Definiteness in Gothic & Old Church Slavonic biblical translation: a semantic analysis of form and use

哥特式的确定性

• 批准号: 2877225
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2877225
• 关键词: Definiteness; Gothic; Old; Church; Slavonic

My research focus is to compare the distribution and semantics of various potential instantiations of definiteness in Gothic and Old Church Slavonic (OCS), using comparative analysis to investigate the extent to which Gothic and OCS are able to represent the definiteness of the original Greek sources, and comparing the range of situational uses (types of semantic reference) of such instantiations of definiteness in each language. The aim is to determine not only the extent to which Gothic and OCS can each exhibit definiteness as independent languages, but, more innovatively, the extent to which the semantics of definiteness in Gothic and OCS are comparable. By comparing the situational uses of definite forms, I aim to go further than the literature and position each language on a spectrum of semantic development towards full definiteness, with Greek as an exemplar of full definiteness marking.Both Gothic and Old Church Slavonic have been argued to express definiteness as a semantic category to varying degrees. I aim to build on the existing literature by noting some clear similarities between each language in terms of potential instantiations of definiteness. There is a clear point of comparison between Gothic and OCS in the use of distinctive adjectival forms which have been argued to render definiteness: OCS long-form adjectives used in contrast to short-form adjectives (Lindberg, 2013 and Flier, 1974), and Gothic weak adjectives in contrast to strong adjectives, with such weak forms in the Gothic also (mostly) accompanied by demonstrative pronouns (Ratkus, 2018). We also note the use of distinct demonstrative pronouns in each language which will develop in later attestations of Slavonic and Germanic languages into fully-fledged definite articles: OCS demonstrative pronouns develop into definite articles in Middle Bulgarian, while the demonstrative pronouns in Gothic contrast with fully-fledged definite articles in modern Germanic varieties. I will also investigate some areas of divergence, for example that OCS arguably makes use of the genitive-accusative (GA) as a potential marker of definiteness in the development of the animacy category in Slavonic. I intend to take these formal similarities further by considering the semantics of such forms, both regarding definiteness as a category of each language, and as a spectrum of comparison between the two. To this end, I will make use of a comprehensive list of different situational uses of definiteness (semantic reference types) cross-linguistically which I can then use as the basis of the analysis. By analysing the instantiations of definiteness in each language with such a spectrum, I hope to offer insight not only into the distribution of such instantiations of definiteness in each language, but also the semantic development of such forms, in turn helping us to put Gothic and OCS on a spectrum towards the full definiteness marking we see in the modern varieties.My initial research will involve quantifying the various potential instantiations of definiteness in each of the three languages (including Greek) and classifying these along a spectrum of situational uses. To this end, I plan to use the same dataset of Greek, Gothic and OCS biblical translations that I used for my MPhil thesis on the semantics of 'ga'-prefixation in Gothic compared to OCS and Greek. As we do not have the original Greek source of the Gothic or OCS biblical translations, I shall also make use of a range of Greek sources, including critical editions such as that of Streitberg. We also note that semantic tagging of reference types in the Greek New Testament has been performed previously (Lindberg, 2013), with similar work on OCS performed within the TOROT treebank. This makes the task significantly more feasible, as my work will primarily involve analysing the Gothic text, cross-referencing the previous analysis of OCS and Greek text, and adapting this analysis to my specific spectrum.

我的研究重点是比较哥特语和古教会斯拉夫语（OCS）中确定性的各种潜在实例的分布和语义，使用比较分析来调查哥特语和OCS在多大程度上能够代表原始希腊语来源的确定性，并比较每种语言中这种确定性实例的情景使用范围（语义参考类型）。其目的不仅是确定哥特语和OCS语作为独立语言各自表现出确定性的程度，而且更创新的是，确定哥特语和OCS语的确定性语义的可比性的程度。通过比较确定形式的情景用法，我的目标是比文献更进一步，将每种语言定位在朝着完全确定的语义发展的光谱上，以希腊语为完全确定标记的范例。哥特语和古教会斯拉夫语都被认为在不同程度上表达了确定性这一语义范畴。我的目标是在现有文献的基础上，注意到每种语言在确定性的潜在实例方面存在一些明显的相似性。哥特语和OCS语在使用独特的形容词形式方面有一个明显的比较点，这些形式被认为可以呈现确定性：OCS语使用的长形式形容词与短形式形容词形成对比（Lindberg， 2013年和Flier， 1974年），哥特语使用的弱形容词与强形容词形成对比，这种弱形式在哥特语中也（大部分）伴随着指示代词（Ratkus， 2018年）。我们还注意到每种语言中不同指示代词的使用，这些指示代词在后来的斯拉夫语和日耳曼语的证明中发展成完全成熟的定冠词：OCS指示代词在中保加利亚语中发展成定冠词，而哥特语的指示代词与现代日耳曼语变体中完全成熟的定冠词形成对比。我还将调查一些分歧的领域，例如，OCS有争议地使用了主宾格（GA）作为斯拉夫语中动画类别发展的确定性的潜在标记。我打算通过考虑这些形式的语义来进一步探讨这些形式的相似性，既将确定性视为每种语言的一个范畴，又将其视为两者之间的比较范围。为此，我将利用一份综合清单，列出不同情景下跨语言使用确定性（语义参考类型）的情况，然后作为分析的基础。通过分析每种语言中确定性的实例，我希望不仅能洞察每种语言中确定性实例的分布，还能洞察这些形式的语义发展，从而帮助我们把哥特语和OCS放在一个光谱上，朝着我们在现代变体中看到的完全确定性标记。我最初的研究将包括量化三种语言（包括希腊语）中每种语言中确定性的各种潜在实例，并根据情景使用范围对它们进行分类。为此，我计划使用希腊语、哥特式和OCS圣经翻译的相同数据集，我在我的哲学博士论文中使用了与OCS和希腊语相比，哥特式中“ga”前缀的语义。由于我们没有哥特或OCS圣经翻译的原始希腊语来源，我也将利用一系列希腊语来源，包括批评版本，如Streitberg的版本。我们还注意到，希腊文新约中引用类型的语义标记以前已经完成（Lindberg, 2013），在TOROT树库中对OCS进行了类似的工作。这使得这项任务更加可行，因为我的工作将主要涉及分析哥特文本，交叉参考之前对OCS和希腊文本的分析，并使这种分析适应我的特定谱。