Dative Predicatives: Russian in the Slavic Perspective

This guest lecture was given in September 2018 at the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language, Ljubljana (ZRC SAZU). The topic of this lecture is traditional for a research line in Slavic studies devoted to copular non-agreeing predicatives. I share the fascination of Lev Shcherba, Victor Vinogradov and their followers with this amazing class of forms but unlike them do not believe that it consitutes a separate part of speech in Russian or any other Slavic language. Moreover, I argue that an analysis of Slavic predicatives in terms of part of speech classification does not capture their semantics-to-grammar interface, contrary to Shcherba's initial claim (1928). Meanwhile, dative-predicative structures (DPS) constitute the core of the alleged part-of-speech dubbed 'category-of-state' by Shcherba, and the non-agreeing copular predicatives that license the DPS construction indeed express the categorial meaning of stage-level predicates (SLP). In this context, Nikolai Pospelov (1955) was quite right, when he claimed that the special feature of Russian (also Ukrainian, Belorussian, Serbian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Macedonian predicatives is the total lack of agreeing morphology. Dative predicatives cannot select nominative subjects, and in languages like Modern Russian tbey do not select nominative objects either. The technical difficulty with this approach is that there exist morphologically ambivalent forms that represent pairs of the type 'morphologically defective adjectival head licensing the dative-nominative construction' vs 'non-agreeing predicative'. Comment 1. The analysis outlined here has been presented in detail in the following papers of mine: Zimmerling (1998, 2010, 2016, 2017, 2018ab, 2021, 2022). Similar ideas have been proposed by other scholars, first of all, Alla Gradinarova, Elena Ivanova, Sergej Say and Alexander Letuchiy. No one else, except of myself is responsible for the shortcomings. Comment 2. In 2018, I organized the panel of dative predicatives ( = 'thematic block') at the Slavic congress in Belgrad. The panel papers along with the papers of two other scholars were published in the special thematic issue of the journal "Russkij jazyk za rubezhom", see Gradinarova 2018, Ivanova 2018, Petrova 2018, Mitkovska 2018, Maric & Kerkez 2018, Uhlik 2018, Kulinich 2018, Bashmakova 2018 in the Reference. Comment 3. In this presentation, I do not use the semantic term 'Davidsonian state' (D-state) and the notion of spatiotemporality, but I stick to them in Zimmerling 2021, 2022, 2024. The interpretation is similar. Mind that the standard version of Davidson's theory excludes quantification of D-states, so one has to modify his theory to account for the quantification of intensional states: they are spatiotemporal in the sense that the referential subject-of-state (and dative subjects are typically referential in the Slavic languages and elsewhere) is always located somewhere.本次客座讲座于2018年9月在卢布尔雅那的斯洛文尼亚语言弗朗·拉莫夫什研究所（Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language，ZRC SAZU）举行。本次讲座的主题，属于斯拉夫语文学领域中专注于系动词非一致谓语（copular non-agreeing predicatives）的研究脉络，具有传统代表性。我与列夫·什切尔巴（Lev Shcherba）、维克多·维诺格拉多夫（Victor Vinogradov）及其后继者一样，对这类独特的词类范畴抱有浓厚兴趣，但与他们不同的是，我并不认为该范畴在俄语或其他斯拉夫语言中属于独立的词类。此外，我主张，从词类分类的角度对斯拉夫语谓语进行分析，无法揭示其语义-语法界面（semantics-to-grammar interface）的本质，这与什切尔巴1928年的初始论断相悖。与此同时，与格谓语结构（dative-predicative structures, DPS）是什切尔巴所称的"状态范畴"（category-of-state）这一所谓词类的核心，而许可与格谓语结构的非一致系动词谓语，的确表达了阶段水平谓语（stage-level predicates, SLP）的范畴意义。在此语境下，尼古拉·波斯佩洛夫（Nikolai Pospelov）1955年的论断十分中肯：俄语（以及乌克兰语、白俄罗斯语、塞尔维亚语、斯洛文尼亚语、保加利亚语和马其顿语的谓语）的独特之处在于完全缺乏一致形态。与格谓语无法支配主格主语，在现代俄语等语言中，它们同样无法支配主格宾语。该研究路径面临的技术难题在于，存在形态上具有两可性的形式，这类形式对应两类范畴：一类是"许可与格-主格结构的形态残缺形容词中心语"，另一类是"非一致谓语"。 注释1。本文概述的分析方法已在我本人的以下论文中得到详细阐述：齐默林（Zimmerling）1998、2010、2016、2017、2018ab、2021、2022年的相关研究。其他学者也曾提出类似观点，其中尤以阿拉·格拉季纳罗娃（Alla Gradinarova）、埃琳娜·伊万诺娃（Elena Ivanova）、谢尔盖·赛（Sergej Say）与亚历山大·列图奇伊（Alexander Letuchiy）为代表。本文的所有缺陷均由本人独自承担，与他人无关。 注释2。2018年，我在贝尔格莱德举行的斯拉夫语大会上组织了与格谓语专题小组（即‘主题板块’，thematic block）。该小组的论文与另外两位学者的论文一同发表于期刊《境外俄语》（*Russkij jazyk za rubežom*）的特刊中，参考文献中列出的Gradinarova 2018、Ivanova 2018、Petrova 2018、Mitkovska 2018、Maric & Kerkez 2018、Uhlik 2018、Kulinich 2018、Bashmakova 2018即为相关文献。 注释3。在本次讲座中，我并未使用"戴维森状态"（Davidsonian state, D-state）这一语义术语以及时空性（spatiotemporality）概念，但在齐默林2021、2022、2024年的研究中，我沿用了这两个概念，二者的阐释逻辑具有相似性。需注意，戴维森理论的标准版本排除了对戴维森状态的量化分析，因此若要解释内涵性状态的量化问题，必须对其理论进行修正：内涵性状态具有时空性，即作为状态指称主语的成分（在斯拉夫语及其他语言中，与格主语通常具有指称性）始终处于某一空间位置之中。