SLAVIC LINGUISTICS

This course explores the historical development and structural diversity of Slavic languages. Through a comparative approach, students will analyze phonological, morphological, and syntactic patterns across East, West, and South Slavic languages. Topics include Proto-Slavic reconstruction, language contact, case systems, aspect, word order, and modern variation.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:

Identify major phonetic, morphological, and syntactic features of Slavic languages

Understand historical sound changes from Proto-Slavic to modern languages

Compare grammatical structures across Slavic languages

Use linguistic corpora and digital tools for Slavic language analysis

There are no prerequisites for ths course

Unit 1: Introduction to Slavic Linguistics
Week 1: The Slavic Language Family – Unity and Diversity

Classification: East, West, and South Slavic
Genetic relationship with Indo-European

Key sources for Slavic linguistics (corpora, dictionaries, grammars)
Week 2: Proto-Slavic and Its Development

Common Slavic phonology and morphology. The breakup of Proto-Slavic.

Unit 2: Phonology and Morphology
Week 3: Sound Changes from Proto-Slavic to Modern Slavic Languages. Palatalization, vowel shifts, liquid metathesis. East vs. West vs. South Slavic phonological innovations
Week 4: The Case System in Slavic Languages. Nominative-accusative vs. ergative tendencies.
Week 5: Verbal Aspect in Slavic. Perfective vs. imperfective verb aspect. Historical development of aspect. