Coding the Hypothetical
A comparative typology of Russian and Macedonian conditionals
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:
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements | p. vii
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Chapter 1 - Introduction | p. 1
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1.1 The study of conditionals
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1.2 Linguistic approaches to the study of conditionals
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1.3 Grammatical categories
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1.4 The data
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Chapter 2 - On Russian conditionals | p. 15
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2.1 Typologies of Russian conditionals
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2.2 esli and by or esli by: the role of conjunctions in conditionals
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2.3 The role of grammatical categories
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2.4 Concluding remarks
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Chapter 3 - Morphosyntactic and semantic features of Russian conditionals | p. 47
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3.1 Typology of Russian conditionals
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3.2 The particle by
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3.3 Grammatical categories in the Russian conditional
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3.4 Concluding remarks
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Chapter 4 - Conditional sentences in Macedonian | p. 91
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4.1 The formation of conditionals: an overview
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4.2 The literature
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4.3 A reevaluation of Macedonian conditionals
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4.4 Concluding remarks
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Chapter 5 - Conclusion | p. 129
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5.1 The principle of parallel marking
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5.2 Conditional typologies and grammatical categories
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5.3 Concluding remarks
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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.
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Edward J. Vajda in Language 78(3), 2002
Cited by (8)
Cited by eight other publications
Aubrey, Rachel & Michael Aubrey
Dobrushina, Nina
Mezhevich, Ilana
Bhatt, Rajesh & Roumyana Pancheva
Bhatt, Rajesh & Roumyana Pancheva
Hacking, Jane F.
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General