CASE AND VOCATIVENESS
ПАДЕЖ И ВОКАТИВНОСТ
IVAN G. ILIEV/ИВАН Г. ИЛИЕВ
(2007)
СЪДЪРЖАНИЕ - TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface .............................................................................. 4
Предисловие ................................................................ 5
За същността на падежа, езиковата типология и за произхода на вътрешните допълнения и подлози .................... 8
On the Nature of Grammatical Case, Language Typology, and on the Origin of Cognate Objects and Subjects ……………......... 9
За вокативността при българските прилагателни имена …………………………………………………………..182
On the Vocativeness of Bulgarian Adjectives ………….… 183
За антропонимичната метонимия в българския език ..... 198
On Antroponimic Metonymy in Bulgarian Language ….… 199
Съкращения/Abbreviations …………………………..… 222
Библиография/References ........................................... 224
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PREFACE
This book comprises three linguistic essays. The first of them pays attention to the origin of cognate objects and subjects. The author first explains the related to them linguistic categories case and language typology. Readers will make themselves familiar with the different views on the nature of case, and unnoticeably will be led to the conclusion that the existence of this grammatical category is doubtful. The examination of language typologies is done with a definite aim. It is related to the ‘case’ roles in every typology. That is why the author pays so much attention to the formation of the Indo-European case system, tracing the consequent stages of its development. From this point of view, some linguistic archaisms have been commented upon (one of them is tautological subjects and objects).
The object of research in the second essay is the vocative. On the basis of language facts, taken from medieval Bulgarian manuscripts and Modern Bulgarian dialects, the author reveals the tendencies in the development of the Bulgarian adjectival vocative, and shows some dialectal means of expressing this category.
In the third essay, the author examines some competitive forms, which are probably a resonance of the old Indo-European lack of distinguishment between nouns and adjectives.
In this work, Ivan Iliev challenges some of the established opinions in linguistics, and logically defends his theses, not only through very interesting examples from the Bulgarian language, but also through numerous examples from other languages and linguistic families.
Dr. Tatiana Slavova,
Full Professor at Sofia University
ON THE NATURE OF GRAMMATICAL CASE, LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY, AND ON THE ORIGIN OF COGNATE OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS
The aim of this monograph is to solve the problem of the origin of cognate objects and subjects (for example, to dream a dream, to sleep a sleep). The first are also called by the term accusative of cognate internal object. This is a continuation of a previous research of the author, at which end were shown, without a comment, examples from Bulgarian folk songs of the type чудо (се) чудя – чудом се чудя ’ to wonder (a wonder)’; бяг бягам – в бяг бягам - бягом бягам ’to run’. An explanation requires, not only the origin of such combinations, but also the possibility of their expression through case endings, prepositions, or zero affixes.
This task requires the explanation of other linguistic terms and categories, which will be done below. To clarify the character of cognate direct objects and subjects, it is necessary to define what language typology is. In addition, before doing that, we need to specify what grammatical case is.
І. NATURE OF GRAMMATICAL CASE
The nature of grammatical case is not complicated. However, it is often not properly researched and explained. As Anderson states, a general theory of its domain has yet to be offered. In different periods of the development of linguistics, this notion designated different phenomena. Yet, one thing is clear. This category is related to the change of word forms, or to their semantic function, and it is often mistaken with other grammatical categories. Aristotle, for example, designated as case, all oblique
and plural forms of names and verbs. On the other hand, Genko uses the terms definite and indefinite case, regarding the Abazian words тшы ’horse’ и аттґ ’the horse’, which, in fact, is an expression of the category definiteness-indefiniteness. In the same way, vocativeness, which is rather an independent grammatical category, is considered to be a case grammeme (vocative case).
A subject of dispute is whether case is a morphological, syntactic, morpho-syntactic, or structural category. However, there is no doubt for some authors that there are two elements within the case model - a governing word and a governed word, between which only one relation, government, is possible; and the case morpheme is only a consequence of case relations.
А. VIEWS ON THE NATURE OF CASE
In traditional grammar, which was, and is, based on studying and teaching classical Greek and Latin languages, and later, on modern Indo-European languages, case was, and is, considered to be a category, related to word-form changes and identified through the change in the form of the words. It is a functional feature of nouns. The subject is in the nominative case, the vocative form is in the vocative case, the direct object is in the accusative, possession is expressed by the genitive, the beneficient (beneficiary), or the recipient of the action, are expressed by the dative, direction is expressed by the ablative. This accepted scheme varies among different Indo-European languages.
As a rule, case is expressed by affixes: suffixes (in agglutinative languages), or endings (in flective languages). However, this also may be done by sound alternation (in Irish
Gaelic), or through tones (in Kipsigis, Kenya). The fact that some word changes - after a preposition, in fact, after some verbs, nouns, and adjectives, too (see in detail further), cannot be explained through the syntactic function of nouns, is a disadvantage of the traditional scheme.
A modification of the traditional model is the model, used by Stoikov. Under this system, the number of case grammemes, used in the paradigm, determines the number of cases. For instance:
Bipartite Case System
Nominative Agglomerative Prepositional
Case Case Phrase
аз ’I’ мене/ме ’me’ на мен ’to me’
Tripartite Case System
Nominative Glomerative Dative
Case Case Case
аз ’I’ мене/ме ’me’ мене/ми ’to me’.
With the term agglomerative case, Stoikov designates a combined object case, which replaces the terms accusative and accusative-genitive. It is used only in bipartite case systems where it is opposed to the nominative. With the term glomerative case, the same author designates a combined object case, opposed to the dative in tripartite case systems.
Other authors define the presence or absence of cases through the frequency of the used forms. According to this view, Modern Bulgarian pronouns do not have cases. Forms, such as когото ’whom’, комуто ’to whom’, are not cases but case relicts.
Another modification of the traditional view is the view, expressed by Jespersen and Blake, according to which cases are categorised as grammatical (nominative, accusative) and concrete, or semantical: locative, instrumental, etc.
Unlike the supporters of traditional grammar, these who support the so-called case, or role grammar (Philmore, etc.), call case not word changes, but semantic relations between words. The semantic of the sentence is described by them as a system of semantic valencies. Syntactic and semantic relations are considered universal. The meaning of the verb determines its roles. The verb to give, for instance, requires a case for the giving person (the agent), the addressee (recipient), and the object that is given. In fact, it is a matter of valency – the ability of words to become connected with other elements. Verbs can be: avalent, or impersonal (Bulg. съмва се ’dawn breaks’), monovalent, or intransitive (Peter is sleeping), bivalent, or transitive (Peter is reading a book), trivalent (He is giving the book to his brother). Valency may be obligatory (with verbs to have, to give, to hold) and optional: Peter took the book from the table - here the underlined may be omitted.
According to case grammar, the underlined noun, in the sentences below, is in the same case (аgentive) in the two opposed examples:
John opened the door - The door was opened by John.
Respectively, the noun is in the instrumental case in the following sentences:
The key opened the door - John opened the door with the key - John used the key to open the door.
And the following is in the locative case:
Chicago is windy - It is windy in Chicago.
A disadvantage of the proposed by case grammar model is that it is impossible to determine how many case grammemes are present in the language. However, this is not so important, or necessary, since other language phenomena cannot be classified comprehensively, too. For example, all meanings of prepositions. Regarding Hungarian language, even traditional grammar cannot say for sure how many cases are distinguished. According to Abondolo, there are seven grammatical and ten spatial/temporal cases there. However, Maitinskaya thinks that they are more than twenty.
Another, more important, argument against the statements of case grammar, but not disproving them totally, is that in sentences like The wind opened the door the word the wind (and why not John and key from the above-mentioned examples) may be interpreted as an agent, as well as an instrument of action; there is not always a clear distinction between semantic roles. However,
agent and instrument are not always different things, as we will see further.
B. CASE AND GOVERNMENT
The misunderstandings, concerning the category case, are a consequence mostly from the presence of syncretism in language – the possibility for several relations to be expressed by one form (this can be seen with other grammatical categories, too). For example, the syncretistic form of the present tense in Bulgarian expresses several tenses: the present historic, present gnomic, and what in English is called the present progressive or present continuous tense – realization of the syncretistic possibilities of language. In addition, prepositions can express relations that are even more syncretistic: go to the cinema - the key to the door, etc.
Maybe it is easier to say what case is not than what case is. Of all shown opinions about what case is not, a well-substantiated one (from the point of view of non-case grammar), is the opinion, expressed by Liubenova. She thinks that, if there is no government, there is no case.
There are two main kinds of government:
1. Governed nouns and pronouns;
2. Governed verbs.
The second kind can be seen in Chechen, for instance (nouns of different classes (genders) require different verb prefixes):
Stag v-eza v-u ’the man is heavy’, Stag aara v-eelira ’the man went out’; but:
Beera b-eza b-u ’the child is heavy’, Beer aara d-eelira ’the child went out’.
Here stag means ’man’, beer(a) - ’child’, -u means ’is’,
-eelira means ’went out’.
In Arabic, verbs, governed from particles, can be observed. According to Lopatina, in Indo-European languages, government is mostly a government from a verb, directed to a noun (however, an exception is the English subjunctive mood where verb forms change because of adjectives: It is necessary that he go, instead of ... he goes). In fact, if it is accepted that there is case, if there are governed nouns, it should be accepted that case and governed nouns are almost the same – supporters of such theory did not consider this. We should agree that with nouns, case and government are two names (according to different features) of almost the same thing. A type of government should also be considered agreement; but here, the governed form accepts the same form as the governing one.
Nouns can be governed also in combination with some preposition (postposition), verb, or noun. The government is fulfilled rather by the notion, not by the word form itself. That is why in Russian, for example, a noun can be governed and receives the same form when it is connected with a verb, adjective/participle, or noun:
готов к прыжку ’ready to jump’ (masculine dative) – готовиться к отъезду ’to get ready for departure’ (masculine dative) - готовность к эксплуатации ’readiness for putting into operation’ (feminine dative);
болна ангиной (feminine instrumental) – болеть гриппом (masculine instrumental);
рады встрече (feminine dative) - обрадоваться встрече (feminine dative);
нападать на врага (masculine accusative) - нападение на человека (masculine accusative);
управлять самолeтом (masculine instrumental) - управление государством (masculine instrumental).
Similar examples of earlier time can be found in the language of Bulgarian Slavs of the IX-XI centuries - the accusative of direct object, in addition to after verbs, can be observed after nouns and adjectives/participles; the same goes for some uses of the genitive:
w №слышаньи ... гласъ ’after hearing the voice’ – ąслышати гласъ ’to hear the voice’ (with the accusative);
по приЄтии ... великыи даръ – приЄти ... великыи даръ (with the accusative);
б©д© исповэденъ всэхъ грэхъ – исповэсти вьсэхъ грэхъ (with the genitive).
To this fact, attention has been paid also by Savchenko. He also thinks that, at the beginning, in the Indo-European language, the government of nouns, by the verb, was fulfilled semantically. It was rather apposition than government. Involved was the semantics of words, as in готов ’ready’, готовност ’readiness’, готовиться ’to get ready’, above, and relations between words could be redefined and interpreted. Nevertheless, when an action is
expressed and perceived in a different way, the ‘governed’ name also takes a different ‘case’ form:
Old Gr. V ˆÞ ’(they) heard a voice’ – with the accusative, it designates the sound heard; but:
V ˆ‡’(they) heard him’ – with the genitive, it designates the source of the sound: ’(they) heard (a voice from) him’;but:
ˆ÷Ý¥ V’(they) are listening to my direction’ – with the dative, it designates the direction, to which the hearing is directed;
слежу за полетом птиц ’I watch the flight of the birds’ – with the instrumental - but:
выслеживаю преступника ’I follow the criminal’ – with the genitive.
The latest examples show that in different languages, syntactic and semantic relations may not be the same, may vary, and may change within the language itself, as time goes by. More proof will be shown:
Old Bulg. благодар« т¬ (with a direct object in the accusative = ’I offer you a good word’) - against Mod. Bulgarian благодаря ти ’I express my gratitude to you’ (with an indirect object in the dative);
Old Bulg. с©жд© ти (with an indirect object in the dative) – against Mod. Bulg. съдя те ’I judge you’ (with a direct object in the accusative) - but in dialects, it is still said: не мога да ти съдя ’I can not tell you what to do’ (with an indirect object in the dative);
Russ. помагаю человеку, Bulg. помагам на човека ’I help the man’ (with an indirect object in the dative, or with a preposition) - Lat. adjuvo hominem ’I help the man’ (with a direct object in the accusative), or Bulg. подпомагам човека ’I help/support the man’ (with a direct object);
Tur. seni görüyorum ’I see you’ (with a direct object in the accusative) - Tur. sana bakýyorum - literal translation, ’I look to your direction’ - with an indirect object in the dative’;
Kor. aiga omoniege murotsəmnida (literal translation, ’the child is asking to its mother’) - against Bulg. детето пита майка си ’the child is asking its mother’;
Kor. kə airəl мitoio – literal translation, ’I trust the child’ – against Bulg. вярвам на детето ’I trust in the child’; but in South-Bulgarian dialects, one can observe the phrase не те вярвам ’I don’t trust you’ (see below);
Engl. I trust/believe you (without a preposition) - I believe in you (with a preposition);
Germ. er kocht ihr/für sie ’he cooks for her’ (with the dative or a preposition) - er bekocht sie (with the accusative);
Bulg. вървя по пътя ’I walk on the road’- Bulg. dialectal върв’ахме едни места ’we walked some places’;
Modern Bulg. пристигам в града ’I arrive at the town’ – against Old Bulg. приде хЌсъ небесьскы¬ двьри ’Christ came to the gates of heaven’, or Lat. Rōмaм tōta Italia convenit ’whole Italy came to Rome’, and vādō Rōмaм ’I go to Rome’;
Engl. to enter the room (without a preposition) - Bulg. влизам в стаята (with a preposition);
Bulg. викам Петър да дойде (without a preposition) - викам на Петър да дойде (with preposition) ’I am calling (to) Peter to come’;
Bulg. летя на височина 1000 метра (’I am flying at an altitude of 1000 meters’) - прелетявам височина от 1000 метра ’I am crossing the altitude of 1000 meters’ - Koreans say literally: ’I am flying through an altitude of 1000 meters’;
Bulg. обработвам полето (without a preposition) - работя в полето (with a preposition) ’I work in the field’- in Kabard-Cherkes (Kabardinian), it is literally said: ’I work through (the existence) of the field’ - see below;
Bulg. вярвам богу (with the dative) - вярвам в бог (with a prepositional phrase) ’I believe in God’;
Bulg. моля се богу (with the dative) - моля бога (with animate accusative) – моля се на бог (with a prepositional phrase) ’I pray to God’;
Bulg. рискувам здравето си ’I risk my health’ - Russ. рискую здоровьем (with the instrumental), literal translation ’I take risks with my health; or:
Bulg. мърдам плещи/махам (с) ръка ’I move my shoulders’/’I wave my hand’ - Russ. двигаю плечами (with the instrumental), literally ’I move with the help of my shoulders’.
Bulg. живея живот ’I live a life’- Russ. жить жизнью (with the instrumental) - literal translation, ’I live through my existence’.
With more imagination, each verb, if necessary, with a different affix, may be connected to a noun, which expresses either an object, which suffers from the verb action; or an object to which it is directed; or an instrument; or a locative modifier. According to this logic, it is possible to imagine the existence of a phrase as I pray/believe through (the existence) of God (such a dative - instrumental opposition can be seen in Bulgarian folk songs: бягу бягам - бягом бягам ’I run’). The
language is a system of paraphrases and transformations. Everything can be said in several ways:
Иван продает машину Петру ’Ivan is selling the car to Peter’®
машина продается Иваном Петру ’the car is being sold to Peter by Ivan’®
(это) продажа машины Иваном Петру ’(this is) the sale of the car to Peter by Ivan’. Alternatively:
сестра любит брата ’the sister loves (her) brother’ – брат любим сестрой ’the brother is loved by (his) sister’.
If anyway, some languages cannot give a suitable example, other languages give us them. The processes of replacement of the indirect object by a direct object, and vice versa, as well as the replacement of the object by another sentence part, are called accusativisation, dativisation, instrumentalisation, etc. Moreover, there is, not only a simple change of case endings, or prepositional and non-prepositional phrases, but a manifestation of a different way of thinking, and different language typology, which can appear even in rare cases. The Russian phrase with the instrumental двигаю плечами, and the Bulgarian one with a preposition мърдам с плещи, are manifestation, not of nominative-accusative, but of ergative way of thinking - see below.
