This Course is Cross-Listed with Linguistics C137

This course is an introduction to the field of Slavic linguistics. We will examine basic concepts of synchronic and diachronic language study, and discuss in detail many issues relevant to Slavic languages. We will cover topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax of modern Slavic languages, with some attention to selected issues in phonetics, semantics, sociolinguistics, discourse structure, and language change. While the focus of the course is on Russian, a comparative study of other Slavic languages, such as BCS, Bulgarian, Polish and Czech will be offered.

The workload includes readings, homework assignments, midterm, class presentation, and a short paper.

Some tentative texts (or selections from these):

 Bethin, Christina. 1998. Slavic Prosody. Cambridge University Press.

Comrie, Bernard; Gerald Stone, Maria Polinsky. 1996. The Russian Language in the 20th Century. Oxford University Press.

Cummins, George M. 2005. Literary Czech, Common Czech, and the instrumental plural. JSL 13: 271-298.

Dickey, Stephen. 2000. Parameters of Slavic Aspect: A Cognitive Approach. Stanford: CSLI.

Janda, Laura. 2007. Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs. Studies in Language 31:3.607-648.

Nichols, Johanna. 1993. The linguistic geography of the Slavic expansion. In Robert Maguire and Alan Timberlake, eds. American Contributions to the Eleventh International Congress of Slavists, 377-391. Columbus: Slavica.

Timberlake, Alan. 2004. A Reference Grammar of Russian. Cambridge University Press.

Townsend, Charles E. 1975. Russian Word Formation. Columbus: Slavica.

Various other articles

Prerequisite: A year or more of a Slavic language or consent of instructor.