Ebook: Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018

Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2018 offers a selection of articles that were prepared on the basis of talks presented at the conference Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL 13) or at the parallel Workshop on the Semantics of Noun Phrases, which were held on December 5–7, 2018, at the University of Göttingen. The volume covers a wide array of topics, such as situation relativization with adverbial clauses (causation, concession, counterfactuality, condition, and purpose), clause-embedding by means of a correlate, agreeing vs. transitive ‘need’ constructions, clitic doubling, affixation and aspect, evidentiality and mirativity, pragmatics coming with the particle li, uniqueness, definiteness, maximal interpretation (exhaustivity), kinds and subkinds, bare nominals, multiple determination, quantification, demonstratives, possessives, complex measure nouns, and the NP/DP parameter. The set of object languages comprises Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, and Torlak Serbian. The numerous topics addressed demonstrate the importance of Slavic linguistics. The original analyses prove that substantial progress has been made in major fields of research.

PREFACE

The Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL) conference series was initiated
in 1995 in Leipzig. The 13th edition, FDSL 13, was held on December 5–7, 2018, at
the University of Göttingen. The conference featured four invited lectures presenting
leading ideas from the fields of syntax, psycholinguistics, and computational
linguistics. These lectures were read by Catherine Rudin (Wayne State College)
“Demonstratives and definiteness: Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic”,
Irina Sekerina (City University of New York): “Psycholinguistics, experimental
syntax, and syntactic theory of Russian”, John Bailyn (Stony Brook University):
“Cost and intervention: A strong theory of weak islands”, and Duško Vitas (University
of Belgrade): “The formalization of Serbian: Lexical resources and tools”.
We are grateful to the invited speakers for sharing the results of their research.
Two workshops accompanied the conference – one on “Heritage Slavic languages
in children and adolescents”, organized by Natalia Gagarina, and a second
one on the “Semantics of noun phrases”, organized by Ljudmila Geist.
Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2018, the present volume, offers a selection
of articles that were prepared on the basis of talks presented at the main
session of FDSL 13 or at the workshop on “The semantics of noun phrases”. The
volume covers a wide array of topics, such as situation relativization with adverbial
clauses (causation, concession, counterfactuality, condition, and purpose),
clause-embedding by means of a correlate, agreeing vs. transitive ‘need’ constructions,
clitic doubling, affixation and aspect, evidentiality and mirativity, pragmatics
associated with the particle li, uniqueness, definiteness, maximal interpretation
(exhaustivity), kinds and subkinds, bare nominals, multiple determination,
quantification, demonstratives, possessives, complex measure nouns, and the DP
hypothesis. The set of object languages comprises Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian,
Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, and Torlak Serbian.
The numerous topics addressed in the papers that are included in the present
volume demonstrate the importance of Slavic linguistics. The original analyses
prove that substantial progress has been made in major fields of research.
Each article underwent an extensive reviewing process in line with the usual
standards (double-blind peer reviewing). We would like to thank the reviewers –
Boban Arsenijević, Petr Biskup, Joanna Błaszczak, Olga Borik, Wayles Browne,
Małgorzata Ćavar, Barbara Citko, Mojmír Dočekal, Elena Karagjosova, Krzysztof
Migdalski, James Joshua Pennington, Olav Mueller-Reichau, Edgar Onea, Roumyana
Pancheva, Tatiana Philippova, Zorica Puškar, Catherine Rudin, Andrew
Spencer, Luka Szucsich, Ludmila Veselovská, Jacek Witkoś, Hedde Zeijlstra, Markéta
Ziková and Marzena Żygis. We could not have done without their tremendous
support, without their meticulous work.
Thanks are due to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research
Foundation) and the Universitätsbund Göttingen. They provided substantial financial
means that helped to realize FDSL 13.
The series editors – Berit Gehrke, Denisa Lenertová, Roland Meyer, Radek
Šimík, and Luka Szucsich – deserve special mentioning. We are grateful to them
for including the present volume in the series Open Slavic Linguistics.
We would like to acknowledge the work and efforts by those authors who did
the LATEX type setting themselves and thereby facilitated the editorial process.
Finally, we would like to thank our two student assistants – Nicole Hockmann
and Freya Schumann – who supported us in the process of preparing the papers
for the present volume.
We dedicate the volume to Ilse Zimmermann (b. 1928), a great linguist, an erudite
advisor, and a close friend. She died on June 20, 2020. We honor her memory.
One of her very last articles – “The role of the correlate in clause-embedding” –
is based on the talk she gave in 2018 at FDSL 13. We are proud to present this
article to the public.
Göttingen, 1 March 2021
Andreas Blümel
Jovana Gajić
Ljudmila Geist
Uwe Junghanns
Hagen Pitsch