Post, Margje(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel, 2002)
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Abstract:
The word dak is one of several highly frequent particles, used in most Northern Russian and some Siberian dialects. It can occur sentence initially, sentence internally and sentence finally to connect two parts of the discourse, such as words, sentences, and presuppositions. This article describes the advantages and shortcomings of six different perspectives which have been used to describe this unspecified, multifunctional word: descriptions in traditional grammatical terms, in syntactic terminology used for spontaneîus speech, research on its role in information structure, its use in discourse, the role of prosody, and finally comparisons with parallel words in neighbouring and other languages. I conclude that a combination of approaches is required for a better understanding of the way dak functions. Studies in prosody combined with research on dak's role in information structure appear to be most fruitful, and modern theories of discourse structure, which are almost completely ignored at present, could be helpful. Much research remains to be done, especially to clarify the restrictions on the use of the word dak and the way it functions in less obvious contexts.
Parallel to radical changes in Russian society in the last decades of the 20th century are transformations in literary methods and genres. There is a widespread notion that new tendences in this sphere were born as a reaction to the uniformistic, boring Sovjet literature of the previous period. Valerija Narbikova was one of the new names which manifested the arrival of postmodernist literature (1989), with its neglect of social and political realities and concentration on the egocentric inner life of an individual and, unusually for Russian literature of the time, its acceptance of sex as the most important part of life, an expression of the desperate need for love and understanding and helplessness in the attempt to discover the meaning of human existence. Narbikova's prose is interesting not for its philosophy, which is intentionally very simple, but for its inventive use of language, for its intertextuality and vitality. Narbikova became almost a cult figure in the 1990s. Her latest novel was published in 1996, and since then she has been silent. Russian society has changed, the reader has become mature, and one may ask oneself in what directions this type of prose might possibly develop.
El uso del gerundio no perifrástico en oraciones independientes, es decir no subordinadas a un predicado principal, ha sido descrito muy poco en la gramática del español. Creo que el uso que los hablantes hacen de esta construcción en narraciones cortas ofrece una interesante aproximación al estudio de las estrategias afectivas que usan los hablantes en el discurso. En consecuencia, se propone considerar los gerundios independientes como uno de los diversos mecanismos afectivos que los hablantes utilizan en la lengua hablada para acercar al interlocutor a la narración.
This article provides with a state of the art of how the Individual Level / Stage Level distinction –and the related but distinct issue of the distribution of ser / estar– is instantiated in Spanish. We argue that the IL / SL distinction can be understood in two different ways: as a contrast between properties predicated of an individual or of a stage of that individual, and as a contrast between temporally persistent properties and temporary ones. The paper ends with a specific proposal about how to capture the distinction inside a structural system.
The freedom of choosing what language to use in various contexts is restricted by a wide range of non-linguistic factors. One often-overlooked factor is the availability of a digital
infrastructure for the languages in question. To put it bluntly: With no keyboard layout
available there also will be no texts written. The article looks at different aspects related
to minority languages and digital linguistic resources.
This paper discusses if place names can be used to construct and express identity, with a focus on the Norwegian names of farms and parishes. Since the Norwegian Place Name Act came into existence in 1991, the many appeals in regard to official spellings as decided by the authorities give clear indication that Norwegians have different opinions of how the names of farms
and parishes should be spelled compared to names referring to natural features.
Many people prefer the spelling of names of natural features to be as close as possible to the dialectal pronunciation, whereas they prefer older, often ornamental spellings or spellings which differ from the pronunciation when it comes to the names of farms and parishes. This paper looks at the reasons for these attitudes towards the spelling of place names, and is highlighted
by some theory pertaining to language and identity.
Parallel to the radical changes in Russian society of the last decades are
transformations in literary methods and genre. There is a widespread
notion that in the new social surroundings serious literature has lost its
appeal to the majority of the readers, that the modern era has brought
about the victory of mass culture with its ambition only to entertain.
There is a wide gap between the authors of serious literature and the
common reader, which threatens the viability of serious literature in the
market economy.
Still, there are some authors who seem to have found a key to
success with the public without compromising the artistic quality of their
books. Marina Judenic is one of them. Her books are not only entertaining
due to unexpected twists in the plots, sudden changes of time and setting,
and richness and accuracy of language. The author’s preoccupation with
fundamental contemporary existential problems is evident in the two
novels and story analyzed in this article. She portrays the human search
for ideals and truth and, last but not least, for spiritual salvation. Judenic
is interested in the social and psychological bonds which help a human
being remain human in any conditions and at any time.
Marina Judenic promises to bridge the gap between quality writing
and popular readership.
The well-known fact of great changes which have taken place in Russia in the past twenty years finds its confirmation in the drastic change of the literary tastes of the Russian readers. Literature has lost its impact on the spiritual life of a common man, and people feel free to admit that they do not read classic literature, that they do not buy serious fiction. This literature demands a certain effort of thinking, and what the public wants is entertainment and a promise of justice and happiness. These years have been the years of the triumph of mass culture, and in Russia the crime literature is best when written by female authors.
Aleksandra Marinina is undoubtedly the most important of all crime authors. She combines her experience as a former police offiser with her knowledge of criminal psychology (she has received her Doctor grade in this field) and great literary ability to involve the reader in the coplexity of the plot and the personality of her heroine Anastasia Kamenskaya.
Darya Dontsova is not so interested in the documentary accuracy of her stories of crimes, they are always rather exotic, but are written with an humoristic touch and love for animals, all of it is very entertaining and relaxing.
Some new trends in crime fiction by women writers are the theme of patriotism and highly intellectual superagents (Marina Serova.
A very special place is occupied by Boris Akunin. Some of his novels are translated into Norwegian, and the readers can judge about his mastery in literary mistification. He writes about Russia of the X1Xth century, and his appeal lies in following the tradition of classic literature in great attention to the authenticity of the historical background and the characters. Very intricate plots and very good literary style.
The new genre of crime fiction experiences the period of blossoming, but would readers return to the serious literature?
In this paper we will discuss how economy principles interact with cues in the input in bilingual first language acquisition. We will look at the acquisition of verb placement in a child acquiring English and Norwegian simultaneously. Based on data from this child, it will be argued that when faced with ambiguous cues with respect to the verb movement parameter, children do not necessarily adopt the default, less marked setting. Rather, they may opt for a setting which yields an overall consistent grammar, even when this grammar contains operations that are more costly than those used in the target language. We will suggest that economy in acquisition may involve consistency in a grammar in correlation with economy in the more traditional sense within minimalism, where moving an element in general is considered more costly than not moving it (Chomsky 1995).
Description:
In special issue: Tromsø Working Papers in Language Acquisition
A number of European languages have undergone a change from object-verb to verb-object order. We focus on the change in English and Icelandic, showing that while the structural change was the same, it took place at different times and different ways in the two languages, triggered by different E-language changes. As seen from the English viewpoint, low-level facts of inflection morphology may express the relevant cue for parameters, and so the loss of inflection may lead to a grammar change. This analysis does not carry over to Icelandic, as the loss of OV there took place despite rich case morphology. We aim to show how this can be explained within a cue-style approach, arguing for a universal set of cues. However, the relevant cue may be expressed differently among languages: While it may have been expressed through morphology in English, it as expressed through information structure in Icelandic. In both cases, external effects led to fewer expressions of the relevant (universal) cue and a grammar change took place.
Description:
In special issue: Tromsø Working Papers in Language Acquisition
Dette er del to av en planlagt serie med orienterende artikler om moderne litteratur- og kulturteori. Det er meningen å presentere viktige retninger og tekster i tiden fra og med strukturalismen på 1960-tallet og fram til vår tid. Del en, om strukturalismen, er lagt ut på nettet som ”Småtrykk” 2/2004 hos Eureka forlag.
Artiklene er skrevet for ikke-eksperter som ønsker å få en viss oversikt over dette feltet, for eksempel lærere og lærerstudenter.
Denne gang gjelder presentasjonen overgangen til poststrukturalismen, som en kan si fant sted på slutten av 1960-tallet. De teoretikerne som her blir omtalt, er Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault og Jacques Derrida, og hensikten er å beskrive deres poststrukturalistiske posisjoner på en forhåpentlig lett tilgjengelig måte som ikke krever spesialkunnskaper i emnet på forhånd.
This article discusses the formation of imperatives in Norwegian. It focuses on the cases in which phonological well-formedness requirements interfere with imperative formation. Several attested solutions are presented and receive an optimality theoretic analysis. Some speakers invoke a purely phonological solution, e.g. sonorant devoicing. Others borrow from elsewhere in the paradigm, e.g. taking the infinitive form and using it as the imperative. A third group avoid the constructions altogether, necessitating an analysis in which the null parse is optimal.
Russian semelfactive verbs formed with the suffix -nu- are well-known in the literature (Isachenko 1960; Maslov 1948, 1965; Zaliznjak & Šmelev 2000).
However, the distribution between two semelfactive suffixes -nu- and -anuis less studied. Makarova & Janda (2009, 90) suggest that “there is no clear trend concerning the frequency of -nu- vs. -anu-”, so the nature of the distribution between the two semelfactive suffixes remains unresolved. In this paper we explore 2041 semelfactive verbs from the Russian National Corpus (RNC1) produced with the two suffixes and show that: 1) distribution of the two suffixes partly depends on the number of the syllables in the base, 2) suffix -anu- is more recent and most monosyllabic roots are currently undergoing a shift from -nu- to -anu-, and 3) prefixed verbs most frequently choose the -nu- semelfactive suffix, because the pairing of a prefix and a root functions as multisyllabic base. These principles function as tendencies and we do not postulate a clear-cut division. This paper is written within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics, which allows us to fully capture the complex distribution of the two suffixes.
The research on the properties of nominalizations
is one key empirical domain where crucial
questions about the organization of grammar
have tried to be answered: how are the morphology,
the syntax and the semantics of a word intertwined? In this paper we address zero derived deverbal nouns in Spanish (the equivalent of attack) and we argue that, despite the presence of a desinence, this morpheme cannot be responsible for the grammatical category of the word. It is not empirically correct to propose, either, that there is a zero nominalizer in Spanish. We argue that the solution is to let the base of the word synthetically spell out both
the nominalizer and the verb.