Eckhoff, Hanne Martine: Old Russian possessive constructions. A construction grammar approach (Trends in Linguistics. St
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Eckhoff, Hanne Martine: Old Russian possessive constructions. A construction grammar approach (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 237) Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter Mouton, 2011, 215 pp. Barbara Sonnenhauser
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
1 Summary 1.1 Aims and structure In her book on Old Russian possessive constructions, Hanne Martine Eckhoff is concerned with “one of the most striking syntactic differences” (2) between 11th–14th century Old Russian (OR) and present-day Russian: the encoding of adnominal possession. Her study is both a synchronic survey of possessive constructions and their meaning potential at three different stages in the history of Russian and a diachronic investigation of the developmental paths of these constructions. The overall intention is to “contribute to a clearer understanding of why, when and how the genitive came to take over many of the functions of the denominal adjectives and all of the functions of the possessive dative” (5). In this respect the comparison of Old Church Slavonic (OCS) and OR takes on a central role. Even though OCS cannot be regarded as a proper part of the history of Russian, it is included in the study for a number of reasons (49–51): Being the earliest attested Slavonic language it may “reveal an early stage of the typologically and genetically quite exotic system in Old Russian” (50). Moreover, OCS also influenced Old Russian in the possessive space: the possessive dative is sometimes assumed to be a loan from OCS. Furthermore, since OCS texts are translations from Greek, their inclusion in the analysis may shed light on the possible Greek influence upon the Russian possessive constructions, for instance on the possessive genitive. Comparing OCS and OR is also considered important because of the “unclear statements of the relationship between the two systems” (52) found in the previous literature on that topic. The data basis was established by means of a corpus study consisting of five text samples: one from OCS texts, one from Old Russian texts from the 11th–14th centuries, and three further samples, one each from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The size of the samples B. Sonnenhauser () Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
B. Sonnenhauser
matches the time span they encompass, and the texts are balanced as regards geography and literary genre. In order to “make sense of the various possessive-like functions” (1), a possessive semantic space is established. Within this space, the main possessive meanings—conceived as functional nodes structuring that space—are located, and the semantics range of possessive constructions is plotted according to their affinity to these nodes. Comparing the results for the different stages of language development allows for an analysis of the diachronic development of the constructions in question. The book consists of eight chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1 anchors the argumentation with previous approaches to possessivity and places it within the framework of C
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