Review: Ludwig-Todorova, T. (2012). Kontrastive Analyse syndetischer und asyndetischer Konstruktionen des kausalen Bereichs im Russischen und Bulgarischen

Abstract

The aim of this monograph, a doctoral dissertation at the University of Trier, is quite ambitious: comparing syndetic and asyndetic constructions in Russian and Bulgarian, both language-specifically and in a comparative perspective. The focus is concentrated on causal relations and the question as to which interpretations out of this specific domain are possible for complex sentences consisting of two propositions not connected by an explicit connector. For this purpose, the author analyses syndetic constructions containing a causal connector and asyndetic constructions expressing causal relations without an overt connector. Furthermore, the possibility of substituting syndetic with asyndetic constructions is tested. This is achieved in two steps: elimination and substitution. ‘Elimination’ pertains to the removing of the connector, whereby asyndetic sentences are derived from originally syndetic ones. At the same time this serves as a test for whether the construction in question is also acceptable without the causal connector. By means of ‘substitution’, i.e. the insertion of conjunctions, the asyndetic constructions derived by elimination are converted back into syndetic ones. The conjunctions that can be inserted indicate the interpretational range of the given asyndetic relation. Whereas the elimination test is performed by the author herself, the substitution task is carried out by informants for Russian and Bulgarian, who have been advised to insert the first connector that comes into their minds when reading the test items. In addition, they have been asked to give a second possible variant. This aims at testing which semantic relations out of the causal domain expressed by asyndetic sentences may be acknowledged as syntactic synonyms to syndetic constructions. In order to arrive at a principled comparison of causal syndetic and asyndetic constructions in Russian and Bulgarian, the following issues need to be addressed: