The Evolution of the System of Long and Short Adjectives in Old Russian by Karin Larsen (review)

Abstract

SEER, Vol. 86,No. 4, October 2008 Reviews Larsen, Karin. The Evolution ofthe Systemof Long and Short AdjectivesinOld Russian. Slavistische Beitrage, 439. Otto Sagner, Munich, 2005. 283 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. 26.00 (paperback). Judging by its title, a reader might suppose that this book deals with the morphology, syntax and semantics of the long and short adjectives inOld Russian. In fact, its contents are more accurately described by its author's 'mission statement' in her introduction: 'The purpose of thisdissertation is to investigate the process through which attributive position changed from an environment inwhich SFs [short-formadjectives] and LFs [long-form adjec tives] occurred to an environment inwhich only the LF is possible' (p. 11). Thus thiswork is concerned onlywith adjectival-nominal word combinations, whether they are found as subjects of sentences or in theirpredicates. It does not deal with adjectives which do not qualify nouns in an attributive relation ship, e.g. substantivized adjectives, nor with adjectives standing on their own inpredicates. From the adjectival-nominal word combinations which it studies it excludes the pronominal adjectives hh- and BCflK-, which are said not to have 'real "adjectival" meanings'. Active and passive participles are similarly excluded on the ground that the status of the former as 'real' adjectives is problematic, although passive participles, when occurring in adjectival func tion, can be regarded as 'real' adjectives. All comparative and superlative adjectives are also excluded (p. 18).Although the reasons for the exclusion of some of these word categories are not entirely convincing, to narrow the focus of thework in thisway seems sensible and realistic. The work's primary sources are lengthy excerpts from seven Russian chronicles describing historical events from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries (p. 12). From these excerpts the author has extracted all the adjecti val-nominal word combinations except those whose adjectives contain the suf fixes -HH-, -OB-, -b, -HH and -bCK- (pp. 18-19, 46, 221): in the author's opinion these adjectives form discrete groups which should be studied individually. From the point of view of historical morphology thepicture which emerges iswell known. Already in the oldest chronicles short-form adjectives used attributively are rarely found in the oblique cases of the plural and are not common in the oblique cases of the singular: in the later chronicles short-form adjectives used attributively inoblique cases virtually disappear, being replaced by long-form adjectives. The cases which typically display variation between the long form and the short form in the attributive position in the oldest chron icles and which continue to show some, although increasingly less, variation in the later chronicles are the nominative and accusative singular and plural. The fact that these developments in the historical morphology of the adjective are related to the case and number of the adjectives suggests that they reflect similar developments elsewhere in the morphological system, and the author rightly connects them with contemporaneous changes in the morphology of the noun (pp. 16-17). At this point the investigation leaves the relatively objective realm of morphology and enters the less certain realms of semantics and syntax. Faced REVIEWS 705 with two structurally identical adjectival-nominal word combinations, in one ofwhich the adjective is long,whereas in the other it is short, the author seeks for an explanation of this difference either in themeanings of the adjectives and the nouns constituting theword combinations or in the relationship of theword combinations to other parts of the sentence. The author describes the former, semantic explanation as NP [noun-phrase]-internal, i.e. internal to theword combination itself (p. 20), and the latter, syntactic explanation as NP-external (p. 29). In her concluding analysis (pp. 221-50) the author concentrates on those factorswhich appear to influence the choice of a short or long form in the cases which display variation right up to the seventeenth century, namely the nominative and accusative singular and plural. A major change took place between the fourth and sixth chronicles, i.e. in the firsthalf of the sixteenth century (p. 231). Thereafter the use of the short form in these cases decreases sharply, until by the time ofV. N. Tatishchev's Istoriia rossiiskaiathemodern pattern of usage...