New approaches to Slavic verbs of motion (review)

Victoria Hasko and Renee Perelmutter, eds. New approaches to Slavic verbs of motion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. [Studies in Language companion series, 115.] A Slavist seeing Slavic verbs of motion thinks immediately of the dozen or so imperfective verb pairs like Ru. idti-xodit, bezat'-begat', and nesti-nosit, and a third of the 15 papers in this heterogeneous collection deal with them. (1) But New approaches predominate. As the first editor observes, "During the last several decades the field of linguistics has witnessed the emergence of a rich body of typological studies investigating the domain of motion" (197). She is referring chiefly to the work of Leonard Talmy (2007, first published 1985), who has classified the languages of the world into those in which motion expressions are satellite-framed and those in which they are verb-framed. In the former, the verb expresses the manner of motion and a satellite the path of motion, e.g., run (manner) down the stairs (path); in the latter it's the other way around: descendre (path) l'escalier en courant (manner). Ten of the papers take Talmy's typology as their point of departure, several of them arguing that although the Slavic languages are satellite-framed like English, there are intratypological differences between the two that call for study. Another new feature is that nine of the papers draw data from web corpora and subject them to statistical analysis. (2) I discuss the papers in their published order (with one exception). The title of Joanna Nichols's article (47-65) asserts: "Indeterminate motion verbs are denominal". I don't think so. A denominal verb is a verb that has a noun as its root. Clearly denominal is zeniti with its noun root, likewise dariti, the root of which is headed by a noun suffix. But I see no basis for claiming that the root of vodit[??] is the nominalization of /ved/, as in vozdb, rather than /ved/, as in vedet[??],. According to Kurylowicz (1928: 197; 1964: 87), there are three syntactic environments for o-grade ablaut: iterative, primarily with transitive verbs (neset[??], vedet[??], vezet[??] ~ nosit[??], vodit[??], vozit[??]), causative, with intransitive verbs (lezet[??], sedet[??], tecet[??] ~ lozit[??], sadit[??], tocit[??]), and nominalization (prinos[??], voz[??], zalog[??], sad[??], otok[??]). Nichols downplays the iterative function, subsuming it under causative, to bolster her claim that vodit[??] contains the nominalization of /ved/. (She concentrates on determinate / nondeterminate vedet[??] / vodit[??], ignoring perfective / imperfective privedet[??] / privodit[??].) We should not let morphology dictate our analyses. Iteratives may share o-grade with nominalizations but they are not more closely related to them than they are to the e-grade base. Vodit[??] may appear 'derived from' (or 'motivated by') the root of vozdb, but consider the meaning: a vozdb is one who vedet[??] people toward a goal, not someone who vodit[??] them here and there. Likewise for /nes/, as in Ru. neset, nosit, and nosa; the noun denotes a burden, typically heavy, which one neset from point A to point B, not something light like an item of clothing which one nosit. Nichols goes on to discuss deverbal nouns, deadjectival verbs, and the accentuation of -it' verbs (giving percentages for fixed and mobile stress in Russian). I don't see how any of this supports her claim that (pri)voditi, (pro)xoditi, (ob)nositi, etc. are denominal (which would make them suppletive with regard to (pri)vesti, (pro)jti, (ob)nesti). Stephen M. Dickey's "Common Slavic 'indeterminate' verbs of motion were really manner-of-motion verbs" (67-109) argues that the determinate / nondeterminate distinction is a North Slavic innovation which is not reflected in the earliest texts. In ORu. Jaroslav[??] xodi na jatvjaze 'Jaroslav marched against the Jatvjags', it is wrong to read aorist xodi like the nondeterminate xodil of Vcera ja xodil v kino. It does not denote 'went and came back' but rather the manner of motion, campaigning on foot. …