All these possibilities of language manipulation are relicts of different mental processes, which enable the expression of one notion in a different way. That is why different verb forms require specific noun forms. In the language of Bulgarian Slavs of the IX-XI centuries (as well as in all other Slavonic languages, and many Indo-European ones), different verbs govern different cases (there is obligatory valency here):
вижд© жен© ’I see the woman’ (accusative);
бо« с® жены ’I am afraid of the woman’ (genitive);
мол› с® женэ ’I bag of the woman’ (dative);
влад© жено› ’I rule the woman’ (instrumental);
прилэпихъ с® женэ ’I got close to the women’ (locative).
As emphasised by Katznelson, traditional grammar cannot explain satisfactorily why only the accusative form should be considered an indirect object, and the governing it verb - transitive. However, although sometimes a different case form gives an additional meaning to the expression (Russ. oн дал ему хлеб, or oн дал ему хлеба ’he gave him the/some bread’– there is a partitive meaning in the second example), verbal government is related, not only to case, but to language typology – see below.
Language typology changes slowly and irregularly. That is why parallel uses of different case forms, after certain verbs, may be observed, for instance, in the medieval Slavonic-Bulgarian dialect:
с©дъ с©дите (with the accusative) John 7. 42 Codex Marianus – с©домь с©дите ’you will sue through a court’ (with the instrumental) Matthew 7. 2 Op. cit.
There will be listed some examples, classified by Mincheva, which are a deviation from the natural instrumental case, and which are a reflection of very old processes:
А. Double accusative with verbs having two direct objects – of person, and of object:
напоитъ вы чаш© воды Mark 9. 41 Codex Marianus ’(he) will give you a glass of water to drink’. Here the glass, or the water, still are not considered to be instruments, as it would be in *напоитъ вы чашо› воды /*напоитъ вы водо«.
B. Double accusative for designating a predicative supplement to the direct object:
мќ постави с©ди› Luke 12. 14 Codex Marianus ’(he) appointed me as a judge’ - this could be replaced by *мќ постави с©дие›;
C. Accusative with a transitive reflexive verb:
землэ плодитъ сќ трэв© ... класъ ... и пьшениц© Mark 4. 28 Op. cit. ’the earth produces grass ... and wheat’ - this could be replaced by *землэ плодитъ сќ трэво› ... класомь ... и пьшенице›;
D. Partitive genitive – indirect object:
наплъните водоносы воды - John 2. 7 Op. cit. ’fill the vessels with water’- this could be replaced by: *наплъните водоносы водо›.
C. CASES, PREPOSITIONS, AFFIXES
Some authors, such as Yahontov, state that combinations of a noun and a preposition, or of two nouns, are also case grammemes (they call them analytical cases). In this way, the form Петру ’to Peter’, as well as the combination на Петър ’to Peter’, will be in the dative. Others do not accept this.
It is usually said that prepositions also govern (Old-Bulgarian examples):
ид© въ градъ ’I go to the town’ (accusative), but:
работа› въ градэ ’I work in the town’(locative), or:
ид© къ град¹ ’I go to the town’ (dative).
However, it also could be stated that the relation between the three shown examples resembles the so-called English phrasal verbs (they can be seen in Arabic, too). The meaning of carry, for example, is different from the meaning of carry on. However, here the relation is opposite to the expressed in English. Here the verb gives an additional semantic to the preposition, not vice versa. In these examples, the preposition takes the part of a verb prefix (ити въ градъ ’to go to the town’ can be expressed also by вънити градъ, and работати въ градэ ’to work in the town’ = *въработати
градэ), and can alternate with such a prefix, or replace it. That is why here the government is also fulfilled by the verb (the examples are from Codex Supraslensis):
Old Bulg. при⬮заш®¬ с⮬тааго д©бэ ’they tied the saint to the tree’ – Mod. Bulg. вързаха светеца при дървото;
Old Bulg. доидетъ мэста того ’he will reach that place’ – ити до мэста того ’to reach that place’ - Mod. Bulg. ида до мястото - дойда до мястото.
Sometimes, as it is seen, this can cause doubling and syntactic pleonasm:
Germ. er wolte mit uns mitcomen ’he wanted to come with us’;
Old Bulg. вънити въ градъ ’to enter the town’;
Mod. Bulg. влизам в града ’I enter the town’;
Russ. налетет на столб;
Russ. подпрыгнуть под потолок;
Russ. сбежать с горы.
However, pleonasm is present in all cases of prepositional case uses, since the ending has the same role as the preposition: работа› въ градэ ’I work in the town’.
Undoubtedly, prepositional government (въ градэ – къ град№) is a phenomenon that should be examined in detail. Nevertheless, it can not be taken for granted that with it, some case relations are present. Moreover, there are languages (as Korean) where not only verbs, but also even prepositions do not govern, although there are case relations in these languages, or syntactic position markers with nouns and pronouns. The classificatory scheme, proposed by traditional grammar, is mostly applicable to such languages. Ironically, Indo-European languages do not belong to this type.
It is possible flective forms to be opposed to prepositional and postpositional phrases, which are replaceable, and all their meanings can build an ideal paradigm of flections, or an ideal paradigm of prepositional phrases (if there is no synonymy, or homonymy in language). For example:
Петр№ - на Петър ’to Peter’;
Петромь – с Петър ’with Peter’;
Петрэ – в Петър ’in Peter’, etc.
In addition, this is not a characteristic feature of case presence, especially with agglutinative languages. In fact, the flection often is a rather flexible notion, since in the example Петр№ - на Петър ’to Peter’, there is synonymy between a preposition and an ending; and the latter sometimes is hardly differentiated from an postposition. Anderson also pays attention to the fact that the drawing of a consistent dividing line between case and postposition depends on the availability of a general definition of the word as unit. Jaworska uses the term lexical items with the characteristics of prepositions. For instance, traditional Turkish grammar accepts that bende ’on me’ is a form with a locative ending, but forms such as bensiz ’without me’, or benimle ’with me’, are not considered to have case endings, although these are forms of deprivative and sociative cases (or separate categories depriveness and sociativeness).
Such ambiguous interpretations can be observed, regarding the Japanese language, too. What some scholars consider to be a case
ending, or case particle, others consider just a postposition. For example, in the sentence Sensei ga Tasaku ni hon o yatta ’the teacher gave Tasaku a book’, according to Blake, ga, ni, o are just postpositions, marking the subject, the indirect object, аnd the direct object, not case markers (see further). In fact, only suprasegmental language units, such as intonation and accent, can help the distinguishment between case endings and postpositions. As formal distinguishment is impossible. Except the position, there is no difference, in principle, between the preposition на in на Петър, and the ending -№ in Петр№. Only in the first example, the preposition can be placed in front of every noun, and in the second example, the ending -№ can be added only to a masculine singular –o stem noun. Such restrictions can be either phonetic (Kor. –i after a consonant, but -ga after a vowel), or semantic (as in the cited example – depending on the gender, or the number of the noun).
Therefore, besides formal markers, another clear semantic criterion is necessary for differentiating between postpositions and endings/suffixes, on one hand, and prepositions and prefixes, on the other.
D. CASE AND/OR OTHER CATEGORIES
The requirement of government, being present for the existence of a case system, contravenes with the formulations of traditional grammar. According to Liubenova, the so-called nominative and vocative cases cannot be included into the notion of case, since there is no government with them. Here we can add the mentioned above concept that vocativeness is an independent category. Even subject marking can be regarded arguably as a case marking. The
subject (in the nominative) in Indo-European languages is not marked in form. Its marking by a morpheme (or the marking of the object) can be seen in Japanese and Korean. However, there the same markers (or postpositions) can be placed after adverbs, and should not be regarded as case indicators:
Kor. Pungthu-nən olма iмnikka? ’how much is the envelope?’ - after a noun; but:
Kor. Jigəm-ən opsəmnida ’now, it is not available’ - after an adverb.
Or:
Jap. Watashi-wa roku ni okimasu ’I get up at 6’ - after a pronoun;
Jap. Ie-wa kōgai ni arimasu ’the house is in the suburbs’ - after a noun; but:
Jap. Nichiyōbi-wa … kaisha-wa yasumimasu ’on Sunday, the firm does not work’ - after an adverb;
Jap. Yoru-wa biru-o nomimasu ’in the evening, I drink beer’ - after an adverb.
In Japanese, the marker -wa can be added to an addressing form, too:
Miraa san-wa, nan sai desuka? ’Mr. Miller, what is (your) age?’.
In colloquial speech, these grammatical markers can be even omitted:
Kor. Маrina-gа chanda – but also: Маrina chanda ’Marina is sleeping’.
In Chinese, there is also marking of sentence parts with the help of morphemes. The marker, which can be placed in front of the designated word, may be added to the subject (only in some dialects), to the predicate, the object, or the adverbial modifier.
Japanese grammar totally throws into confusion the European concepts on the case category, not only with the option of adding nominative markers to adverbs and addressing forms, but also by the presence of syntactic models, called topic sentences/topicless sentences. In such sentences, the role of the markers (endings or postpositions) –wa and –ga sometimes seems to be either a nominative ending, or a definite article, or a relative element. Since there are no relative pronouns in Japanese, and the modifying phrase is placed in front of the modified: wood cuts man = the man, who cuts wood (the marker or postposition –о, in the examples below, emphasises the direct object):
Topicless sentence: Taroo-ga sono hon-o yondeiru ’Taro is reading that book’; but:
Topic sentence: Taroo-wa sono hon-o yondeiru ’Taro is such that he is reading that book’; and more:
Topic sentence: Sono hon-wa Taroo-ga yondeiru ’that book is such that Taro is reading it’.
Here hon means ’book’, and yondeiru – ’reads’.
Such a situation is observed in Algonquian, where the sentence ’the man saw the dog’ (and that of opposite meaning, ’the dog saw the man’) may be expressed by adding the same marker -wa (this -wa is just a coincidence with the Japanese marker) either to the word for ’man’, or ’dog’ (only the verb changes). The cause for doing this is the way the action is perceived – as direct or inverse:
Nāpēw atim-wa wāpam-ē-w;
Or:
Nāpēw-wa atim wāpam-ik
Here nāpēw means ’man’, and atim means ’dog’. Such ‘case’ systems are called direct-inverse. Tagalog also offers suitable examples, which cannot be explained by traditional grammar.
In Turkish, an interlacing between the categories case and definiteness can be observed. Blagova gives examples, showing that the Bulgarian чета книгата ’I am reading the book’ can be translated by the Turkish kitabý okuyorum (where -ý is an accusative ending), and чета книга ’I am reading a book’ - by kitab okuyorum.
Possessiveness also can be arguably considered a case manifestation. According to Liubenova, the English -’s should rather be considered a possessive suffix than a case ending (and she is right). Possessiveness, which is strongly emphasised in the Turkic languages, as well as the vocative, is beyond the main frame of the sentence, which, depending on the typology (see bellow), can be built by subject-object opposing, or other features. Moreover, possessiveness can also be expressed by suffixes, while another syntactic relation is being expressed:
Russ. nom. sing. masc. отц-ов дом = дом отца ’father’s house’;
Russ. gen. sing. masc. отц-ов-а дома = дома отца ’of the father’s house’;
Russ. dat. sing. masc. отц-ов-у дому = дому отца ’to the father’s house’.
A basic indicator for case defining, according to the traditional view, is the word ending. For instance, in господь дома ’master of the house’, it is accepted that дома is in the genitive (of possession), and in господь дом№ ’master of the house’, it is accepted that there is dative (of possession). The combinations господь дома and господь дом№, are defined in a different way, according to the word-change criterion (as genitive possessive, or dative possessive case). However, the relation is the same, although traditional grammar considers them different cases. That is why, if it is accepted that possessiveness is a kind of case, and not a separate category, it should be better to talk of one possessive case (expressed in two ways), instead of ‘competition between the genitive and the dative’. Maybe definiteness, or another category, is also involved in this opposition.
All connotations of the designated by the traditional grammar cases, in fact, are separate cases, or other separate grammatical categories. The so-called Slavonic genitive, for example, is a syncretistic denotation of the possessive case, the objective case (after negation), the animate case (with animate nouns), or whatever other term may be used for it, and of many other meanings.
Another obstacle to case defining, besides language syncreticity and the resulting synonymous uses, is the mixing of linguistic terms. For example, traditional Bulgarian Paleoslavistics often does not differentiate between the terms stem and declension. Some textbooks say that дома is a genitive form, belonging to the
-о stem, not to -о declension. In fact, the same is valid for the category case, that is why this statement should be reconsidered. For instance, the different forms of the Old Bulgarian masculine nouns, belonging to -о stem, should be redefined as:
родъ ’clan’ (traditional nominative case) - the basic or initial form, coinciding with the third syncretistic one – the term case itself, calque from the Latin сāsus (and the Greek ðτÕòéò), presupposes a main initial form, and others are considered deviations to the rule;
роде – the vocative form;
родотъ/родось – the definite form;
рода (traditional genitive case) – the first syncretistic form;
родΉ (traditioanal dative case) – the second syncretistic form;
родъ (traditional accusative case) – the third syncretistic form;
родомь (traditional instrumental case) – the fourth syncretistic form;
родэ (traditional locative case) – the fifth syncretistic form.
In some Russian, Czech, etc., grammar books something similar is done – terms such as first, second, third, etc., cases are used – for example, by Schwarz.
The same is valid for the other stems: the first syncretistic form of the -ä stem noun домъ ’home’, respectively, should be дома (-о declension), or домΉ (-ä declension), and the third - домΉ (-о declension), or домови (-ä declension).
When teaching every Slavonic or Indo-European flective language, it could be much easier to explain the so called case relations by classifying verbs (and others parts of speech) according to the form of the governed noun that they require, instead of explaining some case functions, which include more
exceptions than rules. For example, regarding Old Bulgarian (Slavonic):
1. Verbs, requiring the 1st syncretistic form: бояти с® ’to be afraid’, etc. + negative verbs;
2. Verbs, requiring the 2nd form: с©дити ’to judge’, молити с® ’to pray’, etc.;
3. Verbs, requiring the 3rd form: благодарити ’to thank’, etc.;
4. Verbs, requiring the 4th form: власти ’to rule’, etc;
5. Verbs, requiring the 5th form: прилэпити с® ’to get closer’, etc.
It can be concluded that the phenomenon, which so far has been called by the uncertain semantically, but more comfortable to use term case, is a change in the noun form. Moreover, sometimes this term is used as a synonym of grammatical category: definite case, instead of definiteness; active case, instead of activeness. It would be better to use separate designations of all categories, expressed by it: agentivity, subjectivity, beneficientivity, objectiveness (accusativeness), direction, instrumentality, possessiveness, animateness, vocativeness, sociativeness, negation, ablativity, partitivity, topicness, focuseness, inverseness, factitiveness, etc. (see further). A radical approach could even deny the existence of this unclarified category (case).
Government, especially of nouns by verbs, which is related to, or identic with cases, and is fulfilled through accusativisation, dativisation, instrumentalisation, locativisation, etc., in fact, is a resonance of old ways of expressing different relations, which will be explained below.
ІІ. ‘CASE’ AND LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY
А. SCHEMATIC PRESENTATION OF TYPOLOGIES
Language typology should be involved in explaining the nature of cases and pseudo-cases. However, in the existing Bulgarian textbooks in ‘General’ Linguistics, in which are described only 20-30, mostly Indo-European, languages, this has not been done.
The so-called сontentive typology distinguishes between three main language types, according to the syntactic manifestation of mental processes of the speaker, regarding the distribution of the roles in the sentence, and the phrase. These language types are rarely shown in ‘pure’ examples and often interweave. Probably, the ancient Indo-European language has passed through all of these stages of typological development. Using the different sources, which have dealt with this matter, a brief ideal variant will be presented below (concrete examples will be given in the next part).
1. ACTIVE - PASSIVE TYPOLOGY
The simplest type, active-stative, or only active (from the Latin аctivus ’agentive’), is a language typology, based on semantical opposition, not of subject and object (as in modern Indo-European languages), but of active and inactive (passive) principle. This typology opposes an agent to a patient (sometimes also a dative beneficient or recipient) irrespective of the subject-object status, and of the category transitivity-intransitivity. Here agreement between verbs and nouns is observed. There are passive (inactive, stative, inanimate) nouns: ’chair’, ’stone’, which combine with
stative, or inactive verbs: ’be erect’, ’stand’; and active, animate nouns: ’boy’, ’woman’, which combine with active verbs: ’arise’, ’eat’, ’come’. There are often verb doublets (one for the active and one for the passive form). Active verbs may have a direct object (not in the accepted sense) also a passive name, not only an active one. Adjectives are absent, there are stative (of state) verbs instead. There are two types of sentence structures: active (with an active verb), and inactive, or stative (with a passive verb). However, this kind of typology is not clearly presented, although many American languages, such as Sioux and Navajo in the USA, and Guarani in Paraguay, are still at the stage of transition from an active typology to a more developed one.
