Workshop description

The Slavic languages are traditionally divided into three groups – East, West and South. However, these groups not homogenous. This holds in particular for South Slavic, which covers Slovene, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Bulgarian, and Macedonian. On the one hand, these languages form a dialect continuum with quite smoothly running parallel isoglosses reflecting inner-Slavic development. On the other hand, they are part of different convergence zones with intersecting isoglosses reflecting multiple language contact: Bulgarian and Macedonian belong to the Balkan linguistic league (including also Albanian, Greek, and Rumanian), Slovene to a Central European area (including also Slovak, Czech, German, and Hungarian). The intersection of dialectal commonalities and areal convergences is further complicated by the individual standardisation histories, which may have led to differentiations on the level of the standard languages that are not necessarily observed for the spoken varieties and dialects. This makes the investigation of non-standard and historical data an urgent requirement.

One case in point illustrating this complex situation is clausal complementation. Clausal complementation (CC)[1], i.e. structures in which – to put it very simply – a clause functions as an argument to a verbal or nominal predicate, is highly diverse in South Slavic. It is still to be investigated to what extent the formal and functional divergences among these languages and in comparison to the other Slavic languages can be accounted for in terms of internal development, and to what extent contact and areal influences need to be assumed. And here as well, the possible influence of meta-linguistic factors has to be taken into account. The picture gets even more diffuse given that CC itself is still an under-defined notion – which is, in turn, problematic for collecting data and processing them in larger scale corpora.

These questions provide the starting point for the proposed workshop. They will be addressed from different points of view with each contribution focusing on one particular aspect of CC. The collective aim consists in arriving at a comprehensive picture of the patterns of unity and diversity of CC in South Slavic and the factors underlying this complex picture.

Variance in CC across South Slavic concerns form-meaning correlations as well as restrictions and preferences within the complementation structure. This can be illustrated with da-complements (note that da has non-COMP uses as well). Da-complements constitute a prime example of this diversity, mainly as concerns their opposition to complements introduced by other markers with respect to the feature [+/- real/factive] and their distribution over different types of clause combining along the Semantic Integration Hierarchy (Cristofaro 2003).

Boye, K. 2010. Reference and clausal perception-verb complements. Linguistics 48/2, 391-430

Cristofaro, S. 2003. Subordination. Oxford

Greenberg, M. L. 2011. A Balkanism in Central Europe? Realis vs. irrealis in subordinate clauses in Prekmurje Slovene. Holub, Z. & R. Sukač (eds.). Dialektologie a geolingvistika v současné stŕední Evropě. Opava, 8-18

Moskovljević, J. 2004. O distribuciji komplementizatora u savremenom srpskom jeziku. Južnoslovenski filolog 60, 57-65

PE: Sofronij Vračanski. Poučitelno Evangelie. 1868. Bělgradъ

Petkova-Schick, I. 1973. Zur Problemstellung und Modellierung der bulgarischen „да“-Konstruk­tion. Zeitschrift für Slawistik 18/2, 273-280

Sonnenhauser, B. 2015. Functionalising syntactic variance: declarative complementation with kako and če in 17th to 19th century Balkan Slavic. Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch, NF 3. (to appear)

Tomić, O. 2006. Balkan sprachbund morpho-syntactic features. Dordrecht

Topolińska, Z. 2003. Means for grammatical accommodation of finite clauses: Slovenian between South and West Slavic. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 56/3, 306-322

Wiemer, B. & A. Letuchiy 2014. Clausal complementation (A status report). Ms.

The linguistic complexity of South Slavic has been impeding studies covering the CC strategies of these languages in their entirety. At the same time, exactly this situation offers the chance for studying the multiple factors underlying linguistic unity and diversity on the example of one particular object of investigation. Discussing CC in South Slavic from various points of view, applying different theoretical approaches and methods of investigation necessitates a clear elaboration of the key notions underlying the suggested analyses. Hence, the workshop aims not only at gaining a detailed picture of the diverse patterns of CC in South Slavic, but also at linguistic concept formation, which is indispensable for further collaborative investigations. In addition, the possibilities of creating a unified platform of corpora and similar kinds of data necessary for empirical research in this domain will be explored.

In order to have a common starting point for a fruitful discussion, the participants have been sent a template sketching the potential components of CC structures, cf. figure 1:

Based on this template, the data observed in the manifold varieties of South Slavic will be approached, focusing on the following aspects:

• Factors: language internal, contact related, meta-linguistic
• Perspectives: diachronic development and synchronic variation
• Processing: data collection and data processing of existing and new data
• Concept formation: clause linkage and complement clauses 

To date, there is no comprehensive overview of CC in South Slavic. Individual researches have been concerned with specific aspects related to this topic, among them those invited to the workshop. Bringing them together thus combines efforts, also in terms of exploring the potential for further collaboration and sharing of resources. The contributions each focus on individual aspects of CC in South Slavic and thereby contribute to the larger picture, as illustrated in figure 2. This includes the factors underlying the complexity of the data, perspectivising them in their diachronic and synchronic diversity, questions of gathering, storing and processing the data, as well as questions concerning the nature of CC and its status among clause linkage.

The discussion initiated by this workshop is the first comprehensive, in-depth study of CC in South Slavic, covering both the dialect continuum and the specific areal conditions especially at the peripheries. By elaborating a concise view on the interaction of internal, contact-induced and meta-linguistic factors on diachronic processes, the formation of dialect continua and areal convergences zones, it will at the same time serve as a model for similar investigation of further aspects of South Slavic morpho-syntax as well as of CC in other linguistic areas. In this respect, the workshop also contributes to the field of ‘Eurotypology’, in particular by bringing to the fore some lesser investigated languages. Developing a joint format of collecting and processing data based on a common concept of CC will lead to a clearer picture of these structures and thereby advance linguistic concept formation. Due to the additional focus on corpus-related questions, impact is to be expected for the further development of electronic resources, also with respect to the sharing of existing resources and making them reusable in a common format.