Avoiding Agency or Is Russian a Non-Egotistical Language? Dagmar Divjak Laura A. Janda

A striking difference Russian – No modal verbs (except мочь ‘be able’) – Many impersonal constructions: мне холодно/48 лет English – Lots of modal verbs – Personal subject- headed constructions : I’m cold/48 yrs old Often Russian Dative Experiencer + Impersonal verb constructions correspond to English Nominative Agent + Personal verb constructions e.g. Мне хочется спать = I feel like sleeping

Some theoretical background Do these grammatical differences influence thought? Thinking for speaking (Dan Slobin) Is the organization of thought influenced by specific organizational properties of an individual language? Speaking a language requires paying attention to those properties that are grammaticalized in that language, e.g. number, gender, tense, aspect...  Speakers of different languages might be thinking differently to this extent.

A grammatical difference Russian DAT + Vfin + Vinfin + ACC expresses enjoyment, necessity, opportunity: Мне хотелось бы порадовать моих девчонок. English NOM + Vfin + Vinfin + Obj for corresponding expressions: I’d like to make my girls happy. Do Russian and English speakers think differently when speaking about these experiences? If so, in which way(s)?

A typical interpretation Wierzbicka (1988: 233): the unknown – Limitations of human reason/knowledge  dependence on fate, destiny – Uncontrollable passions govern lives of people = some things are beyond human control Israeli (1997: 21) – Some things come from outside the subject, are imposed upon him/her

Impersonal Constructions = ? finite verb is “impersonal” – “every verb without an acting person or thing [canonically in the nominative] can be considered impersonal” OR all “3rd (n) sg verb forms and infinitives are impersonal forms” (KG 1990: , §285) lack a subject with nominative case marking accusative or dative required or possible [with infinitive]

Disparity of Views in 3 Areas Disagreement on the structure of impersonal constructions and function of their components – The construction as a whole: monopartite or bipartite? – The status of the infinitive: grammatical subject or not? – The function of the (accusative or) dative: semantic subject or not?

A Construction-based Proposal ! Status of infinitive and dative depends on the type of finite verb Bipartite structure possible – Infinitive can be subject of construction – Dative can take on subject-like function  different ways of encoding signal different sorts of relationships between the participants (CG)  analysis reconciles different insights put forward in literature [Guiraud-Weber (1984) or Bricyn (1990)]

Verbs used in the study Nominative slot: infinitive = grammatical subject, dative = true experiencer: – (R) Грозило, идет, льстило, нравилось, опротивело, не светит – (E) Be in danger of, look good, be flattered to, enjoy, be sick of, be fated to No nominative slot, dative takes on subject-like function, i.e. Agentive experiencer: – (R) Осталось, повезло, полагалось, пришлось, хотелось, удалось – (E) Have to, be lucky enough to, be supposed to, have to, feel like, manage to

An experiment: discourse cohesion Trigger: Мне хотелось бы порадовать моих девчонок чем- нибудь необычным, сказочным. / I’d like to make my girls happy with something special, something fantastic. 3 “Instigator” types: – Subject …Я - хороший отец, люблю своих детей, люблю доставлять им удовольствие./ I am a good father, I love my children and I like giving them pleasure. – Object …В школе они получили только пятерки и заслуживали награду. / They got the best grades in school and deserved a reward. – Circumstance …Новый год был близок, и надо было отметить этот день./ New Year’s day was near and it was necessary to mark that day.

Experimental design 36 questionnaires per language – (E) college age, non-linguists, non-slavists, responded in class – (R) various ages, responded via , most live in US 6 benchmark sentences, 12 fillers, 6 triggers – Benchmark sentences: training, also test participant reliability (3 at beginning, 3 at end) – Filler sentences: to prevent participants from guessing what we were testing – Trigger sentences: contained the independent variables ! fillers and triggers presented in randomized order in every questionnaire to avoid order effects

Experimental design, cont’d. Independent variables: 2 kinds – type of experiencer: 2 levels True vs. Agentive Experiencer – type of instigator: 3 levels Subject, Object, Circumstance ! 12 verbs, 3 different token sets per verb to avoid lexical effects Dependent variable: discourse coherence, measured on 5-point Likert-scale (-2 to 2)

Statistical evaluation Data: – 36 judgments for every factor level combination every subject judged all 6 factor level combinations once every subject got only one example from each token set Data analyzed using both the Means Model (models means) and the Multinomial Model (models proportions) No statistically significant contrasts: – speakers of Russian do not significantly prefer situations in which the circumstances are held responsible for need, opportunity etc. to do sth.

Discussion Is there no difference in expectation pattern?  evidence from a corpus (BNC/RNC) Is there a difference in expectation pattern that this design does not show? – Different type of task? – Different type of measure?

Bibliography Bricyn, V.M Синтаксис и семантика инфинитива в современном русском языке. Kiev. Croft, W Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford U Press. Guiraud-Weber, M Les propositions sans nominatif en russe moderne. Paris (Bibliothèque Russe de l’institut d’études Slaves, vol. LXIX) Israeli, A Semantics and Pragmatics of the “reflexive” verbs in Russian. München: Otto Sagner. Langacker, R.W Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: SUP. Švedova, N.Ju., Lopatina, V.V. (eds.) 1990². Русская Грамматика. Moskva: Russkij Jazyk Wierzbicka, A The Semantics of Grammar. A’dam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Many thanks to Stef Grondelaers (K.U.Leuven, Belgium), Christina Hellman (SU, Sweden) and Stefan Gries (UCSB, USA) for discussing the experimental set-up; Masja Koptjevskaja (SU, Sweden) and Eleonora Magomedova (UNC, USA) for scrutinizing the experimental items; Our 72 participants for filling out the questionnaires; Chris Wiesen (UNC, USA) for statistical analysis.