One should bear in mind that, generally, all phrases of the type: my photographs, my school, my departure, my redness, my condemnation possess either a hidden predicativeness: the photographs that I have made; the school where I work; or there is a predicate with surface implementation: I depart, I am red, I am condemned. In Navajo, the same phrase can designate ’you have wood’ and ’this is your wood’; in Guarani, the same holds true for ’my house’ and ’I have a house’. In both expressions, ’I have’ should be accepted as the Russian у меня eсть ’it is near/on me’, not as a full-meaning verb. Here one can also add the Bulgarian dialectal phrases (with a full-meaning verb) имъм зъпомнени думи ’I have memorised words’ = ’I have remembered words’, имът зèмену ’(they) have (something) taken’ = ’they have taken (something)’, къръджа имъм убиену ’= I have killed a hind’, имêхме българе дòйдену = ’(some) Bulgarians have come’, or the Russian dialectal у волков здесь идeно = ’wolves have passed here’ (the prepositional phrase у волков can be replaced by the instrumental one волками). A significant part of Indo-European
and Turkic perfective verbs is of denominative origin: Uzbek езди-им = ’I wrote’, but also ’my writing’; Sanskr. véda, Old Bulg. вэмь/вэдэ (эко ...) = ’I know (that ...)’, but also ’my knowledge (is that ...)’.
The hidden predicativeness of such word combinations without a linking auxiliary verb will be obvious if we take a look at the Turkish expressions of politeness:
- Çok iyisiniz! ’you are very kind’
- (O) sizin iyiliðiniz! ’(this *is) your kindness’. Or:
- Çok güzelsiniz! ’you are very beautiful’
- (O) sizin güzelliðiniz! ’(this *is) your beauty’.
Here iyilik (® iyilið-) means ’kindness’, güzellik (® güzellið-) means ’beauty’, аnd -n- is a possessive suffix.
Semantically, even now, a verb like to smell (= ’to give off a smell’), which probably derives from an old inactive verb, means ’I have a smell’ or ’my smell (is felt)’. Similar to such expressions are the French j’ai faim ’I am hungry’ = ’I have hunger’ or the Turkish ihtiyacým var ’I need’ = ’(this) is my need’.
To some extent conditionally, the nature of active typology may be presented by the following English examples:
STATIVE CONSTRUCTION:
The grass is erect = ’(this is) the erection of the grass’ or ’the grass has erection’
Here the elements are designated in the following way:
the grass – a passive noun;
is erect – a passive verb or a denominative predicative.
The door is shut = ’the shutting of the door (is a fact)’, ’the door has shutting’
the door – a passive noun;
is shut – a passive verb or a denominative predicative;
The stone is red = ’(this is) the stone’s being red/redness’, ’the stone has redness/red color’
the stone – a passive noun;
is red - a passive verb or a denominative predicative.
АCTIVE CONSTRUCTION
WITH AN ‘INTRANSITIVE’ (FROM AN ACCUSATIVE POINT OF VIEW) VERB (for the inappropriateness of the terms ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’ here, see Stepanov )
The man runs
the man – an active noun;
runs – an active verb.
WITH A ‘TRANSITIVE’ VERB
The man shuts the door
the man – an active noun;
shuts – an active verb;
the door – a passive noun.
The man makes the grass erect
the man – an active noun;
makes … erect – an active verb;
the grass – a passive noun.
The man reddens the stone
the man – an active noun;
reddens – an active verb;
the stone – a passive noun.
With active typology, unlike with ergative (see below), the subject (the man) of the intransitive active verb is marked in the same way, as the subject of the transitive active verb (the man), and the inactive subject of the passive verb (the door, the stone) is marked in the same way, as the passive direct ‘object’ of the active verb (the door, the stone).
2. ЕRGATIVE TYPOLOGY
Ergative typology is a more complicated stage in the development of syntactic relations. The term is derived from the Greek еńãÜôçò ’acting person’, but according to Harris, it is a rather misleading name. With this typology, a verb can be either ‘transitive’ (it is better to say agentive), or ‘intransitive’ (factitive), without changing its lexical meaning (the ‘direct object’ in a transitive use may serve as ‘subject’ with ‘intransitive’ use). Semantically, agentive (action producer) and factitive (bearer of action – from fact) ‘cases’ are opposed.
In this case, a pure example cannot be found, either. Moreover, different subtypes of ergative construction are distinguished; in some languages pronouns are marked in a different way than nouns; in others, ergativity is used optionally. With this typology, the agreement between verbs and nouns is replaced by government. There is opposing of an ergative to an absolutive sentence phrase.
Now, this typology is a characteristic feature of one third or one fourth of world languages, including many Caucasian languages, Basque In Europe, Inuit in North America, Australian, and Papuan languages. According to the cited author, even in the Indo-European language Hindi, such construction is present.
Although the ideal model of ergative typology, where the ‘subject’ of an ‘intransitive’ verb is the same as the ‘object’ of an ‘transitive’, can apply to many English (and some Bulgarian) verbs (see the examples below), some authors – see Manning, do not agree with the appliance of the term ergative to some verbs of non-ergative languages. According to the latter, here the verb is not ergative, but unaccusative.
АBSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION
The door opens = ’(this is) the opening of the door’, ’the door has opening’
the door - an absolutive noun;
opens - a factitive verb.
The mirror broke = ’(this was) the breaking of the mirror’, ’the mirror had breaking’
the mirror - an absolutive noun;
broke - a factitive verb.
Bulg. Жътвата започва ’the harvest begins’ or Ризата съхне ’the shirt dries’, etc.
ЕRGATIVE CONSTRUCTION
The man opens the door = ’the door is opened by the man’, ’(this is) the opening of the door by the man’, etc.
the man - an ergative noun;
opens - an agentive verb;
the door - an absolutive noun.
The boy broke the mirror = ’the mirror was broken by the boy’, ’(this is) the breaking of the mirror by the boy’, etc.
the boy - an ergative noun;
broke an agentive verb;
the mirror - an absolutive noun.
Bulg. Човекът започва жътвата ’the man starts the harvest’, or Bulg. dialectal Вятърът съхне ризата ’the wind makes dry the shirt’ (see further).
Of course, the category voice is not a characteristic feature of the pure ergative typology.
A subtype of this type phrase construction is the ergative-accusative (tripartite) typology. The difference is the presence of a third element, a real subject of an intransitive verb, whose form differs from the form of the imaginary subject (the agent/instrument) in ergative constructions:
Ergative: The man opens the door;
Absolutive: The door opens;
Nominative-accusative: The man runs.
Here for ’the man’, in the first and in the third example, different forms are used.
3. NOMINATIVE - ACCUSATIVE TYPOLOGY
This typology (sometimes called just accusative), whose name comes from the traditional Latin designations of the nominative and accusative cases, is regarded as a most complicated stage in syntactic relations. It is based on opposing the subject (expressed by the nominative in synthetic languages) to the object (expressed by the accusative case in syntetic languages). Here the semantic role (agent, patient) is not important. Verbs are divided into transitive and intransitive. The actant and the agent of the transitive verb are expressed in the same way – by the nominative, and the patience (patient) of the transitive verb – by the accusative. The verb and the noun are connected through agreement.
The usual construction, expressed by the active voice, is the following:
The man opens the door
the man ’човекът’ - a subject in the nominative, in synthetic languages;
opens - a transitive verb in the active voice;
the door - an object, which is in the accusative, in synthetic languages.
With the accusative type, there is usually also a distinguished in form passive voice:
The door is opened by the man
the door – a subject, also in the nominative;
is opened – a verb in the passive voice;
by – a preposition that can alternates with a case ending;
the man – a noun, perceived as an instrumental indirect object.
With nominative-accusative typology, the old passive, or, better to say, of absolute-dative (see below) origin constructions are rare archaisms. Some examples of this include the absolute Slavonic dative case (¬м№ глагол«щ№ ’while he was talking’), the dative with the infinitive (быстъ же ем¹ сэати ’it happened that he sowed’), or the preserved now, passive combinations as the Bulgarian dialectal стаята е влизана ’the room is entered’ = ’someone has entered the room’, зъ къкò съ дòйдени ’why are they come’ = ’why have they come’, the Russian у волков здесь идено, or the Dutch er wordt hier door de jonge lui veel gedanst ’it is here by the young people a lot danced’. And in the nominative-accusative (in fact, it is of mixed type) Russian language, a
construction of the type рисковать здоровьем ’I take risks with my health’ is a characteristic example of an ergative, instrumental in nature, construction (see below).
Often, there is no sharp distinction between the different typologies – the split between ergative and accusative patterning can be organized along a number of dimensions. Some present-day languages, as Dyirbal in Australia, are ergative-accusative. In the Papuan language Yimas, the 1st and 2nd person forms of the verb follow a different type of construction (nominative-accusative) from 3rd person, which follows a nominative-dative one.
4. OTHER TYPOLOGIES
Besides the above shown basic typologies (and the additional ones, such as absolute dative or ablative constructions), another type is also observed in Tagalog. It is referred to as trigger typology. However, it can also be called focus typology.
With this kind of sentence structure, one noun (agent, patient, beneficiary, instrument, etc.) is the trigger, or focus of the sentence, designated by a special morpheme. The other sentence parts (verbs and nouns) take different affixes, according to their positions and roles. The sentence The child will take a/the toy out of the box can be arranged, as follows:
1. Agent in focus: The child will take the toy out of the box;
2. Patient in focus: The toy will be taken out of the toy by the child;
3. Location in focus: The box will remove the toy from itself through the child or: into the child’s direction.
B. ‘CASE’ IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGE TYPOLOGIES
а. ‘CASE’ IN ACTIVE TYPOLOGY
With the active-passive type, according to Dobrev, there are no cases, and verbs and nouns are connected by agreement, so the latter do not change their forms, as a result of the connection. In the main sentence type, there is no acting subject, because, according to this author, if there is no animatenes, there is no opposition between a subject and an object. So there is no need for cases and every action is non-active. Actually, since there is no pure active-passive language, with this typology, case uses are observed in some languages. Moreover, some authors use the terms active/agentive case and inactive/patientive case, or just name the case according to its endings: -i case, -мa case, etc. – regarding Georgian.
As a concrete example of using active typology, the North-American language Lakota will be shown, with expanded interpretation.
PASSIVE CONSTRUCTION
Ma-k’uje
’I am ill’ = ’my illness (is this)’, ’I have illness’
мa- ’I’- a passive pronoun;
-k’uje ’to be ill’, ’ilness’ – a passive denominative verb or a noun predicative.
Ni-k’uje
’you are ill’ = ’your illness (is this)’, ’you have an illness’
ni- ’you’ - a passive pronoun;
-k’uje ’to be ill’, ’illness’ – a passive denominative verb or a noun predicative;
АCTIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH AN ‘INTRANSITIVE’ VERB
Wa-u
’I come’
wa- ’I’- an active pronoun with form, different from the passive one;
-u ’to come’– an active verb.
Ya- u
’you come’
ya- ’you’- an active pronoun;
-u ’to come’ – an active verb.
АCTIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH AN INCORPORATED OBJECT
О-ма - ya - le
’you seek me’
-ма ’I/me’ – a passive pronoun, its oblique form is the same, as the basic one in the first example;
-ya- ’you’ – an active pronoun;
о…le ’seek’ – an active verb.
Another similar example can be seen in the South-American language Guarani; here the example is with extended interpretation.
PASSIVE CONSTRUCTION
Che-roga
’my house (is this)’ or ’I have a house’
che- ’I’ – a passive pronoun;
-roga ’house’ or ’possession of house’– a passive denominative verb or noun predicative.
Che-мandua
’I remember’ = ’my memorising (is this)’
che- ’I’ – a passive pronoun;
-мandua ’to remember’ or ’memorising’– a passive denominative verb or a noun predicative;
АCTIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH AN ‘INTRANSITIVE’ VERB
A-guata
’I walk’
а- ’I’ – an active pronoun with a form, different from the passive one;
-guata ’to walk’ – an active verb.
It is seen that in these examples, the passive ‘subject’ has the same form, as the ‘object’ in the active construction, and there is no case paradigm, since the oblique form of the pronoun is not different from the basic (but here are shown only some of the most
appropriate examples). The active (a-) and passive (che-) forms that have been shown so far are different lexemes, although they have the same meaning. A variety of this type of sentence is the possibility of expressing active and passive forms by the same lexeme (a step to ergativity), but with a different ending (no matter if it is regarded as a case or another marker). This may be seen in Georgian, for example (this language is said to be either active, or ergative-accusative, but it is rather mixed, with elements of several types):
PASSIVE CONSTRUCTION
Bavšv-eb-i darθ-nen saxlši
’the children stayed in the house’
bavšv-eb-i ’children’ – a passive noun;
darθ-nen ’stayed’ – an inactive verb;
saxlši ’house’ – a noun;
АCTIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH AN ‘INTRANSITIVE’ VERB
Bavšv-eb-мa iθxub-es
’the children quarreled’
bavšv-eb-мa ’children’ – an active noun;
iθxub-es ’quarreled’ – an active verb;
АCTIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH A ‘TRANSITIVE’ VERB
Bavšv -eb-мa nax-es irem-i
’the children saw a deer’
bavšv-eb-мa ’children’ – an active noun;
nax-es ’saw’ – an active verb;
irem-i ’deer’ – an passive noun.
b. ‘CASE’ IN ERGATIVE TYPOLOGY
In linguistics, it is said that in ergative typology, the agreement between verbs and nouns is replaced by government, and this results in changes of word form. Yet, these changes still cannot be called cases, as it is done. It is said that, in ergative languages, the actant of the intransitive verb and, the paciens (patient) of the transitive are expressed by the absolutive case, and the agent of the transitive – by the ergative case. Since pure ergative systems are rarely observed, the absolutive case sometimes can express also an indirect object in affective constructions, such as the Russian мне холодно ’I feel cold’, мне страшно ’I have fear’ – both examples here comprise dative forms; and in possessive constructions. It does not matter if these forms are regarded as indicators of case relations or not. Here both forms will be referred to, as an ergative, and as an absolutive form. The subject of the intransitive verb in the mentioned above tripartite constructions is called by the term intransitive case.
As many other linguistic terms, the absolutive and the ergative forms often are called by other names, too. The absolutive sometimes is called nominative, and the ergative can be called also narrative, relative, or instrumental case.
Ergative thinking is different from nominative-accusative thinking. In order to go deep in the first of the two ways of thinking, and to explain the use of the absolutive and the ergative,
some examples from different languages, with extended interpretation, will be cited below:
Examples from Avar language (in the Caucasus) are more suitable and best illustrate the phenomenon:
АBSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION
Istakan bekana
’the glass broke’ = ’(this was) the breaking of the glass’, ’the glass was forced to break’
istakan ’glass’ – an absolutive noun;
bekana ’broke’ – a verb.
ЕRGATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Vacas istakan bekana
’(my) brother broke the glass’ – literal translation ’by (my) brother was broken the glass’, ’the breaking of the glass was caused by (my) brother’
vacas ’brother’ – an ergative noun;
istakan ’glass’ – an absolutive noun;
bekana ’broke’ – a verb.
Examples from Kabardinian language (from the same area )
АBSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION
ЩIалэр матхэр
’the boy writes’ = ’the boy is forced to write’, ’this is the (compulsory) writing of the boy’
щIалер - ’boy’ – an absolutive noun;
матхэр ’writes’ – a verb.
Пщащэр мадер
’the girl sews’ = ’the girl is forced to sew’, ’this is the (compulsory) sewing of the girl’
пщащэр ’girl’ – an absolutive noun;
мадер ’sews’ – a verb.
ЩIалэр макIуе
’the boy goes’ = ’the boy is moved’, ’the boy is forced to move’, ’this is the (compulsory) moving of the boy’
щIалэр ’boy’ – an absolutive noun;
макIуе ’goes’ – a verb.
Щыр мажэ
’The horse runs’, etc.
щыр ’horse’ – an absolutive noun;
мажэ ’runs’ – a verb.
ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Художникы-м сурэтыр ищIащ
’the artist drew a painting’ = ’by the artist the painting was drawn’
художникым ’artist’ – an ergative noun;
сурэтыр ’painting’ – an absolutive noun;
ищIащ ’drew’ – a verb.
Учителым тхылъыр иритащ
’the teacher the book gave’ = ’by the teacher the book was given’
учителым ’teacher’ – an ergative noun;
тхылъыр ’book’ – an absolutive noun;
иритащ ’(he) gave’ – a verb.
ЩIалэ-м письмо/письмэр итхащ
’the boy a letter wrote’ = ’by the boy the letter was written’
щIалэм ’boy’ – an ergative noun;
письмо/письмэр ’letter’ – an absolutive noun;
итхащ ’(he) wrote’ – a verb.
