The Chain of Being and Having in Slavic

Download or read book The Chain of Being and Having in Slavic written by Steven J. Clancy and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complex diachronic and synchronic status of the concepts "be" and "have" can be understood only with consideration of their full range of constructions and functions. Data from modern Slavic languages (Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian) provides a window into zero copulas, non-verbal "have" expressions, and verbal constructions. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, "be" and "have" are analyzed in terms of a blended prototype model, wherein existence/copula for "be" and possession/relationship for "have" are inseparably combined. These concepts are related to each other in their functions and meanings and serve as organizing principles in a conceptual network of semantic neighbors, including "give, take, get, become, make," and verbs of position and motion. Renewal and replacement of "be" and "have" occur through processes of polysemization and suppletization involving lexical items in this network. Topics include polysemy, suppletion, tense/mood auxiliaries, modality, causatives, evidentiality, function words, contact phenomena, syntactic calques, and idiomatic constructions.