On the Linguistic Status of Several Obscure Features of Upper Sorbian Morphosyntax

Author: Toops, Gary H.

Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 86, Number 3, 1 July 2008 , pp. 401-419(19)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

The article presents linguistic data generated by responses on a questionnaire that was completed by twelve native speakers of Upper Sorbian in July to August 2006. The questionnaire sought native speakers' grammaticality judgments and personal attitudes towards language use in connection with five insufficiently understood features of Upper Sorbian morphosyntax: a) conflation in the derivation of possessive forms of feminine nouns (both proper and common) and that of married women's surnames, as evidenced by their occurrence in certain serial possessive constructions; b) the apparent conflation or syncretism of the dative and the accusative short forms of the USo reflexive pronoun (sej, so); c) the use of žadyn `no, none' as an indefinite pronoun or adjective signifying `someone/anyone, some'; d) variability in the simple negation of compound verb tenses; and (e) the use of forms of the conditional/subjunctive mood to denote a future-in-the-past in the sentential complements of past-tense performatives (verba dicendi and verba cogitandi).

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas

Publication date: 2008-07-01

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The Review is the oldest British journal in the field, having been in existence since 1922. Edited and managed by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, it covers not only the modern and medieval languages and literatures of the Slavonic and East European area, but also history, culture, and political studies.