Examples from the Siberian Korjak language - there is a non-typical for ergative constructions word order here, and, in fact, there are two ergative mechanisms with several endings (see also the ‘coincidence’ between the ergative and locative in the next part):
АBSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION
Кайнын гэ-лэ-лин
‘the bear walked’, etc.
кайнын ’bear’ – an absolutive noun;
гэ-лэ-лин ’(it) walked’ – a verb.
ЕRGATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Кайн-а гэ-ну-линев’ ’ынну
’the bear ate the fish’ = ’by the bear was the fish eaten’
кайн-а ’bear’ – an ergative noun;
гэ-ну-линев’ ’(it) ate’ – a verb;
’ынну ’fish’ – an absolutive noun.
Эньпичи-тэ гэтэйкы-лин в’ала
’father made the knife’ = ’by father was made the knife
эньпичи-тэ ’father’ – an ergative noun;
гэтэйкы-лин ’(he) made’ – a verb;
в’ала ’knife’ – an absolutive noun.
Examples from Inuit language:
АBSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION
Мыкылгихак аглягакук
’the boy goes’, etc.
мыкылгихак ’boy’ – an absolutive noun;
аглягакук ’(he) goes’ – a verb.
ЕRGATIVE CONSTRUCTION (also with uncustomary word order; here the ergative has a possessive meaning, that is why Meshtaninov uses the term genitive case, regarding it; about this – see further)
Агнам тагитак-а мыкылгихак
’the woman is leading the boy’ = ’(this is) the woman’s leading of the boy’, ’by the woman is being led the boy’
агнам ’woman’ – an possessive ergative noun;
тагитак-а ’(she) is leading’, ’leading’ – a denominative verb or a verbal noun;
мыкылгихак ’boy’ - an absolutive noun.
Examples from the Australian language Yidiny:
АBSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION (WITH AN ADVERBIAL MODIFIER)
Mujam galling digarra-mu
’mother is going from the beach’ = ’mother is moved beach from’
мujam - ’mother’ - an absolutive noun;
galling - ’is going’ - a verb;
digarra-mu - ’beach from’ - a locative (ablative) noun.
ЕRGATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Wagaal-du mujam wawal
’(my) wife is looking at (my) mother’ = ’mother is being looked at by (my) wife’
wagaaldu - ’wife’ – an ergative noun;
mujam - ’mother’ – an absolutive noun;
wawal ’is being looked at’ – a verb.
Examples from the Australian language Yalarnnga:
АBSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION (WITH A LOCATIVE MODIFIER)
Kupi waya kunu-ŋka
’the fish is in the water’ = ’the fish is/exists through the (presence) of the water’
кupi -’fish’ – an absolutive noun;
waya – a demonstrative pronoun or a definite article;
kunuŋka - ’in (the) water’ – a locative noun » ergative (see the next example – the stem of the locative, -ŋka, is built from the ergative stem -ŋk-); sush examples show that the Slavonic predicative instrumental case may be a successor of former ergative meanings.
ЕRGATIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH A NOUN
Kupi-ŋku milŋa tacamu
’the fish bit the fly’ = ’the fly was bit by the fish’
кupiŋku ’fish’ - an ergative noun;
milŋa ’fly’ - an absolutive noun;
tacamu ’(it) bit’ - a verb.
ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH A PRONOUN (with an ending, different from the noun ending)
Ŋatu kupi walamu
’I the fish killed’= ’the fish was killed by me’.
Ŋatu ’аз’ - an ergative pronoun;
кupi - ’fish’ - an absolutive noun;
walamu ’(I) killed’ - a verb.
c. TRANSFORMATION OF THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION INTO ABSOLUTIVE
Ergative thinking presupposes the possibility for ergative constructions to be transformated into absolutive, and vise versa. If we want to transformate an ergative construction into absolutive, in a classical example, as the shown above Avar one, we should only remove the ‘subject’, better to say, the instrument, through which the action is fulfilled:
Vacas istakan bekana ® Istakan bekana
’by (my) brother the glass broke’ ® ’the glass broke’
Of course, this is not applicable for all ergative languages. Many of them have peculiarities. However, in general, verbs bear more information than nouns. Sometimes, verb forms depend on other factors, too. Some scholars consider such a factor the transitivity, or its lack, and say that it can change due to the context. For instance, in Adigey:
1. Редактор матхэ ’the editor writes’, but:
2. Редакторы-м стьяр етхы ’the editor an article writes’;
Or, in its cognate Kabardinian:
1. ЩIалэр матхэр ’the boy writes’, but:
2. ЩIалэ-м письмер етхыр ’the boy a letter writes’.
However, exactly here the cause is not transitivity, but the fact that in the examples, designated by 1, the noun is in the absolutive case, and in these, designated by 2, it is in the ergative. Moreover, absolutive forms should be regarded as perceived as subjects of external action. In other words, ’the boy’ and ’the editor’ in the
examples 1 do not express the action ’writing’, but express the necessity or the obligation, related with this action: ’the editor/boy is compelled/forced to write’. But in the examples 2, ’the boy’ and ’the editor’ are instruments of the action ’writing’, directed to ’the letter’ and ’the article’.
These arguments are difficult to be perceived by the nominative-accusative mind, but other Kabardinian examples can help further understanding. In nominative-accusative languages, the sentence for the English ’the student waits for the car’ is built by subject – verb – оbject. Nevertheless, in an ergative language, one can say Студентыр машине-м иожьэ ’the student waits for the car,’ or þaler (= щIалер) radio-м yoda’we ’the boy listens to the radio’.
The endings of nouns here show obviously that студентыр ’the student’ and þaler/щIалэр ’the boy’ are in the absolutive; and машинем ’the car’ and radiom ’the radio’ – in the ergative. This means that here the action is perceived in the opposite to the nominative-accusative mind way, and it is not completed by ’the student’, or ’the boy’, but they undergo it; and here ’the student (is forced/obliged) to wait for the car (through its presence)’, and not just ’the student waits for the car’. See also the English forms of the type I was given the book = ’I took the book’, in which ’I’ suffers the action, denoted by the verb.
d. ‘COINCIDENCE’ BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND ‘OTHER’ FORMS
From governmental point of view, the absolutive case is not a case, either. The absolutive in Indo-European is a bare stem - see писмо ’letter’ in the shown above Kabardinian examples), and can be considered a separate case, only if as subject, it bears a special ending, required by the governing ‘intransitive’ verb.
We may conclude, regarding the nature of case in ergative languages, that in nominative-accusative languages, the ‘transitive’ verb changes the form of the ‘direct object’, but in ergative languages, it changes the form of the ‘subject’, or the instrument of the action. That is how things have been explained in TNL: the ‘subject’ (А) of the transitive verb is marked; but the subject (Si) of the intransitive verb, and the object (О) of a transitive are not marked. The same can be seen in Manning: the absolutive is unmarked and the ergative is a marked case, contrary to accusative typology. Dobrev also writes that in active structures (better to say, in ergative), the object is more important than the subject, contrary to nominative-accusative structures.
It has been stated many times that the ergative form may have other functions, besides ‘subject’ of a ‘transitive’ verb (quotation marks are mine - Iv. Il.). Such functions may be this of the indirect object (beneficient or recipient of the action), and of the instrument. In Dagestanian languages (Avar, Andi), ergative forms are not different from the instrumental, in Tabasaranian, all endings of oblique cases are formed by the ergative ending stem. In Chukci, the ergative also functions as an instrument of the action. Coincidences between the ergative and the instrumental can be seen in Tibetan, too. In Korjak, this coincidence, as we will see
below, is common with some nouns and with others, the locative functions as an ergative case. Similar structures are observed in the Australian language Arrernte (Aranda). In another Australian language, Pitjantjatjara, the ergative form coincides with the locative; the same is valid for Itelmen and Lezgi(an). In Inuit and Lak, the ergative form is the same as the genitive.
Another question is, if there is a coincidence between different case forms or there is only one form, perceived or called in a different way (as a different case) by the non-ergative mind, which is modeled linguistically otherwise.
Here are some examples of such ‘coincidences’ between the ergative and ‘other cases’:
‘COINCIDENCE’ BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND AN ‘INDIRECT OBJECT-INSTRUMENT (maybe the most frequent; sometimes only the word order is different)
Example from Kabardinian (taken from the cited sources)
ГъукIэр уадэ-м иролъащъ
’the blacksmith uses a hammer’
гъукIэр ’blacksmith’ – a noun, ‘indirect object’-instrument in the absolutive;
уадэм ’hammer’ – an ergative noun;
иролъащъ ’(he) uses’ – a verb.
The literal translation here should be ’the blacksmith is forced to work by (the presence of) the hammer’. Since here ’blacksmith’ is in the absolutive, not in the ergative.
In Kabardinian, an instrument can be expressed, not only by an ergative ending, but also by (an ergative ending +) an instrumental suffix:
Сэ машинэм - кIэ джанер сод
’I sew a shirt on a sewing-machine’ = ’the shirt is sewn by me and by (the presence of) a sewing-machine’
сэ - ’I’ – an ergative pronoun;
машинэм-кIэ ’with a sewing-machine’ - a noun, an ‘indirect object’-instrument in the ergative + an instrumental suffix;
джанер - ’shirt’ - an absolutive noun;
сод - ’(I) sew’ - a verb.
Or:
Художникы-м къэрэндащ-кIэ сурэт ещI
’the artist draws a painting with a pencil’
художникым ’artist’ – an ergative noun;
къэрэндащ-кIэ ’with pencil’ - a noun without an ergative ending, but with an instrumental suffix, which is called by the cited authors a postpositional case;
сурэт ’painting’ - an absolutive noun;
ещI ’(he) draws’ - a verb.
In Kabardinian, the instrument can be expressed in another way, in addition, instead of the instrumental suffix to the noun, an instrumental prefix can be added to the verb. The following is an example:
Сэ машинэм джанер ири-зод
’I sew a shirt on a sewing-machine’ = ’the shirt is sewn by my presence and the presence of a sewing-machine’
сэ ’I’ – an ergative pronoun;
машинэм ’sewing-machine’ – an ergative noun;
джанер - ’shirt’ – an absolutive noun;
ири-зод ’with + sew’ = ’sew together’ – a verb with an instrumental prefix.
„СOINCIDENCE” BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND AN ‘INDIRECT OBJECT’-RECIPIENT/BENEFICIENT (here only the word order is different; the indirect object, as well as the instrument, is after the absolutive form)
An example from Kabardinian (taken from the same sources)
Учителы-м тхылъыр еджакIуэ-м иритащ
’the teacher a book to the student gave’ = ’the book was given by the teacher and through (the presence of) the student’
учителым ’teacher’ – an ergative noun-‘subject’;
тхылъыр ’book’ – an absolutive noun;
еджакIуэм ’student’ – a noun-‘indirect object’ in the ergative;
иритащ ’(he) gave’ – a verb.
ЩIалэм тхылъыр хъыджэбзым йыритащ
’the boy a book to the girl gave’ = ’the book was given by the boy and through (the presence of) the girl’
щIалэм - ’boy’ – an ergative noun-‘subject’;
тхылъыр - ’book’ – an absolutive noun;
хъыджэбзым ’girl’ – an ergative noun-‘indirect object’;
йыритащ ’(he) gave’ – a verb.
The next example shows that the word order can be changed:
Фызыр лIыжьы-м пщащэ-м хуеджащ
’the old woman called the girl at the old man’s request’ = ’the old woman was forced to call through the (presence of the) girl, and by the (request of the) old man’
фызыр ’old woman’ – an absolutive noun;
лIыжьым ’old man’ – an ergative noun;
пщащэм ’girl’ – an ergative noun;
хуеджащ ’(she) called’ – a verb.
The words ‘subject’ and ‘indirect object’ in the examples above, are placed in quotation marks, since only the nominative-accusative mind makes such a distinction, which is not usual for the ergative one. Of course, every language has different rules, but at least in Kabardinian, the coincidence in form between the ‘subject’, the instrument, and the ‘indirect object’, as well as other sentence parts (see below), shows that there such a distinction is not made. The beneficient of the action is realised as a second instrument of the action (read further about the common features of Indo-European dative and instrumental cases). The place of the indirect object-recipient is the same, as of of the indirect object-instrument above. This is a proof that both are perceived in the same way by the ergative mind.
The proximity between the dative and the instrumental has been emphasised. According to Dobrev, the dative is newer than adverbial cases (the locative, ablative, sociative, instrumental), and before its meaning was closer to the instrumental one (this is obvious in examples, such as Bulg. бягом бягам - бягу бягам ’I run’).
‘СOINCIDENCE’ BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND THE DIRECTIVE
Again Kabardinian examples will be used:
Учителыр классы-м щIохьэ
’the teacher enters the class-room’ = ’the teacher is forced to enter (by the presence of) the classroom’
учителыр ’teacher’ - an absolutive, not an ergative noun - this proves that it is realized, not as an agent or instrument, but as a receiver of the action;
классым - ’class-room’ - an ergative noun (but placed after, not before the absolutive noun);
щIохьэ ’(he) enters’ – a verb.
Through this example, it is obvious that the direction is realised in the same way, as the instrument and the beneficient of the action. A similar parallel can be seen in Turkish - there the beneficient and the direction are expressed in the same way – see further;
Another Kabardinian example:
ЩIалэр къалэ-м макIуэ
’the boy to the town goes’ = ’(you can see that) the boy is moving because of the town (which is approaching him)’
щIалэр ’boy’ – an absolutive noun – as in the above example;
къалэм ’town’ – an ergative noun – as in the above example;
макIуэ – ’(he) goes’ – a verb.
‘СOINCIDENCE’ BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND THE ABLATIVE
Through the ergative, totally opposite actions can be expressed. While in the latest example, the ergative expressed approaching, below it shows moving away:
ЩакIуер мемы-м къокIыж
’the hunter from the forest comes’ = ’(we can see that) the hunter comes because of the forest (which moves further away)’
щакIуер ’hunter’ - an absolutive noun;
мемым ’forest’ - an ergative noun;
къокIыж ’(he) comes’ - a verb.
In Inuit, the ablative is also competitive to the classic ergative. In the next sentences, the personal name Juuna can be either in the ergative, or in the ablative (it also can be in the absolutive):
Juuna-p miiqqat paarai
’Juuna is looking after the children’ = ’the children are being looked after by Juuna’
Juuna-p ’Juuna’ - an ergative noun;
miiqqat ’children’ - an absolutive noun;
paarai ’being looked after’ - a verb.
Miiqqat Juuna-mit paariniqarput
’the children are being looked after by Juuna’ = ’the children are being looked after by the action, whose source is Juuna’
miiqqat ’children’ – an absolutive noun with an uncommon position in the word order;
Juuna-mit ’Juuna’ – an ablative noun;
рaariniqarput ’to look after’ – a verb.
‘СOINCIDENCE’ BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND THE LOCATIVE
It can be seen in Kabardinian, for example (cited in the same sources):
ЩIалэр губгъуэ-м щолаже
’the boy in the field works’ = ’the boy is forced to work through (the presence of) the field’
щIалэр ’boy’ – an absolutive noun;
губгъуэм ’field’ – an ergative noun;
щолаже ’(he) works’ – a verb;
Бзур жыгы-м тесц
’the bird in the tree sits’ = ’the bird (is forced to) sit(s) through (the presence of) the tree’
бзур ’bird’ – an absolutive noun;
жыгым ’tree’ – an ergative noun;
тесц ’sits’ – a verb.
A variety of this state is the coincidence between the ergative and the temporative in the same language:
Хьэмид махуе-м мэлажьери
’Hamid during the day works’ = ’Hamid through (the presence of) the day works’ – compare to the Bulgarian: работя денем ’I work during the day’, in which there is an old instrumental case ending.
Хьэмид ’Hamid’ – a proper noun in the absolutive;
махуэм ’day’ – an ergative noun;
мэлажьери ’(he) works’ – a verb.
More particular is the state in Korjak. There, the doer (agent) of the action, besides through the classic ergative form, shown above (эньпичи-те), can be expressed by an alternative form, which Meshtaninov calls locative case, but it is also ergative in nature. In this language, nouns have two declinational forms. In the 1st declension are all nouns for non-humans or indefinite humans, and in the 2nd – the nouns for definite humans. In this way, the word ’father’ can have an ending, according to the 1st, or 2nd declension, depending on its being definite, or indefinite (as the Old Slavonic word слово, whose second form can be словесе or слова, depending on the stem). This may be illustrated by the following example, which differs from the cited in the previous part, only because it has an agent – definite noun (the father – against father above):
Эньпичи-нэ-к гэтэйкы-лин ва’ла
’the father made the knife’ = ’in (the hands of) the father was made the knife’
эньпичи-нэк ’the father’ – a noun in the locative = ergative (here, a term ergative B, or ergative 2 may be used);
гэтэйкы-лин ’(he) made’ – a verb;
в’ала ’knife’ – an absolutive noun.
The coincidence between the locative (temporative) and the instrumental-ergative form here is the same, as in some Slavonic-Bulgarian uses from the IX-XI centuries, in which a similar adverbial modifier (of time), as emphasised by Dobrev, can be
also expressed by an old instrumental ending, in fact, a sociative form: ąбихъ и нощи› - ’I killed him in the night’, literal translation ’I killed him with the help of (my ally) the night’.
‘СOINCIDENCE’ BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND THE GENITIVE AND BETWEEN THE ERGATIVE AND THE COMPARATIVE
The possessive semantic of the Inuit ergative was mentioned above. In Kabardinian, there is also a possessive function of the ergative. In the following example, there is a comparative ergative, too:
ЩIалэ-м и джанер уэсы-м нэхърэ нэхъ хужьщ
’the boy’s shirt than snow is whiter’ (–м is the ergative ending).
A similar phenomenon is observed in the Russian comparative uses of the instrumental case: пахнет сеном ’it smells of hay’.
From the shown coincidences between the ergative and considered to be non-ergative forms, it is obvious that in ergative typology, the presence of an ergative, and an absolutive form is obligatory, no matter what the semantic, according to the nominative-accusative point of view. If there is no ‘subject’, the ergative function is fulfilled by the locative or by the ablative, if necessary.
Some authors think that in the times, when Indo-European ergative construction was formed, the ‘subject’ of the intransitive verb was realised, as being in passive state (an ergative-as-passive approach). This is obvious from the examples, cited thus far. The absolutive direct object, in fact, is not a real direct object (that is
why, according to the cited author, in some Caucasian languages, such as Avar, Andi, etc., not the subject, which actually is an instrument – my remark – Iv. Il., but the ‘object’ (!) agrees with the ‘transitive’ verb). Compare with the Bulgarian dialectal Стаята е влизана (от човека) ’the room is entered (by the man)’; where such ‘object’ (the room), but not the agent (the man), agrees with the verb. However, the opinion, expressed by Savchenko, supported here, is not shared by all scholars. Manning says that ergative typology can be viewed from different points; and he counts five such possibilities in terms of mechanism. He also does not consider correct the mentioned ergative-as-passive analysis, according to which syntactic ergativity is the result of covert passivisation, and according to which ergative languages have only intransitive sentences, and ergative is an oblique case.
Both views examine the matter in two dimensions – based either on the subject, or on the object. According to Harris, the unaccusative hypothesis states that verbs can be of deep structure direct object or of deep structure subject. It would be more precise if things were viewed as an instrument – non-instrument (instrumental object) opposition.
It can be concluded that in the typology, called with good reason or not, ergative, in the sentence, there is a notion, expressed by a word, towards which an action is directed. This notion is expressed grammatically by a word, whose form is with good reason or not, called by the term absolutive. The way, in which the fulfillment of the action is realised, is expressed by coincidence between the form, called ergative, and some other form (if we can talk about use of different forms, at all).
If it (the ergative form) coincides with the form, which expresses an instrument, the action is realised as done by an instrument.
If it coincides with the locative, the action is regarded as fulfilled in a definite place.
If the ergative form coincides with the possessive, the action is realised as possessed by some agent.
If the agent is considered to be a source of the action, the ergative form coincides with the ablative.
Other options are possible, too.
e. ‘CASE’ IN NOMINATIVE-ACCUSATIVE TYPOLOGY
The different opinions about case nature in nominative-accusative typology were explained at the beginning of this work, since traditional grammar, as well as the other shown opinions, are based on examples from nominative-accusative languages. This most developed typology and, especially, its most developed flective subclass, differentiates two groups of languages:
1. SYNTHETIC LANGUAGES
These languages express the word relations through case endings, which synthesise several grammatical categories (gender, number, case):
CONSTRUCTION WITH A TRANSITIVE VERB AND OBJECTS
Russ. Человек дает книгу жене
’the man gives the book to the woman’
человек – ’man’ – a nominative noun-subject;
даeт ’(he) gives’ – a transitive verb;
книгу ’book’ – an accusative noun-direct object;
жене ’woman’ – a dative noun-indirect object.
CONSTRUCTION WITH AN INTRANSITIVE VERB
Russ. Человек работает
’the man works’
человек – ’man’ – a noun-subject;
работает ’(he) works’ – an intransitive verb.
One should bear in mind that the intransitive verb in this typology can always be turned into a transitive, if a cognate object is added: to work (a work), to fight (a fight).
2. АNALYTIC LANGUAGES
They express the same relation through prepositions and postpositions, which do not designate other grammatical categories; this can be a criterion for their distinguishment from affixes, and at the same time, it shows that in agglutinative languages, there is not a clear difference between postpositions and suffixes:
Bulg. Човекът дава книгата на жената
’the man gives the book to the woman’
Here the dative ending -е is replaced by a preposition (see the cited above opinion, belonging to Yahontov), and the accusative ending –у is gone (besides its function to some extent is not taken by the definite article (-та), as this can be done in Turkish).
f. ‘CASE’ IN OTHER TYPOLOGIES
In the so-called trigger, or focus typology in Tagalog, the focused or trigger word is said to be in the trigger case, while the others are said to be in the genitive.
* * * * *
For further clarification of the unsolved questions, concerning the category case, much more is to be done; yet, the first steps should be:
1. Classification of the uses of a separately taken preposition + separately taken ‘case’, at least in the basic nominative-accusative languages;
2. Classification of all uses, regarded as case uses from different authors, in the basic nominative-accusative languages; and comparison between all synonymic uses and meanings;
3. Classification and clarification of all synonymic relations between the ergative and other ‘case’ forms; as well as clarification of the function of prepositions and affixes (especially verbal ones) within ‘case’ relations in these languages.
ІІІ. FORMATION OF INDO-EUROPEAN CASE SYSTEM
Indo-European is likely to have had mixed active-ergative structures, at an early stage (it has been said that there is no pure active-passive type). Stepanov calls this ‘an active typology with possible ergative features’. Other authors have also made similar suppositions, but with the reservation that it is about a nominative-ergative system with different syntactic structures in the present, and in the preterite tense, as in Georgian. Yet, there are some authors who deny the possibility that Indo-European had some ergative features, at a certain stage of development. Syntactic archaisms, such as the dative absolute, or the ablative absolute, or the dative with the infinitive, in Latin, Greek, Old Bulgarian, show that there had been more syntactic constructions than the above mentioned. Despite this, in the case of Indo-European, only one of the terms is used: active, as by Lehman, or both: active and ergative, are used as synonyms, for example, by Savchenko. According to Klimov, not distinguishing these two notions for a long time has been an obstacle to creating the basic principles of the phenomenon.
In Indo-European, inert (passive) inanimate nouns (® in future, neuter nouns) combined with inert, passive verbs (® in future, mostly intransitive ones), showing state (’to be red’ = ’(this is) my redness’, ’I have redness’; ’to be ill’ = ’(this is) my illness’, ’I have illness’. On the other hand, active verbs (® in future, mostly transitive verbs) combined with active nouns (® in future, masculine, or feminine nouns). Therefore, as in pure active-passive
typology, Indo-European passive nouns combined with passive verbs. Respectively, active nouns combined with active verbs. According to the ‘subject’/agent or the patient, the verb for some notion, for instance ’to lie down’, may be either active or passive – for ’stone’ there is a passive correlating verb, but for ’bear’ – an active one. Unlike this typology, which is witnessed in pure state in no language, Indo-European animate nouns could be ‘objects’ of active ‘transitive’ verbs in other constructions; this made such constructions ergative. Therefore, in Indo-European, the ‘object’ of the ‘transitive’ verb could be both a passive, and an active noun (in the perfect variant this is not possible). This state can be illustrated by the following paraphrased examples in the following way:
АCTIVE ANIMATE NOUNS AND ACTIVE/AGENTIVE VERBS WITH AN ACTIVE ‘DIRECT OBJECT’ IN THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION
*ηхкw-o-s ηхкw-o nek'et
The meaning of this sentence, according to the different points of view of the ergative way of thinking (as an instrument, locative modifier, possessor of the action, etc) is: ’the wolf a wolf carries’, ’(this is) the wolf’s carrying of the wolf’, ’ (this is) the carrying of the wolf, related to another wolf’, ’the wolf by another wolf is carried’, ’(this is) the wolf’s being carried by another wolf’, ’the wolf is carried on the (back of another)
ηхкw- o-s ’wolf’ - an active ergative noun;
ηхкw-o ’wolf’ - an active absolutive noun = bare stem;
nek'et ’(it) carries’- an active agentive verb.
АCTIVE ANIMATE NOUNS AND ACTIVE/AGENTIVE VERBS WITH A PASSIVE ‘DIRECT OBJECT’ IN THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION
If the active noun-‘direct object’, designating the carried wolf, is replaced by an inert one (a passive patient), for example ’yoke’ (although wolves do not carry such an object), the construction will be the same:
*ηхкw-o-s Чugo-(м) nek'et
’the wolf a yoke carries’, etc.
ηхкw-o-s ’wolf’ - an active ergative noun;
Чug-o-(м) ’yoke’ - a passive absolutive noun-‘object’;
nek'et ’(it) carries’ - an active agentive verb.
PASSIVE INANIMATE NOUNS AND PASSIVE/FACTITIVE VERBS IN AN ABSOLUTIVE CONSTRUCTION WITHOUT AN ’OBJECT’ (A FORMULA WITH ONE UNKNOWN ELEMENT)
As it was stated, the form of the passive ‘subject’ in this passive construction, is the same, as the form of the ‘object’ in the above construction (that is why later, the nominative and accusative forms of neuter nouns coincided):
*Чug-o-(м) XXX
’the yoke is heavy’
Чug-o-(м) ’yoke’ – a passive/absolutive noun;
XXX = ’is heavy’ - a passive verb.
Alternatively, the same example with a noun from another stem:
*vert-мen YYY
’the weather is warm/getting warm’
vert-мen ’weather’ - an inert passive noun in the absolutive;
YYY = ’is warm/getting warm’ – an inert factitive verb.
Maybe there was a possibility for the verb in the first, or the second example of active constructions above to turn into an ‘intransitive’ one, and the absolutive form *Чugo(-м) to turn into a ‘subject’ as, so far, the related to the ‘intransitive’ verb noun in the ergative construction has been called by linguists. For this, the first element *ηхкw-o-s should have been removed, as in the cited above example Vacas istakan bekana ® Istakan bekana. Then, the following could have happened:
*Чugo(-м) nek'et
’the yoke is carried’
Чugo(-м) ’yoke’ – an absolutive noun;
nek'et ’(he) carries’ – a verb.
This could be argued, since in such a case, there should have been a combination of a passive noun and an active verb. However, in such combinations, the verb, which was not yet a real verb, acquired passive features. Active nouns could also undertake passive features (do not forget that there is no pure active-passive typology). Ergativity has its peculiarities in every language.
According to Dobrev, in this case, active Indo-European nouns again had the ergative ending -s. Here both variations are admitted. The ergativity of such constructions is alluded to by the Greek иеьт-дпфпт ’given by God’. Here the first part of the compound word is obviously ergative, judging by the singular ending –s, if this really is a singular ending, since in GEL the translation is ’given by the gods’. Then it could be:
*ηхкw-o-(s) nek'et
’the wolf is carried’.
According to many scholars, in Indo-European, everything that moves can be regarded as animate. Words, such as ’fire’ or ’water’, were not exceptions. Passive fire designated the word, from which are derived the Modern English one, as well as the Armenian hur, or Old German fiur; and active – this one, from which derived the Latin ignis, or the Slavonic огнь. Maybe there were many more similar replaceable pairs. Schmalstieg also admits the possibility of reinterpretation of Indo-European verbs from passive into active, and vise versa. According to Dobrev, such pairs of verbs could even be of the same root.
A word form as *nek'et initially was an indeclinable verbal noun (that is why = ’the carrying’). It had a verbal feature, expressed by -t. A proof of this is the ability of this suffix to form parallel couples and triads of words, which are verbal nouns, past passive participles, and aorist forms for the 3rd person singular (initially in Indo-European, there were no tenses, and the forms for
the present tense and the aorist derive from a common one, called infect form ). In this way, the following parallels were formed:
Verbal - Aorist - Past
Noun 3rd Person Singular Passive Participle
питье ’drinking’ - питъ ’(he) drank’ - питъ ’drunk’
пэтье ’singing’ - пэтъ ’ (he) sang’ - пэтъ ’sung’
№битье ’killing’ - №битъ ’(he) killed’ - №битъ ’killed’
№мрьтье ’dying’ - №мрэтъ ’(he) died’ - *№мрэтъ ’dead’.
Thus, besides in sentences, such as *ηхкw-o-(s) (*est) nek'et (®*несетъ) ’the wolf is carried’, the noun *ηхкw-o-s could combine with the proto-forms of some of the later examples, shown above:
*ηхкw-o-(s) (*est) XXX (® №битъ) ’the wolf is killed’;
*ηхкw-o-(s) (*est) YYY (® *№мрэтъ) ’the wolf is dead/killed/made to die’.
Even now, in some Bulgarian dialects such unusual for the literary language and formed by the respective intransitive, instead of the transitive verb, past passive participles (see bellow) are observed:
Т’а не е исъхнътъ (= изсушена – my remark – Iv. Il.) ’it is not dried’;
С’а е в гръцку устанъту (= оставено – my remark – Iv. Il.) ’now, it is left in Greece’;
Сичку е нъзат тръгнъту (= подкарано – my remark – Iv. Il.) ’everything is led backwards’;
Кът камен е станъту (= превърнато – my remark – Iv. Il.) ’it is turned into stone’).
According to Dobreb, the second part of the phrase *ηхкw-o- nek'et has the same meaning, as the Latin genetīvus objectīvus (’the carrying of the wolf’ = ’they carry the wolf’), and the first, *ηхкw-o–s nek'et, has the meaning of the Latin genetīvus subjectīvus (’the carrying of the wolf’ = ’the wolf carries’). Of course, this could be correct only if this ergative construction has been realised as a possessive. Otherwise, the interpretation ’through the wolf (something) is carried’, ’in (the mouth of) the wolf (something) is carried’, and so on, can be possible, but it is the same, in principle.
The phrase *ηхкw-o- nek'et, if the observations that were made are correct, should have had the same meaning, both as part of an active, and as part of an inert construction. In the first, only the additional element *ηхкw-o-s shows ’through whom’ the action that is fulfilled is done, or ’whose’ it is, and so on. Moreover, this is the nature of ergativism – a transitional stage from an active to a nominative-accusative typology although some scholars do not accept the so-called ‘ergative-as-passive’ approach to this problem. However, it is valid at least for some languages, and the problem of its character will be solved only after full examination of synonymous relations between the ergative and other ‘cases’.
In fact, as it seems, there is a real grammatical subject only in nominative-accusative languages. Even in the example from
Modern Bulgarian, Жътвата започва ’the harvest begins’, there is no subject, since, if we pay attention to this, жътвата ’the harvest’, in fact, е започната ’is begun’ by someone, that means that this някой ’someone’ is the subject of the action.
In constructions, such as *ηхкw-o-(s) nek'et, *Чugo-(м) nek'et ’the wolf/yoke is carried’, it is not shown who is the agent of the action. The added ‘subject’ (instrument) fulfils this function. However, if a second instrument is to be expressed, it also should be marked in the same way. That is why in many ergative languages (Kabardinian, Tibetan, etc.), the indirect object-instrument has the same ending as the ‘subject’ of the ergative construction – see above.
At the beginning of the new nominative-accusative syntactic order in Indo-European, which, in all likelihood, did not develop suddenly, the old and the new type were probably used at the same time (such uses are observed, for instance, in the Australian language Dyirbal). After this, the absoluive form was replaced by expressing direction and marked with a special directive morpheme one, and the instrument, or the possessor, of the action turned into a subject, so the following example could be seen:
NOMINATIVE-ACCUSATIVE CONSTRUCTION
*ηхкw-o-s *ηхкw-o-n nek'et
’the wolf a wolf carries’
ηхкw-o-s ’wolf’ – a nominative noun-subject;
ηхкw-o-n ’wolf’ – an directive ® accusative noun-direct object;
nek'et ’(it) carries’ – a verb.
Under these circumstances, there were two, different in form, syncretistic case endings in Indo-European:
*-s –for the nominative case, and later - for the possessive genitive;
*-n – for the directive and later – for the accusative.
