Coding the Hypothetical

A comparative typology of Russian and Macedonian conditionals

Jane F. Hacking | The University of Kansas

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027230416 (Eur) | EUR 105.00

ISBN 9781556198496 (USA) | USD 158.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027281913 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

Conditionals encode speculation. They convey how events could have been different in the past or present, or might be different in the future if particular conditions had been or will be met. While all languages afford the means to speculate or hypothesize about possible events, the ways in which they do so vary. This work explores some of this variation through an analysis of the stucture and semantics of complex conditional sentences in Russian and Macedonian. It addresses typological questions about the general properties of natural language conditionals and examines the role of the grammatical categories tense, aspect, mood and status in the coding of conditional meaning. The book also discusses the relationship between the use of these categories and the shape of a languages conditional system. For example, the use of tense in counterfactual contexts in Macedonian correlates with the grammaticalization of more shades of conditional meaning than are grammaticalized in Russian, which does not employ tense forms in this way. The study draws on data from a rich variety of sources and thus includes kinds of conditionals overlooked in many other studies. The book addresses issues of concern to Slavists and raises questions for those interested in conditionals and the coding of hypothetical meaning.

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 38] 1998. vi, 156 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 18 August 2011

https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.38

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | p. vii

Chapter 1 - Introduction | p. 1

1.1 The study of conditionals
1.2 Linguistic approaches to the study of conditionals
1.3 Grammatical categories
1.4 The data

Chapter 2 - On Russian conditionals | p. 15

2.1 Typologies of Russian conditionals
2.2 esli and by or esli by: the role of conjunctions in conditionals
2.3 The role of grammatical categories
2.4 Concluding remarks

Chapter 3 - Morphosyntactic and semantic features of Russian conditionals | p. 47

3.1 Typology of Russian conditionals
3.2 The particle by
3.3 Grammatical categories in the Russian conditional
3.4 Concluding remarks

Chapter 4 - Conditional sentences in Macedonian | p. 91

4.1 The formation of conditionals: an overview
4.2 The literature
4.3 A reevaluation of Macedonian conditionals
4.4 Concluding remarks

Chapter 5 - Conclusion | p. 129

5.1 The principle of parallel marking
5.2 Conditional typologies and grammatical categories
5.3 Concluding remarks

Index | p. 155

“The book is clearly written: its arguments are well developed and empirically grounded. In data-rich studies such as this one, in particular where more than one language is involved, it is very common to see a wealth of typographical errors, and yet Hacking's work is quite free of them. All in all, the book is a welcome contribution ot research on hypotheticals and provides a valuable bridge between work in general and Slavic lingustics.”

Lenore A. Grenoble, Dartmouth Colloge in Canadian Slavonic Papers 43:1, 2001

“This book is highly recommended for Slavicists and typologists as well as for anyone interested in teaching and learning either Russian or Macedonian.
”

Edward J. Vajda in Language 78(3), 2002

Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Order by:

Aubrey, Rachel & Michael Aubrey

2022. Bibliography of Conditionals. Journal of Translation 18:2 ► pp. 135 ff.

Dobrushina, Nina

2012. Subjunctive complement clauses in Russian. Russian Linguistics 36:2 ► pp. 121 ff.

Dobrushina, Nina

2015. The Verbless Subjunctive in Russian. Scando-Slavica 61:1 ► pp. 73 ff.

Mezhevich, Ilana

2008. A feature-theoretic account of tense and aspect in Russian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 26:2 ► pp. 359 ff.

Bhatt, Rajesh & Roumyana Pancheva

2006. Conditionals. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ► pp. 638 ff.

Bhatt, Rajesh & Roumyana Pancheva

2017. Conditionals. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition, ► pp. 1 ff.

Hacking, Jane F.

1999. Grammaticalization Theory and the Particlebi/byin Bulgarian, Macedonian and Russian. Canadian Slavonic Papers 41:3-4 ► pp. 415 ff.

[no author supplied]

2006. Consolidated References. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ► pp. 439 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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