Abstract
Though both Early East Slavic (EES) and Modern Russian have a relatively free word order, the distribution and function of word order in EES is quite distinct from Modern Russian. This paper is a study of word order within a single EES text, Xoždenie igumena Daniila, which is split into two major subdivisions: travel guide and narrative. In the travel guide, existential, stance, and motion verbs occur more frequently in VS order, and VS(O) order is more frequent overall; copular and transitive verbs occur more frequently in SV(O) order. Instances of the less frequent word order for the clause type occur as a result of specific conditioning contexts. The narrative, in contrast, has proportionally more SV(O) clauses and transitive verbs than the travel guide.
Highlights
This paper presents a study of word order in the 12th century Early East Slavic (EES) text Žit’e i xožden’e Danila rus’kyja zemli igumena, hereafter Xoždenie
The first subdivision represents the majority of the text and is called ‘the travel guide’ because it is an account of Abbott Daniil’s tour of the Holy Land, replete with descriptions of sites and anecdotal information about events that occurred in biblically important locations
The results of this study show that textual and contextual demands of the language, in addition to lexicosemantic properties of verbs, can be used to explain the distribution of word orders in Xoždenie
Summary
This paper presents a study of word order in the 12th century Early East Slavic (EES) text Žit’e i xožden’e Danila rus’kyja zemli igumena, hereafter Xoždenie. The text falls into two natural subdivisions, which I call ‘the travel guide’ and ‘the narrative’. The results of this study show that textual and contextual demands of the language, in addition to lexicosemantic properties of verbs, can be used to explain the distribution of word orders in Xoždenie. This analysis is consistent with Modern Russian word order analyses, such as Timberlake (2001, 2004) and Robblee (1994, 1997). Her study (2006) is concerned with general observations about the distribution of word orders in EES, whereas the study presented in this paper is an examination of the function of word order within one text. Note that these criteria are stricter than those employed by Turner (2006, 99) who developed rules for counting split verb phrases
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