Linguistics

This book describes the genesis and structure of the project Bulgarian Dialectology as Living Tradition, a searchable and interactive database of field recordings of Bulgarian dialects covering all major dialect types, with innovative analyses including features never discussed before. The depth and breadth of the site, now available on the internet at bulgariandialectology.org, make it an invaluable resource to teachers and scholars.

The bulk of the book presents concrete evidence of the website’s value as a research tool, in the form of two detailed contributions to linguistic scholarship, each the individual work of one of the authors. Vladimir Zhobov discusses aspects of Bulgarian dialectal vocalism, and Ronelle Alexander examines accentual patterns in Bulgarian dialects. Each of these two research reports not only presents valuable new results, but also shows how the organization and presentation of material on the website made it possible to develop the innovative methods by which these results are achieved.

This extraordinary work addresses a number of fundamental theoretical issues based on a wealth of fascinating data related to the nominal domain of South Slavic languages. The analyses it proposes and the conclusions it reaches are truly thought provoking, with far-reaching theoretical consequences that go way beyond just accounting for the complexities of the South Slavic nominal domain. —Željko Bošković, University of Connecticut

South Slavic nominal phrases have always been a challenge for theoretical analyses in generative linguistics. In his impressive new book Steven Franks tackles long-standing problems from a new perspective, that of microvariation, and offers fresh and elegant solutions to the intricate patterns of the South Slavic nominal domain, their functional make-up and featural configuration. With its broad scope and thoughtful argumentation, the book not only illuminates our understanding of various structural aspects of the South Slavic nominal phrase but also serves as an in-depth guide to the complex array of data these languages provide. —Iliyana Krapova, Università Ca' Foscari Venice

Microvariation in the South Slavic Noun Phrase is a monumental work, a fitting culmination of Steven Franks’s longtime research program examining variation in Slavic syntax. This elegantly written volume focuses on the structure of nominals in South Slavic, melding data from diverse languages and constructions, from the Orphan Accusative in Slovenian to Multiple Determination in Bulgarian and Macedonian, to produce a detailed and sophisticated view of NP, DP, and KP across the subfamily, with significant ramifications for general syntactic theory. A must-read for anyone interested in the syntax of nominals, Slavic or otherwise. —Catherine Rudin, Wayne State College

As demonstrated by the diverse contributions to this volume, Catherine Rudin occupies a special position in Bulgarian linguistics. Since her 1982 Indiana University dissertation, she has come to be known as the doyenne of Bulgarian generative syntax. Her extensive work on the syntax of Bulgarian,
both in the context of grammatical theory and in comparison with other languages of the Balkan region, is for many linguists the initial point of departure in conducting any serious research on the language. Catherine’s work encompasses disparate areas, from wh-movement, complementation, and relativization, to clitics and clitic doubling, to concessive and irrealis constructions. If you want to know anything about Bulgarian grammar, for years now the answer has been “Ask Catherine.” But she is a person of many lives, with seemingly boundless energy and diverse interests. One of those is dance and folk music, hence the title of the present book, Katerino Mome—a very popular Bulgarian folksong about an eponymous girl. In this spirit, we offer this celebration of Catherine Rudin’s life and scholarship.

The 2018 volumes of American contributions to the quintennial series of international congresses bringing together the world’s Slavists provides a representative sampling of current trends in Slavic literature, linguistics, and philology as practiced in the United States.

For the second volume on literature, please see the link here

This collection of articles written by colleagues, friends, and students of Laura A. Janda is presented in honor of her contributions to Slavic and Cognitive Linguistics. Topics covered in the volume range from theoretical contributions in Cognitive Linguistics and analyses of particular language phenomena in Slavic linguistics to the conceptualization of movement in Athabaskan and cinematic space of the Cold War, all topics in one way or another relating to Laura’s broad research interests.

Laura A. Janda holds degrees from Princeton University and UCLA and has been a leading researcher in Slavic and Cognitive Linguistics for over thirty years. In her work she has developed not only new approaches to the synchronic analysis of Slavic grammatical categories such as case and aspect, but also innovative diachronic analyses of Slavic verbal and nominal morphology. She has been a strong advocate of applying empirical methods to language data, as well as a passionate  teacher dedicated to her students in Europe and the US.

Read our interview with Steve Franks about this book.

This truly fascinating work deals with fundamental theoretical issues regarding the architecture of the grammar, the nature of the Move operation, and the mapping of syntactic structures to morphology and phonology. It makes bold, far-reaching, and thought-provoking proposals backed up by extremely interesting and rich data. This is a book which every syntactician should read and respond to. 
—Željko Bošković, University of Connecticut

Pervasive differences among languages are often differences in the way distinct morphological pieces are spelled-out. In this volume, empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated as is all of his work, leading linguist Steven Franks brings to bear crucial facts from South Slavic languages to uncover the principles involved in Spell-Out, teasing apart the contributions of syntax and those attributable to morphology and phonology. Compulsory reading for all syntacticians.
—Guglielmo Cinque, University of Venice

A very impressive accomplishment by one of the world’s leading Slavic syntacticians. Every syntactician (Slavicist or not) will gain by reading this book, especially for its great insights about the nature of spell-out, and implications for realization of copies.
—Howard Lasnik, University of Maryland

Steven Franks holds degrees from Princeton, UCLA, and Cornell, and has spent the past 30 years teaching Slavic and general linguistics at Indiana University. He has published and lectured widely on diverse areas of Slavic syntax, and is particularly known for his detailed comparative studies of numerals, case phenomena, and clitics. The present volume, although it also relies largely on Slavic data, offers a broader perspective on the workings of syntax. Syntax and Spell-Out in Slavic explores how syntactic structures are mapped into representations manipulable by the morphology and phonology. Leading ideas are that “movement” is best understood as a metaphor for multiattachment and that what ends up pronounced where results from the complex interaction of competing forces and particular derivational steps. These proposals are primarily illustrated by close examination of phenomena drawn from two distinct domains: wh-movement and clitics. The former domain serves to develop the more general theoretical underpinnings of Spell-Out and the latter, by revisiting classic issues in the analysis of Slavic clitics, probes some of the model’s finer complexities.

Case in Slavic was the third and final monumental collection of articles on Slavic morphosyntax published by Slavica. This is more overtly theoretical than the earlier volumes, albeit reflecting a democratic range of theories. Exploring these three anthologies along with the quinquennial volumes of American Contributions to the International Congress of Slavists, not coincidentally also published by Slavica since 1978, offers a representative survey of American work by Slavists sensu stricto (as opposed to general linguistic theoreticians, mostly native speakers of various Slavic linguists) on more theoretical brands of Slavic linguistics.

Slavica would like to express its sincere thanks to Richard Brecht and James Levine for graciously granting permission for this reprint. We welcome comments on this and all the earlier titles released in this series.

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