Dutch Contributions to the Thirteenth International Congress of Slavists, Ljubljana August 15-21, 2003: Linguistics by J. s> Schaeken P. Houtzagers J. Kalsbeek (review)

Abstract

938 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 Schaeken, J., Houtzagers, P. and Kalsbeek,J. (eds). DutchContributions tothe 7hirteenth International Congress of Slavists,Ljubljana AugustI5-2I, 2003: Linguistics.Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, 30. Rodopi, AmsterdamandNew York,2003. Tables.Notes. Bibliographies. i oo.0oo: $I I9.00. THIs book contains thirteen papers on a wide-ranging list of topics. The collection is not entirely representativeof Dutch Slavic studies, in that there are no representatives of formal ('generative') theoretical linguistics, but nevertheless one gets an impression of a small but very lively and active community of Slavic linguists and philologists, centred mainly at the universities of Amsterdam and Leiden. Only three papers are in Slavic languages (twoin Russian, one in Polish).Apartfrom two Germanpapersand one Frenchthe rest are in English, an indication that English of necessityhas become the lingua francafor Slavistics. Andreas Nievergelt and Jos Schaeken describe what may be the earliest Slavic written record (the word hreho,'sin', scratched onto an early ninthcentury manuscript).William Veder discusses a putatively eleventh-century textual compilation claiming religious and hence political authority over all the Slavs for the princedom of Rus'. He argues that the text must have been authorized by Jaroslav the Wise. Rick Derksen discussesthe PIE origins and the development of initial *ji/ju. FrederikKortlandt is represented by two contributions.The firstis a surveyof dialect diversityin the earliestforms of South Slavic (mainly on the basis of sound patterns),but including a potted history of Common Slavic. The second is effectively a referee's report on a paper by MorrisHalle on Slavic accentuationpublishedin Lingua in 200 I, in which Kortlandt argues that the paper should have been rejected. Pepijn Hendriks provides a note on Stang's Law and the Moscow School of Accentology. He warns the reader that his paper will be incomprehensibleto anyone not conversantwith the work of the Moscow School, and he is right. Willem Vermeer's contribution on the progressivepalatalization is a kind of biographical history of the debate, complete with a genuine biographical appendix in which the 'bad guys' and the 'good guys' are singled out in very clear terms.Veryentertaining. The otherpapersdealwith synchroniclinguistics.CorneliaKeijsper'spaper is called 'Notes on intonation and voice in Modern Russian'. 'Voice' here means passives, middles, reflexives, impersonals and so on, and she makes intriguing observations about these constructions. Intonation means something like 'phrasal accent', it seems, though I had difficultyfollowing those sections. Now, argument structureand intonation/accent are indeed linked but the five completely differenttopics in this paper are not. Most peculiar. Anna Peeters-Podgaevskajauses Cognitive Grammar to argue that Russian 'v' is used for locations that can be thought of as containers and 'na' for locations that are like flat surfaces. Although there are some interesting, somewhat hidden, observations about very specific covert lexico-semantic categories, the reasoning seems completely circular where exceptions and borderline cases are concerned. This is the sort of paper that gets Cognitive Grammara bad name amongst theoreticians.Andries Bruenis'scontribution REVIEWS 939 is the longest of the book (62 pages). It is a stream of consciousness diatribe about how Slavists have got Slavic aspect wrong because we don't admit categories such as the frequentative. The paper has no discernible sections, leave alone section headings and as far as I can see is a melange of interesting insight,glaringabsurdityand off-the-wallinvention. The remaining papers I found somewhat more instructive and satisfying. Adrian Barentsen provides a detailed survey of constructionswe can loosely label 'iSt person imperative' in Russian. Wim Honselaar argues for a novel discourse function of 'resumptive'for Russian es'c'e used as a conversational particle. Cecilia Ode presents not a researcharticlebut an advertisementfor an interestingproject aimed at providing a transcriptionsystem for Russian intonation (ToRi) based on the ToBi system pioneered for English by Mary Beckman and colleagues. I very much look forwardto seeing the fruitsof this work. Han Steenwijkprovides a subtle, semantically oriented analysis of the Lower Sorbian supine with verbs of motion (or in semantically related constructions), while Hanna Toby traces the development of the use of the preposition odin Cassubian(Kaszubszczyznia)as a German calque, carefully covering allthe anglesby systematicallyexcluding any cases thatmightbe due to internaldevelopment. Overall, this is a very mixed volume...