THE MACEDONIAN AND BALKAN SLAVIC THREE-PART ARTICLE AND THE TYPOLOGY OF DEICTIC ARTICLES
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Macedonian’s tripartite article system (proximal, neutral, and distal) aligns with similar systems found in other Balkan Slavic varieties, but also exhibits parallels with non-Slavic languages, such as Wolof, which feature deictic definite articles. This paper investigates the morphosyntactic and semantic features of these articles in Balkan Slavic, aiming to clarify their status within the broader typology of definiteness and deixis. We show through the study of the Macedonian spoken corpus that there are significant differences between the articles regarding their relative frequency. Cross-linguistic comparison further informs the typological status of these articles. In both Balkan Slavic and Atlantic languages like Wolof, definite articles are enclitics, with one form generally occurring significantly more frequently than the others. While interesting secondary functions such as nominal tense have been proposed for these articles, these features are not diagnostic of their “articlehood” and may be expressed by demonstrative pronouns in other languages.
Downloads
Article Details
Copyright © 2014 Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology, Skopje
Journal of Contemporary Philology (JCP)
Современа филологија
References
Becher, J. (1991). Untersuchungen zu den Verbalweiterungen des Wolof. MA thesis. Universität Hamburg.
Becker, L. (2021). Articles in the World’s Languages. Berlin/ Boston: de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110724424.
Boronnikova, N. V. (2014). Status trojnogo chlena v makedonskom jazyke. Filologicheskie nauki. Voprosy teorii i praktiki, 10(3): 60–65.
Cissé, M. (2007). Dictionnaire Français-Wolof. Paris: L’Asiathèque, Dictionnaire des Langues O'.
Diessel, H. (2012). Deixis and demonstratives. An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, 3: 2407–2431. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110724424.
Escher, A. and Winistörfer, O. (eds.). (2021). Macedonian Spoken Corpus. Zürich: UZH Institute of Slavic Studies. escher.pythonanywhere.com, 11 April 2024.
Fanciullo, D. (2019). Temporal expression in nominals: tripartite deictics in the Bulgarian Rhodope dialects. Berlin: Peter Lang. DOI: 10.3726/b15767.
Friedman, V. (2017). Self and other (svoj i chuzhoj) in the Macedonian ‘bombs’ of 2015. In M. Makartsev and I. Sedakova (eds.), Balkanskij tezaurus: Vzgljad na Balkany izvne i iznutri.
Balkanskie Chtenija 14, Moscow, 19–21 April 2017), 216–229. Moscow: Institut slavjanovedenija, RAN.
Hanks, W. F. (1992). The indexical ground of deictic reference. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harris, A. C. (1985). Diachronic syntax: the Kartvelian case. Orlando: Academic Press.
Hodgson, K. (2022). Grammaticalization of the definite article in Armenian. Armeniaca. International Journal of Armenian Studies, 1: 125–150.
Kanevska-Nikolova, E. (2006). Trojnoto chlenuvane v rodopskite govori. Plovdiv: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Paisij Hilendarski.”
Karapejovski, B. (2022). Razvojot na postpozitivniot morfološki člen vo makedonskiot jazik kako
eksponent na generičnata referencija. Slovene, 11(2): 244–263. DOI: 10.31168/23056754.2022.11.2.11
Karttunen, L. (1976). Discourse referents. In J. McCawley (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, 2: Notes from the linguistic underground, 363–385. New York: Academic Press.
Laury, R. (1997). Demonstratives in interaction: The emergence of a definite article in Finnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Müth, A. (2011). Categories of definiteness in Classical Armenian. Oslo Studies in Language, 3(3): 1125.
Robert, S. (2015). Recorded and annotated oral corpus of Wolof. CorpOrAn: Corpus Oraux Annotés, https://corporan.huma-num.fr/Archives/corpus.php?codeLangue=code_WOL, 12 August 2024.
Sonnenhauser, B. (2009). The Macedonian tripartite article: a discourse-oriented account. Makedonski jazik, 60: 123–136.
Usikova, R. (2000). Makedonskij jazyk. Grammaticheskij ocherk, teksty dlja chtenija s kommentarijami i slovarem. Skopje: Filološki fakultet “Blaže Koneski.“
Vuković, T. (2023). A corpus-based analysis of the grammatical status of short demonstratives in the Timok dialect. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 31(1–2): 245–270.
Topolinjska, Z. (2006). Trojniot člen: Da ili ne? Južnoslovenski filolog, 62: 7–15.
Zolyan, S. (2024). On the so-called “definite article” in Eastern Armenian: Grammatical constraints and pragma-semantic functions. Indoevropejskoe jazykoznanie i klassicheskaja filologija, 28: 641–672.