According to Savchenko, the ergative, which ended in -o-s, in other meanings, different from these ones of the nominative, which replaced it, became a separate case, and initially was distinguished from it by the accent and later by the ending; that is how the genitive appeared. Some scholars think that there were two genitive forms: in *-o-s, and in *-o-м (and why not two ergative cases before this – for Schmalstieg genitive = ergative). To such a simple construction, as in the shown above, even before the nominative-accusative type had been formed, different locative, final, ablative, instrumental, etc. adverbs-postpositions were added. It is very probable that in the developing declension several syncretistic forms began to express different syntactic relations, which had been expressed by the above-mentioned postpositional adverbs and by the ergative form. Some of the new forms were strong (the nominative, the accusative, the vocative), the others – weak. And unlike nouns, in which the major formal division in the paradigm separated the nominative and accusative from the weak cases, the basic split in the paradigm of the personal pronouns came between the nominative and other case forms.
The different case endings were formed in a different way from the old adverbs. For instance, the genitive singular ending (вльк)-а was formed by the ablative marker *(ηхк)-ōd; or the instrumental singular ending -омь, comprised –м, which was a medium element, showing that there was a third person, or object, a mediator, or an instrument, standing between the agent and the object. In the dative
plural ending -мъ, -м- also derived from this medium element with a similar meaning.
Language reconstruction can be successful to some limited extent. What is not seen, the possibility such meanings to be expressed by ergative forms, has to be guessed at by comparison with contemporary languages. The mentioned adverbs-postpositions, in future – case endings, probably competed with the other ergative meanings, in expressing different relations between the words in the sentence, till the ergative turned into the genitive. By the way, keeping in mind how many meanings the Indo-European genitive had, which were separate functional units, and the numerous shades of its meaning, it is obvious that this was not a replacement, but two terms for one notion are used. Schmalstieg directly calls this ergative-genitive. One part of the ergative meanings just was reinterpreted, and called by the term genitive, due to some similarities, and the second part of these meanings was replaced by the old adverbs-postpositions, which later became case endings.
Schmalstieg accepts the possibility that other constructions, besides the ergative and absolutive, were present (which can be seen in many languages). He describes several of them; here we will show one, in which a variant of the ergative case was the ‘real’ instrumental case (quotation marks are mine - Iv. Il.), ending in
*-о-м. This *-о-м was a transition from an adverb-postposition to a case ending, if a reference to Dobrev is made. If the Schmalstieg’s example is replaced by the used above, the following will happen:
*ηхкw-o-м *ηхкw-o nek'et
’by a wolf another wolf is carried’
ηхкw-o-м ’wolf’ – an instrumental noun, or a bare stem with an instrumental adverb-postposition, or ending;
ηхкw-o ’вълк’ – an absolutive noun;
nek'et ’to carry’ – a verb.
Schmalstieg, who is sure that here *ηхкw-o-м is a subject, gives an example, showing that the instrumental can act as subject (?) and this is the Russian Ветром убило два дерева ’the wind killed two trees’. Other examples can be shown from Russian, too: Дороги снегом завалило ’the snow covered the roads’; Молнией зажгло сарай ’the lightning burned the barn’; ветер дует, ветром веет ’the wind is blowing’. It is another question if here ветром ’wind’, or снегом ’snow’ are subjects. However, attention should be paid to the fact that in such frequent constructions, the verb is in the third person neuter (it will not be a mistake to say that it is impersonal). To this impersonality, characteristic of Russian, attention has paid Zaenen. The possibility of such constructions, being initial, will be discussed further. Besides by -о-м (an instrumental principle), such impersonal construction in Russian can be formed in another way, too – see the mentioned Russian у волков здесь идeно, which is based on possessive (with initial locative semantic) principle.
According to Dobrev, chronologically, the adverbial cases (locative, ablative, sociative, instrumental) appeared first. After them, appeared the dative, which showed an action, directed to some recipient. As it was stated, at the beginning, the dative semantic was similar to that, expressed by the instrumental. Moreover, there is some logic to that, as the examples from Kabardinian, and the common element -м in the endings of the two cases in some Indo-European languages show. Persons and objects,
which were realised as peripheral factors, could be accepted as an indirect object, and -м- became part of the dative ending. However, the difference between a direct and an indirect objects was weak (do not forget about the initial directive meaning of the accusative). Examples were given as this can be expressed in a different way (to pray God – to pray to the God).
There is not formed dative case in some languages – in Turkish, this term designates just directiveness – see again the initial directive meaning of the Indo-European accusative; in every language a given relation can develop in a specific way. By the same ending are designated direction and recipient in the following examples:
Istanbula gidiyouruм ’I go to Istanbul’;
Kitabý sana veriyoruм ’I give the book to you’ = ’(I) the book in your direction give’.
Here gidiyouruм means ’I go’, kitabý means ’the book’, and veriyoruм is ’I give’.
The same can be seen in Hungarian:
А hajó délnek fordul ’the ship turns to the South’;
Adok … a baratomnak ’I give … to the friend’ – literally, ’I give … in my friend’s direction’.
Here hajó means ’ship’, fordul means ’(it) turns’, and adok is ’(I) give’.
A trace of this relation has been left in the medieval Slavonic-Bulgarian language where the directive dative was preserved: ид© тебэ ’I come to you’, or послэдовахъ pм¹ ’(they) followed him’. These uses have synonymous variants with a preposition къ ’to’: ид© къ тебэ. However, in Bulgarian, directiveness and recipientness have developed into two different categories.
According to Dobrev, the developed Slavonic declension was not homogeneous. There were two components, which he calls Japhetic and Prometheic. He also says that the history of that declension is a resonance from the transition to the second (Prometheic) grammatical type. From the second, Prometheic, type have developed the subject-object cases: the nominative, the accusative, the dative. From the first, Japhetic type, numerous pre-adverbs have been left: дома ’at home’, зиме ’in winter’, зимъс ’in winter’, лете ’in summer’, есенес ’in fall’, денем ’at daytime’, нощем ’at night’, добре ’well’, зле ’badly’, малце ’a little’, блазе (му) ’isn’t he lucky man’, требе (си) ’it is necessary’ – instead of трябва. The interaction between the two components had not been finished. As it is not finished now. That is why in Bulgarian damaskin-books, competitive forms, such as поиде № домь свои – отиде дома си ’he went to his home’, can be seen; and in Russian, there is an opposition between: идти домой ’to go home’ – сидеть дома ’to stay at home’.
Many archaic characteristic features and reflections of old processes can be found in folk songs. For example, the omission of
prepositions, which were not present in Indo-European, as well as prefixes. Undoubtedly, there is a connection between the language typology change, the developing of case system, asyndeton connections, and cognate objects and subjects, which are the focus of this work, and which will be examined again further down.
ІV. LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY, EVOLUTION OF INDO-EUROPEAN CASE SYSTEM, AND COGNATE ‘SUBJECTS’ AND ‘OBJECTS’
In the article Към въпроса за така наречените вътрешни допълнения, an opinion was stated that word combinations, such as Bulg. лов ловити ’to hunt a hunt’, are relicts of the ancient Indo-European word order. It was said in addition that they appeared as a result of root reduplication and incorporation; and they were a transition from a compound word to word group; see also Dobrev’s assumption, stated in his book Българският език (The Bulgarian Language), that compound words are remains from times immemorial when the syntax was simple, and there was no significant difference between a word and a sentence. In the cited article, not cited were some formulations on this matter, made by Stepanov, Radich, Yashar-Nasteva, and this is considered as a fault. The assumption, stated there, will be elaborated from a typological point of view, with relation to the shown above typological schemes; and the different forms of the noun in such combinations will be explored and explained.
Elsewhere in the same article, attention was paid to the classification of such tautological combinations. Traditionally, they have been divided into cognate subjects (роса роси ’dew is falling’) and cognate objects (ден денувам ’to spend the day’, лов ловувам ’to hunt a hunt’). It should be emphasised that such a classification is possible only from a nominative-accusative point of view. In the active-ergative-(nominative) syntactic typology, which was explained above, and which was characteristic for the Indo-European language, at a certain period of its development,
one can not say for sure if there was a syntactic difference between the combination with a cognate ‘subject’ роса роси (= ’this is the falling of the dew’, ’the dew is forced to fall’, etc.), and the combination with a cognate ‘object’ лов лови (= ’this is the hunting of the hunt’, ’the hunt is forced to be hunted, etc.).
Potebnia thinks that some verbs became intransitive after their cognate internal objects were lost. Nevertheless, before being lost, they should have appeared. Yet, Dobrev alludes that direct objects are related to tautological combinations of words (= cognate ‘subjects’, or ‘objects’). Something similar was said by Stepanov, according to which the ‘subject’, or the ‘object’ (quotation marks are mine – Iv. Il.), in tautological combinations had been derived from the predicate. In Indo-European, especially before a sharp distinction between nouns and verbs was made, the predicate often was differentiated from the subject only by taking the phrase accent. A word combination, such as
’вълкът (’животно, което влече’) влече’ -
’the wolf (’an animal that drags’) drags’,
was built by two similar words, differentiated only by the mentioned accent. This state has so far been preserved in the cited Bulgarian phrase; with some peculiarities of the word-formation (suffixes have been added). It stands to reason that primitive man formed words through associations. Thus, one-root combinations, which are relicts from the primitive way of thinking, and, in which the ‘object’, or the ‘subject’ of the action are realised as something unseparated from the action itself, were formed.
In those distant times, it was natural to think that hunt is what was hunted (= ловеното ’the hunted’ ® *у мен е/имам ловом ловено ’I have hunted by hunt’) and thunder is what thunders (=
the thundered ® *the sky has thundered by thunder/in the sky is thundered by thunder). Stepanov also thinks that passive ‘objects’ (quotation marks are mine – Iv. Il.) are derived from the predicate, that is why fight is the fought, hunt is the hunted, etc.
The languages which are not Indo-European also offer proof of such a process. Koreans naturally say cho-мəl cho-nda – literal translation ’to sleep a sleep’, or кəriм-əl кəriм-nida ’to draw a drawing’. In Turkish, cognate objects are also frequent: yemek yiyecekler ’they will eat food’, oyun oynuyorum ’I play a game’, yaz¶ yaz¶yor ’he writes writing(s)’.
Stepanov pays attention to the fact that in Balto-Slavonic, tautological, and sometimes non-tautological, objects, often have ‘a neutralised nominative-accusative form: Russ. служба служить ’to serve a service’, работа работать ’to work a work’, трава косить; instead of службу служить, работу работать, траву косить. He is an erudite, as this is obvious when reading the cited here book of his, but it is also obvious that he has not read (and used) Ivan Dobrev’s Theory of Stems, which is the best of all cited here sources, and should be translated into English. Otherwise, Stepanov could know that it is about abstract collective forms, from which derive the feminine singular nominative ending –а, and the same neuter plural nominative-accusative endings.
Examining the phenomenon of tautological combinations from a non-accusative point of view, we should choose a different approach. Ergative typology usually should not differentiate semantically between a ‘subject’, and an instrument; only in form: -s/-oм (see above). Moreover, the ‘subject’ and the ‘object’
in the ergative Indo-European phrase were differentiated only by the presence, or the lack of ending -s, added, or not, to the word stem. Besides as a cognate subject and object, the noun in combinations without an instrumental ending: бой се бия ’to fight a fight’, мъка се мъча, роса роси, люлка се люля or лов (се) лови; and with such ones: бойом се бия ’to fight a fight’, *мъком се мъча, *росом роси; could be regarded also as a cognate instrument. Stepanov, regarding such an opposition, uses the terms subject actant and instrumental actant. In the cited word combinations, this actant is a relict from the old ergative (which had instrumental nature), in a new form: a case instrumental ending -ом, when such one is present; a zero marker, expressing some old ergative functions, if an instrumental ending is missing; or proto-adverb, such as дома ’at home’, зимъс ’in winter’, etc.
Tautological combinations are relicts of very old active-passive sentence relations. That is why Stepanov emphasises that they are similar to active-passive syntagmas. After the instrument was added to the structure, conditions appeared for the verbal noun with predicate functions (for instance, nek’et) to be realised as a verb (for example, ’carries’). Then an intensification process followed; as a result, archaic examples in Czech and Russian have left: svÌt svÌtúcí ’the whole world’, pravda pradvúcí ’the whole truth’, div divúcí ’extra wonderful’, тьма тмущая. Here the second word is an active participle that shows intensification of the feature through its suffix. Such constructions are similar to the absolute dative case, which is also a semi-independent phrase, and maybe earlier, it was more independent. In Serbo-Croatian, there are also similar examples: цео целцат ’completely whole’, сам самцат ’completely alone’ (compare with the Bulgarian цял целеничък, сам самичък with the same meaning). There are also passive intensified syntagmas in Macedonian-Bulgarian кучка
кучкосана, свадби свадбосани – difficult to translate into English, something like ’a bitch with extreme bitch features’, and ’very pompous weddings’.
At the beginning, the phrase must have been quite impersonal and 3rd personal; this was mentioned above. Even now, in Korean and Japanese, it is usually said literally: To where is this going (directed)? (Kor. Odi gayo?), What is (the) name? (Kor. Irəmən muoeio?), or What is (the) age? (Kor. Mio sal eio?), instead of: Where are you going?, What is your name?, What is your age?, where the person is apparent by the pronoun, or the verb form. Similar phenomenon is observed in Indo-European languages, too. It is easier to say in Bulgarian: Как е?, literally ’how is (it)’; or in Russian, Как дела?, literally ’how (is) business’, instead of: Как си ти? ’how are you’, or Как твои дела? ’how is your business’. Impersonality is transparent also in examples, such as the Bulgarian аз може да ида ’I can probably go’ – the underlined is 3rd person ending, instead of аз мога да ида ’I can go’ – with 1st person ending; има да пиша ’I will write’ вместо имам да пиша ’I will write, I have to write’ (with additional shades in the meaning); and the affective-dative Slavonic constructions мне холодно ’I feel cold’ – literary ’the cold is felt by me’, быстъ же ¬м№ сэатити ’it happened that he sowed’, ¬м№ сэ«щ№ ’when he was sowing’. The Bulgarian dialectal phrase аз ми е студено ’ ’I feel cold’, literal translation ’the cold is felt by me’, show a transitional phase from affective impersonal structures to more developed ones.
Almost every sentence can be reinterpreted as being in the 3rd person even if it has a subject in the 1st or 2nd person: I love you = the person I loves the person You. A phrase as To where is this going (directed)? has a passive nature, and, if a personal pronoun is added to it, the pronoun acts as an ergative form:
you + To where is (directed this) going? ®
To where is (directed) your going? (with a possessive meaning of the ergative).
In support of the stated, is the fact that in Korean, the pronoun uri ’we’ has also a possessive meaning: uri jib (we + house) = our house.
From the initial ’the work is worked’/’the hunt is hunted’, through the extended ’through the worker the work is worked’/’through the hunter the hunt is hunted’, later, after the nominative-accusative typology began to dominate, the verb was reinterpreted as transitive: ’the worker the work works’. After this, the reinterpreted as direct object unnecessary word could be dropped: ’the worker works’. Nevertheless, maybe the active-ergative mind could not realise easily the change, because for the primitive mind (and according to ergative laws), the hunter can not hunt, if there is not anything to hunt. Stepanov also emphasises that ‘objects’ (quotation marks are mine – Iv. Il.) in tautological combinations are irreplaceable. However, if there is no ‘object’, the ergative form in its additional meanings ‘takes’ its place:
Студентыр машине-м иожьэ ’the student waits for the car’ - see above.
Here the ‘object’ is in the ergative. That is why constructions with an ‘intransitive’ ergative verb often require a form, differing from the ‘transitive’ verb form, in order to differentiate between the agentive and factitive action:
ЩIалэр матхэр ’the boy writes’, but:
ЩIалэ-м письмер етхыр ’the boy a letter writes’ – the same action could be expressed also by other endings and other verb:
ЩIалэр письме-м XXX, аs it is obvious from the sentence ’the student waits for the car’.
It is highly possible that such a process was characteristic of Bulgarian verbs during their continuous development (a long time before they were Bulgarian). Probably, the typology shift led to the following:
нощта/денят /пътят (*аз-ом) се нощува/денува/пътува
’the night/the day/way (by me) is spent/walked’
or:
нощем/денем/пътьом аз нощувам/денувам/пътувам ®
’at night/at daytime I spend the night, the day/walk the road’
нощта/деня/пътя прекарвам/изминавам
’the night/the day/the way I spend/pass’.
The first two variants were possible, due to the possibility of reinterpreting the word roles (something like the alternation to boil water with rice – to boil rice with water). The lexical replacement of нощувам ’to spend the night’, or пътувам ’to walk’ by прекарвам ’to spend the night’ or изминавам ’to pass’ is the same as the Kabardinian alternation: матхэр - етхыр.
