Reconstruction in time and space

Seminar with professor Henning Andersen, UCLA, 12-14 June 2013.

Programme

  • Wednesday, 12 June, 12:15 to 14: Slavic vowel contraction and accent change: i-verbs, the imperfect and the volja/suša nouns (no registration required)

The presentation shows how an early wave of glide loss and vowel contraction, occurring between the Late Common Slavic quantity-to-quality vowel shift and the earliest Slavic texts, changed three suffixes. The Present suffix of Slavic iterative, causative, and denominative i-verbs, Common Slavic -eje-; the Imperfect suffix, Common Slavic -ēja--ājā-; the Common Slavic suffix -ej-(ā) of lexicalized relative adjectives. In each instance the explication depends on a detailed understanding of vowel contraction and on due attention to the functional relations of the given elements to similar or contrasting derivational suffixes.

  • Thursday, 13 June, 14:15 to 16: The Slavic territorial expansion (no registration required)

The presentation aims to illustrate how detailed analysis of Slavic linguistic data can complement the testimony of historians and the results of archaeology and shed light on the “Slavic migrations”. Three examples will be presented, one phonological, one morphological, and one that reflects the development of verbal categories. Although each of the examples relies heavily on Slavic details, they all touch on the Indo-European heritage of the Slavic languages.

  • Friday, 14 June, 9:15 to 12 (please note change of time!): Workshop on analogy (in Danish; registration required to Rasmus Thorsø Nielsen, vjm721@hum.ku.dk)