The active-ergative Indo-European verb bore much information and the category way of action was developed. If the verb was active/agentive, it could express through different markers totality (wholeness), inchoativeness, intensity, causativeness, iterativeness, state. But even in non-accusative typologies, there is synonymy and competitiveness between different ways of expressing relations. In Kabardinian, the instrument can be expressed either
only by the ergative ending (машине-м XXX ’on a sewing-machine I sew’), or by adding an additional instrumental suffix to it (машине-м-кIэ сод ’… I sew’), or by adding an ergative ending to the noun and an instrumental prefix to the verb (машине-м ири-зод ’on a sewing-machine I sew together’). Such alternation is observed also in Bulgarian verbs (with some additional shades of meaning):
работя денем ’ I work during the day’, but: отработвам деня ’I work away the day’;
вървя по пътя (п©тьмь) ’I walk the road’, но: извървявам пътя ’I walk to the end of the road’.
But besides the shown tendency, there is another one, fighting for domination in language (expressed by the Avar sentence Vacas istakan bekana ® Istakan bekana) – the verb with a passive characteristic remains unchanged. This tendency probably has tried to overwhelm the opposition of other Indo-European verbal tendencies, as we can judge by some Modern Bulgarian examples. The passive/factitive verb, unlike the active/agentive, did not have a developed system of expressing action. In some cases, the verbs of passive origin began to dominate in expressing the action. Even now, it is possible to say in Bulgarian аз (си) почивам ’I take rest’, but without changing the verb, to say почивам си очите ’I make my eyes take rest’. This is the same action, viewed in a different way. In Thracian, and in other Bulgarian dialects, it is often said: съхна дрехата ’I make the clothes dry’/’I dry the clothes’, тека вода ’I draw water’, вра ядене ’I boil a meal’, etc., instead of: суша дрехата ’I make the clothes dry’/’I dry the clothes’, точа/поливам вода ’I draw water’ или варя ядене ’I boil/cook a meal’. For example:
В’атърът йъ съхне ’the wind dries it/makes it dry’, instead of В’атърът йъ суш£; such an example was deliberately shown, when explaining typologies (compare with the past passive participle исъхната ’dried’, cited above);
Ми йъ течеш таъ òдъ ’you are drawing this water’ – instead of Ми йъ точиш …;
When the second tendency, of adhering to the passive characteristic, begins to prevail over and the verb ‘does not want’ to change its form, when expressing agentive or factitive action (in the examples below, the verbs seem to be only intransitive; the opposite transitive could be: пробягам, сбия, сборя), the noun is forced to adjust, and to be reinterpreted as:
1. A direct object: Bulg. бяг бягам ’to run’, бой бия ’to fight a fight’, чудо чудя, борба боря, наем наемам;
2. An indirect object: Bulg. бягу бягам ’to run’, *чуду се чудя; Serbo-Croat. бjегу бjегаше ’to run’;
3. An instrument: Bulg. бягум бягам ’to run’, бойом се бия ’to fight a fight’, чудом се чудя, наюм наемам; Russian бегом бежит ’to run, ветром веет, воем воет; Serbo-Croat. виком виче, теком тече, etc.;
4. A prepositional expression: фъф бяга бягам ’to run’, ф наем наемам.
All similar examples are a reflection of old competitions between the ergative (in all its transformations and meanings) and the new adverbs-postpositions, future case endings. Moreover, the
cited above competitive forms are the same, as the shown below (some of them already mentioned):
рискувам здравето си ’I risk my health’- рискувам ’чрез’ здравето си (здоровьем) ’I take risks with my health’;
махам ръка ’to wave a hand’ - махам с ръка (р©ко«) ’to wave with a hand’;
обработвам полето ’to work/cultivate the field’ - работя на полето ’to work in the field’ - работя ’чрез’ полето (*полем) ’*to work through the field’;
работя през деня – работя денем ’to work during the day’.
In any case, the tautological combinations, which were preserved due to their possibility to be brought to attention, build the core or the theme of the sentence (Stepanov also thinks that cognate words combinations help the preservation of the ‘object’). Language typology changes, but the theme, which gives information about some fact, stays in the center of the communication: (това е) люлеенето на люлката/боренето на борбата ’(this is) the swinging of the cradle’/’(this is) the fighting of the fight’, etc. As typology changes, language means of expression change, too, but old models are preserved in the language memory, with a faded meaning. That is why the folk singer, instead of аз да се боря с мечката ’to fight the bear’, says аз със мечката борба да боря ’to fight a fight with the bear’. The main expression here is боренето на борбата ’the fighting of the fight’. The language ability to form, from the same root, words for the action, the agent, the instrument, and the object, towards which it is directed, enables the formation of one-root chain expressions. The additional elements (аз ’I’ and мечката ’the bear’), added later, are the rheme from the point of view of the actual division of the sentence.
ON THE VOCATIVENESS OF
BULGARIAN ADJECTIVES
The vocative function (vocativeness) of adjectives can be expressed in different ways. The usual way is by the endings of the words:
Bulg. Иване, ела тук! ’Ivan, come here!’ (but: Казвам се Иван ’my name is Ivan’);
Kor. Оksanaya! ’Oksana!’ (but: Irəmən Oksana imnida ’my name is Oksana).
In Turkish, the accent is used as a device of expressing a vocative meaning:
òsman, bak! ’Osman, take a look!’ (but: Ismim Osmàn ’my name is Osman’).
Another expressive alternative is the use of auxiliary words:
Engl. Hey, you!;
Bulg. Абе, човек! ’hey, man’;
Arab. Ya bint! ’girl’, Ya, sîdi! ’sir’.
Auxiliary words can express not only vocativeness, but gender, as well:
Bulg. Иване бе! ’hey, Ivan’ (masculine);
Bulg. Елено ма! ’hey, Helen’ (feminine).
And finally, zero morphemes can also express this category:
Bulg. Георги, виж! ’George, take a look!’;
Bulg. Ти! Oбърни се! ’You! Turn to me!’.
In Slavonic-Bulgarian language, expressed by endings, the vocativeness is a peculiarity mostly of nouns. However, it is a characteristic feature of adjectives in the earliest testified Slavic manuscripts, too, although there it just appears. In his Old Bulgarian Language, in the chapter of adjectives, Mirchev (Мирчев) claims that the vocative case is expressed either by a long form of the adjective: о роде невэрьныи ’perfidious tribe’, or by the nominative form of the short adjective: цэсарю юдеискъ ’king of Israel’ (as many other scholars, he also uses this term regarding the examined here category vocativeness). According to him, only very rarely a vocative ending, borrowed from nouns, can be observed: фарисею слэпе ’Pharisee blind’ (see also Codex Supraslensis 21. 26-27: бЌе вьседръжителю ¬динъи блаже и милосрьде).
So far, the vocative, as stated above, traditionally has been considered to be a case grammeme, although some scholars have not agreed with this statement. The cited author thinks that the vocative (as well as the nominative) are not cases, because with them, there is no government between words. Some of the defendants of the vocative as case marker, assert that it has much in common with the nominative – most of all, both cases have an appellative function. That is why the formal coincidence between them is not accidental. Moreover, while other cases express some definite relations, within the sentence, the vocative expresses these relations synthetically by forming a sentence (however, case and sentence are different notions – my remark – Iv.
Il.). According to Ivanchev, the vocative often disappears and is replaced by the nominative, although there is always a different intonation (it seems, for him intonation is not an linguistic expressive element). The same author claims yet, that the vocative is a case, which forms with the nominative a privative opposition, in which the former is a marked member (with vocativeness and modality). Ivanchev holds the opinion that, besides gender, number, case, definiteness-indefiniteness; nouns do not need a fifth grammatical category (vocativeness). However, language is a system, which does not function according to whether, or not, some scholar finds necessary the existence of its categories, which are more than five – we can also add diminutiveness and animateness, for example.
According to Ivanchev, the vocative has similarities with definiteness (it is another question whether it is reasonable to call this definiteness, or something else, as we will see below). According to this author, when the addressing form takes the definite article (in Old Greek, French, Bulgarian), this article is added, not to the vocative, but to the nominative form. It is also argued if there is a presence of a definite article, or of a homonymic form in this case.
Molhova has mentioned that in Modern Bulgarian and Modern English, it is possible for some nouns to take a definite article in the vocative:
Bulg. Ела тук, Мичето ’come here, (the) Mary’;
Bulg. Ела тук, Савата ’come here, (the) Sava’;
Bulg. Ела тук, момчето ’come here, (the) boy’;
Bulg. Децата, хайде да играем ’(the) children, let us play’;
Engl. Come here, (you), the boy ;
Engl. (You), the children, let’s play something.
According to her, the difference between the two forms is stylistic, and shows a transformation from a proper noun to a common noun.
Other authors have paid attention to the fact that the ‘definite’ (quotation marks are mine – Iv. Il.) Bulgarian adjectives also may serve as addressing forms, followed by a short pronominal form, used independently, and substantivised, if the phrase is expressing some emotion:
Милото ми, колко си отслабнало! ’my dear, you have lost a lot of weight’;
Крайният, ела по-близо! ’you, at the end, come closer!’;
Първият, ти ще носиш плакaта!;
Нашият, какво търсиш тук?;
Легналите, станете, защото там е влажно.
With pronouns, according to Ivanchev, the vocative form does not occur, although with personal pronouns in the 2nd person, an appearance of this category should be naturally expected.
In the so-called Old Bulgarian Period (IX-XI centuries), expressing vocativeness of adjectives by endings, as well as definiteness – of nouns generally, just appeared. That is why the vocative ending after an adjective was rare (see above). Yet, when the formal marker is missing, the language looks for possibilities of its designation (that is how the definite article appeared). In such a situation, Slavonic-Bulgarian has faced several choices:
1. To activate the recently appeared devices of expression, borrowed by nouns (vocative endings -е, -о, etc.);
2. To determine, as vocative, the disappearing long ‘definite’ form of adjectives (добрыи ’good’, новыи ’new’);
3. To find a new formal device of expressing vocativeness with adjectives;
4. To give up, and not to look for formal devices, which express this category with this word class.
Finally, Bulgarian literary norm accepted the latter choice. Nowadays, Bulgarian adjectives do not have vocative markers, not considering the examined below. However, all other ways of expressing vocativeness by endings, in some periods, and in some places, have fought for domination in language.
The literary works of Grigorii Dobropisetz (XIV c.), dedicated to Romil, are a good example of activation of old expressive ways (vocative endings borrowed from nouns), which are not seen on a mass scale in Bulgarian dialects. In the Service of Romil, there is a plenty of such examples: прпЌдбне wЌче ’reverend father’, трблЌжене ромиле, богоносне ромиле, рwмиле дwсточюдне. In the Prayer of Romil, long forms, such as делателю велегласнеишии, can be seen.
Generally speaking, throughout the historical development of Bulgarian language, the second formal way has been more popular (maybe under the influence of the Church-Slavonic style). That is why the authors of the period of Bulgarian National Revival often use long adjective forms in addressing: милий ’dear’, добрий ’good’. Besides, such examples can be seen in folklore: cиньо льо, я мой майчини ’oh, son of mine’ – the Bulgarian form can be used only by the mother. Now, only several phonetically shortened forms, with additional stylistic connotation, are kept: добри човече ’good man’, млади момко ’youngster’, драги приятелю ’dear friend’, уважаеми господине ’dear sir’.
However, in Bulgarian folklore, some precious examples of the progress of the third process (invention of new formal devices) are kept. Although it was not successful, it existed. The new device is homonymic to the definite article; however, it should not be confused with it, despite the coincidence in form, as there is no
definite article with relative pronouns (който, която, което). The above-mentioned examples can be found in Kuzman Shapkarev’s collection of Bulgarian folk songs:
... остани сбòгом, бре, милиот тàтко (’my dear father’), сèди су здрàвйе …
... остани сбòгом, бре, милата мàйка (’my dear mother’), сèди су здрàвйе …
... яз ке си òдам, бре, милата мàйка, при другà майка ... (etc.).
Such uses often occur with addressing kinship forms of the type: бабината ’granny’s (child)’, ’child of mine’– used only by the grand-mother; лелината ’aunt’s (girl)’, ’my girl’ – used only by the aunt; чичовото ’uncle’s child’, ’my child’ – used only by the uncle: Тодорчице, байнувата, … не видя ли конь да мине? ’Todorchitze, my girl/little sister of mine’ – used only by the elder brother, or by older male person.
Here belong also the above shown examples from Modern Bulgarian, which express emotion (the same is also valid for Shapkarev’s folklore examples):
Милото ми, колко си отслабнало!;
Крайният, ела по-близо!;
Първият, ти ще носиш плакàта!;
Нашият, какво търсиш тук?;
Легналите, станете, защото там е влажно.
These, and forms, such as добри човече ’good man’, are the only forms of expressing vocativeness with Bulgarian adjectives.
CONCLUSIONS
It is high time that the vocative be considered a separate grammatical category and not a case grammeme. Dobrev also thinks that every form of address, even a single word, is a phrase. In addition, a whole phrase cannot express case, or gender, or number, or other category, which is characteristic of a single word. While adjectives and pronouns in all other ‘cases’ in Slavonic languages, for example, agree with nouns (gen. отьца нашего, dat. отьц№ нашем№); when they are in the so called vocative ‘case’ this does not happen: отьче нашь ’our father (in the heavens)’. With definiteness, in historical aspect, such agreement also can be seen in all cases: gen. коня крилатога ’of the winged horse’, dat. коню крилатому ’to the winged horse’.
In the cited above works of Ivanchev, attention has been paid to the relation between the vocative and the imperative. This statement of his (that there is such a relation), indirectly leads to the conclusions that the vocative can be related to other forms of nouns (of case or of definiteness) in the same way, as the imperative is related to the forms of other moods (which also is in contradiction with his formulations). The lack of a morpheme indicator is not an obstacle to relating some word to some grammatical category. The Bulgarian кон ’horse’ is in the masculine, despite the lack of a morpheme indicator. Through a zero morpheme, even definiteness can be expressed, as in Chinese.
Now, vocativeness, expressed by endings, is not characteristic of Bulgarian adjectives. Examples like those of the Service of Romil, and the songs, collected by Shapkarev, show that the process of disappearing of the vocative form with adjectives was resisted in some dialects.
According to Ivanchev, a phenomenon, which is becoming more and more widespread, is the use of forms like: хей, малката
’hey, the little (girl)’; ало, дежурният ’hey, the man on duty’. However, a comparison between them, and the examples in Shapkarev’s songs shows that this is an old process, and here, there is not (only) definiteness expressed, but (also) vocativeness, through endings. This expression is made with some stylistic goal in mind and syntactically, it is differentiated from the other ways of expression. While in the former ways, nouns are marked (добри човече ’good man’, прэподобне отьче ’reverend father’), in the latter, only the adjective is marked: милата майка ’dear mother’ (however, if the word order is changed, the noun gets an inflection, too: Тодорчице, байнувата… ).
ON ANTROPONIMIC METONYMY IN BULGARIAN LANGUAGE
Some cases of replacement of a proper name by another word, due to certain similarities, can be observed in Bulgarian language (here only vocative forms are concerned). The replacement is based on another characteristic feature of the name – kinship relations. One of the ways of replacement is when a married woman is called by the name of her husband: Илийца (after Илия), Петровица (after Петър), Иван(ов)ица (after Иван). A variant of this way is the referring to the profession of the persons themselves: воденичарке ’lady-miller’, стопанке ’housewife’, or to the profession of the marriage partner: кехаицъ, млада невêхчу – after кехая ’steward’;
Another way is the use of the kinship terms themselves: снахо ’daughter-in-law’, жено ’wife’, сине ’son’; sometimes emphasising the possessive semantic: сине мой ’my son’, момченцето ми ’my boy’.
Similar, but having additional semantic, are examples, such as: (сине) майчин/сине на майка ’son of mine (said only by the mother)’/’mother’s son’ and several more, similar forms of address, which are the object of this research. Here will be examined the variants, the origin and the evolution of the latter addressing forms, which are a kind of antroponimic metonymy, without looking for parallels in other languages (the author has information that, under the influence of Bulgarian language, something similar can be seen in some Albanian dialects).
Another, more detailed research, should deal with the spreading of forms as Ивановица, Петровица. They, as it seems, are not characteristic of Slavonic languages in general, but can be observed in Greek: уфбхсáéнб - after уфбхсïò, as well as in Albanian. The causes of their appearance should be researched, too. Such forms maybe are a remaining phenomenon of ancient
times when women (and children – in the below examples) had no proper names; a taboo; or a result of frequent mixed marriages, when the difficult to pronounce name of the new coming bride was replaced by the name of her husband.
Metonymic addressing forms, through which the own family, or kinship status is emphasised, can be classified into several groups, according to their relation to certain lexical and semantic category, and according to the stage of language evolution, expressed by them.
The first group is the possessive adjectives without a ‘definite article’ (with a correlate, or without a correlate). For instance:
N: 1
Първата Стояну думаше:
- Стояне, стринин, Стояне! Кажи ми, стрини, кажи ми защо си дошъл на река …
Втората Стояну думаше:
- Кажи ми, лелин, кажи ми … - translation: ’… Stoian,
aunt’s boy …’/’Stoian, nephew of mine’ - here and further the calling person is related to the called one in a relation, designated by the Bulgarian appellative form;
N: 2
- Дôщеру моê, майчина, … дьô да ти, майци, ушием широко чьôрно фèреже и да та, майци, пребулим, … зам да та турчин не види дали си млада невêста … - translation: ’… mother’s daughter …’/’daughter of mine’ – only the mother may use this;
N: 3
- Станку лю, мари, лелъна, лелъно бêло момичъ - translation: ’Stanka, aunt’s niece’/’Stanka, niece of mine’;
N: 4
- Станку лю, мари, лелъна, лелъно бêло момньче - translation: ’Stanka, aunt’s niece’/’Stanka, niece of mine’;
N: 5
- Чи си бе, дèдин? - translation: ’… grand son of mine …’;
N: 6
- Ела, дèдин - translation: ’… grand son of mine …’;
N: 7
- Какò, уйкин, се коптиса? - translation: ’… uncle’s nephew …’/’ … nephew of mine …’;
N: 8
Дойде падара:
- О, бàк’ова, кво ми е фанал лесичката! - translation: ’… little brother of mine …’;
N: 9
- Пусни ми, мила лелю, Тодорка
двамка на лозе, лелю, да идем.
- Как да ти пусна, лелин, Тодорка,
ага сте пуста, лелин, роднина?; - translation: ’… aunt’s nephew …’/’… nephew of mine …’;
N: 10
- Кольо, мамин Кольо … - translation: ’Kolyo, mummy’s
boy …’/’Kolyo, son of mine …’;
N: 11
- Станко лю, … лелино бêло мòмече - translation: ’Stanka, aunt’s niece’/’… niece of mine …’.
N: 12
- Синьо льо, я мой майчини - translation: ’mother’s son’/’son of mine’.
N 13:
- Дôщеро моê майчина - translation: ’mother’s daughter’/’daughter of mine’.
N: 14
- Еленку, кузум, лелина - translation: ’Helen, aunt’s girl’/’Helen, niece of mine’.
N: 15
- Мари, майчина дôщърно - translation: ’mother’s daughter’/’daughter of mine’.
The second group consists of possessive adjectives with a ‘definite article’ and a dropped out presumable noun:
N: 16
Тодорчице, байнувата, … не видя ли конь да мине? - translation: ’Todorchitze, little sister of mine …’;
N: 17
Яжте, татовата, да пораснете (Vazov) - translation: ’… daddy’s boys …’/’… sons of mine …’;
N: 18
- На, татовата, иди ми отчети … двайсет рубета (Vazov) - translation: ’ … daddy’s child …’/’… child of mine …’;
N: 19
- Спи, бабината, че турците ще дойдат да те грабнат (Vazov) - translation: ’… granny’s child …’/’… grand child of mine …’;
N: 20
- Оставете бере един жив, бабината (Vazov) – here the plural form бабините (деца) should be expected - translation: ’ … granny’s children …’/’… grand children of mine …’;
N: 21
- Ела, дядовото, да те видя (Vazov) - translation: ’ … daddy’s grand child …’/’…grand child of mine …’;
N: 22
- Ти не знаеш, дядовото, колко те харесвам… (Vlaikov) - translation: ’ … daddy’s child …’ or ’…grand child of mine …’;
N: 23
- Слушай, уйчовото … (Vlaikov) - translation: ’ …
uncle’s child …’/’…nephew/niece of mine …’;
N: 24
- Хоп, троп, Радке ле, хоп, байовото (Folk song) - translation: ’Radka, brother’s little sister …’/’Radka, little sister of mine …’.
Besides adjectives, the examined here forms of address can be also nouns in an old genitive, or dative possessive case form. For example:
N: 25
Друми помина бабичка, па на главица думаше:
- Милата баби косица! И него майка
гледала; here милата ... косица ’dear … hair’ is a correlative word to баби ’granny’ - translation: ’my dear child’s hair …’ (many examples of such addressing non-animate objects, such as the legs, or the tail, can be seen in the tale of Kose Bose);
N: 26
Първата Стояну думаше:
- Стояне, стринин, Стояне! Кажи ми, стрини, кажи ми защо си дошъл на река … - translation: ’Stoian, aunt’s boy …’/’Stoian, nephew of mine …’;
N: 27
- Дôщеру моê, майчина … дьô да ти, майци, ушием широко чьôрно фèреже и да та, майци, пребулим, … зам да
та турчин не види дали си млада невêста … - translation: ’mother’s daughter …’/’daughter of mine …’.
N: 28
-У-у! Станчооо, бааби! Сиромахуу, свиди ми се, като те гледам. Почернил си се, баби. Гледам, страниш от хората като говедце. Мешай се, баби, събирай се с човеци - translation: ’Stancho, my daughter’s husband …’.
N: 29
Добрата леля Станка, която ме обичаше и гледаше
като съща майка, остана зачудена.
- Ами защо плачеш, лели? У-у, гледай сега, бива ли тъй!
Цял мъж да плаче - translation: ’… aunt’s boy …’/’… nephew of mine …’.
N: 30
Another example is the lulling interjection нàни, нàнни ’sleep, my precious child’, which is derived from нàна ’mother’, нàне ’grand-mother’.
Combinations of a noun and a preposition can also be used in address:
N: 31
- Стояне, сино на майка! Сакам нещо да те питам - translation: ’Stoian, mother’s son …’/’Stoian, son of mine …’.
In addition, there are some examples of nouns, used in address, having the same form, as that of the kinship term:
N: 32
- Димитре, мамъ, Димитре, нъмери ли си приликъ? - translation: ’Dimitar, mother’s son …’/’…Dimitar, son of mine …’.
N: 33
- Мъл’ч’и, кака, мъл’ч’и, то ш’ти са управ’и - translation: ’… my little brother …’/’… little brother of mine …’.
A last phase in the development of these addressing forms is the use of the vocative, not of the nominative, forms by the same person, who should be addressed through them (the author himself has observed such uses):
- Ела, како ’come, little sister of mine’ (the elder sister calls the younger, it should be vice versa);
- Eла, вуйно ’come, nephew/niece of mine’ (the aunt calls the child – it should be vice versa). These uses are a language paradox, which is a result of the misunderstanding of the grammatical causes of such addressing.
An attempt to interpret the origin of some of these examined words was made by Stoianov. According to him, the variants татковото, маминото, бабиното, дядовото belong to the neuter, due to lack of a modified word, which can be in the same gender: чедо ’child’, детенце ’child’, пиленце ’chick’. According to this author, it is not clear how the feminine singular forms татовата, бабината appeared (he means the uses with a correlative word, which is not in the same gender). According to him, this has happened because of the ellipsis of modified female
nouns as: ч®дь, челядь ’children’. He gives an example from Codex Supraslensis with the phrase п¶wн¶на ч®дь ’the group of Pionius’. Less possible for him is that such forms are remains of old nominative-accusative plural forms, as the dialect phrase добрà децà ’good children’ from Trun.
Apparently clear is the origin of the forms баби, стрини, майци, лели, нани. They derive from old genitive, or dative possessive forms: *баби ® баби (from *баба); матери ® майци (from мати ® майка, with a lexical change); *лели ® лели (from *леля), *нани ® нани (from *нана).
The shown here variants comprise different links of the whole chain process of development of the phenomenon. One can see all stages of syntactic relations between words: government (кажи ми, стрини); prepositional linking (сино на майка); apposition (Димитре, мамъ); agreement in gender, number, and sometimes, in vocativeness (стринин Стояне; Тодорчице, байнувата).
Initial point of the development of the examined forms is the synonymy between the case form of nouns (*лели, *баби) and possessive adjectives (*лелинь, *бабинь). Further, nouns lose their case endings, and replace them with prepositions (на леля, на майка), or, for brevity, drop out even the preposition, at the next stage (*леля, майкъ – the second is either an accusative form, or there is a reduction of the last vowel).
With adjectives, diversification has resulted in using new word forming suffixes (see below), and in adding a ‘definite article’, which, in fact, is just a variant of the vocative morpheme.
The examined here forms, adjectives and nouns, in addressing function, have expressive stylistic functions (moreover, they are used more often in folk songs). That is why, in case of their use, several diversifying techniques can be seen:
1. Simultaneous use, in one sentence, of nouns and adjectives:
- Стояне, стринин, Стояне! Кажи ми, стрини, кажи ми защо си дошъл на река (N: 1).
Or:
- Дôщеру моê, майчина, … дьô да ти, майци, ушием широко чьôрно фèреже и да та, майци, пребулим (N: 2).
2. Use of forms with, and without, a correlate and forms in different gender:
- Станку лю, мари лелъна (feminine), лелъно (neuter) бêло момньче (N: 4).
The forms without a correlate are more usual. The correlate can be preserved, in order to avoid semantic misunderstanding:
- Станко лю, лелино бêло мòмече (N: 11).
Here лелино момече ’aunt’s girl’/’niece of mine’ is a variant of моето момиче ’my girl’, and the correlate is not dropped out. If there is only: Станко лю, лелина, it will be clear that лелина is related to the personal name Станка, because both words are in the feminine. However, if there is: Станко лю, лелино, misunderstanding may appear since the proper name is in the feminine (the gender is emphasised by the particle лю), and лелино is in the neuter. Nevertheless, other examples can also show a dropped out correlative word, despite possible misunderstanding:
- Радке ле, хоп, байовото (N: 24).
Here Радка is in the feminine, and байовото (момиче) is in the neuter.
3. Use of forms with different suffixes:
байовото (N: 24) – байнувата (N: 16);
уйкин (N: 7) – уйчовото (N: 23).
4. Use of words with a ‘definite article’ and without a ’definite article’:
- О, бàк’ова, кво ми е фанал лесичката! (N: 8), but:
- Радке ле, хоп, байовото (N: 24).
5. Use of short and long forms:
- Синьо льо, я мой майчини (N: 12), but:
- Кажи ми, лелин, кажи ми … (N: 1).
6. Use of diminutive and neutral stylistically words: мамъ ’mom’ (N: 32) - *майка ’mother’/кака (N: 33).
It is interesting that the shown examples present only Modern Bulgarian kinship terms. There were no extinct words with old possessive endings as *матери/*матере, or *отьц№/*отьца. At the same time, the use of such archaic words, such as the lulling interjections нани, нанни, which, according to Dobrev, comprises the name of the Babylonian divinity of motherhood Nanna, raise the question how old this phenomenon is. In this case, initially the expression probably meant not ’sleep child’, but ’(you are) Nanna’s child. This assumption is supported by the fact that old adjectives, ending in –инъ (материнь – from мати/матерь), and in –ьнъ (зимьнь – from зима), have an old genitive, or locative origin, and it may turn out that it is about
phenomena, much older than the competition between the genitive possessive, and the dative possessive case. The competition between forms, such as баби – бабин, may be a resonance from the times when there was no difference between Indo-European nouns and adjectives.
СЪКРАЩЕНИЯ - ABBREVIATIONS
англ. – английски
араб. - арабски
БНП - Български народни песни, събрани от братя Миладинови
бълг. - български език
вин. п. - винителен падеж
гр. - гръцки език
дат. п. - дателен падеж
ед. ч. - единствено число
ДСК - Дето са солзи капали, тамо ще песен да никне
ед. ч. - единствeно число
ж. р. - женски род
им. п. - именителен падеж
кор. - корейски език
л. - лице
лат. - латински език
мн. ч. - множествено число
м. р. - мъжки род
нем. - немски език
непрех. - непреходен
новоб. - новобългарски език
НПСР - Народни песни от Средните Родопи
прех. - преходен
род. - родителен
рус. - руски език
санскр. - санскрит, староиндийски език
стб. - старобългарски език
стгр. - старогръцки език
сх. - сърбо-хърватски език
тв. п. - творителен падеж
тур. - турски език
* * *
acc. - accusative
Arab. - Arabic
Bulg. - Bulgarian
CCEG - Collins Cobuild English Grammar
CELGD - Collins Easy Learning German Dictionary
CLT - Case and Linguistic typology
dat. - dative
Еngl. - English
fem. - feminine
GEL - A Greek - English Lexicon
gen. - genitive
Germ. - German
GFT - Japanese for Today
Gr. - Greek
instr. - instrumental
intr. - intransitive
ITED - Illustrated Turkish - English Dictionary
Kor. - Korean
KPE - Korean in Plain English
Lat. - Latin
masc. - masculine
Mod. Bulg. - Modern Bulgarian
nom. - nominative
Old Bulg. - Old Bulgarian
Old Gr. - Old Greek
pl. - plural
RDLL - Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Russ. - Russian
Sanskr. - Sanskrit
Serbo-Croat. - Serbian-Croatian
sing. - singular
TNL - Terminologie zur neueren Linguistik
trans. - transitive
Tur. - Turkish
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BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
КНИГИ ОТ СЪЩИЯ АВТОР
1. ЕПИТЕТЪТ В СЛАВЯНОБЪЛГАРСКАТА
АГИОГРАФИЯ ОТ XIV-XV ВЕК - „Пигмалион”, Пловдив - 2005
EPITHETS IN SLAVONIC-BULGARIAN HAGIOGRAPHY OF THE XIV-XVth CENTURIES - ‘Pygmalion’, Plovdiv - 2005
2. ЕЗИКОВЕДСКИ ОПИТИ - „Пигмалион”, Пловдив - 2006
LINGUISTICS ESSAYS - ‘Pygmalion’, Plovdiv - 2006
TO BE PUBLISHED
ПРЕДСТОИ ДА ИЗЛЕЗЕ
4. СЛАВЯНОБЪЛГАРСКИТЕ ОТНОСИТЕЛНИ МЕСТОИМЕНИЯ (ПРОИЗХОД И РАЗВОЙ)
SLAVONIC-BULGARIAN RELATIVE PRONOUNS. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
5. ЕЗИКЪТ НА БЪЛГАРСКИТЕ СЛАВЯНИ ПРЕЗ ВЕКОВЕТЕ
THE LANGUAGE OF BULGARIAN SLAVS THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES
ЧАСТ І
¬ ¬зъ¶къ словэньскъ¶и - ПРАКТИЧЕСКА ГРАМАТИКА НА СРЕДНОВЕКОВНИЯ БЪЛГАРСКИ ДИАЛЕКТ
PART I
¬зъ¶къ словэньскъ¶и - PRACTICAL GRAMMAR OF MEDIEVAL BULGARIAN DIALECT
ЧАСТ ІІ
¬ ¬зъ¶къ блъгарьскъ¶и - ПРЕДИСТОРИЯ И РАЗВОЙ
PART II
¬зъ¶къ блъгарьскъ¶и - PREHISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
ЧАСТ ІІІ (ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ)
БЪЛГАРСКО - СЛАВЯНСКИ или БЪЛГАРСКО -СТАРОБЪЛГАРСКИ РЕЧНИК
Part III (SUPPLEMENT)
BULGARIAN – SLAVONIC DICTIONARY
6. РЕЧНИК-ИНДЕКС НА ПОХВАЛНО СЛОВО ЗА ФИЛОТЕЯ ОТ ЙОАСАФ БДИНСКИ
GLOSSARY OF THE ENCOMIASTIC SERMON OF PHILOTHEI BY JOASAPH OF BDIN
За автора
Иван Илиев e роден през 1969 година. Той e завършил Българска филология във ВТУ (1989-2004) и Английска филология в ПУ (1998 - 2004). Доктор по старобългарски език от 2005. Работил е като учител в Казанлък и като асистент по История на българския език в Пловдивския университет.
В момента е доцент по Български език в Корейския университет за чужди езици в Сеул.
About the author
Ivan Iliev was born in 1969. He has studied and graduated in Bulgarian Studies (1989-2004) from the University of Veliko Turnovo and in English Studies from Plovdiv University (1998-2004), Bulgaria. In 2005, he received a doctorial degree in Old-Bulgarian (Old-Slavonic) Language. He has worked as a teacher in the town of Kazanlak and as an Assistant Professor in Historical Grammar of Bulgarian Language at Plovdiv University.
At present, he has a position as an Associate Professor in Bulgarian Language at HUFS, Seoul.
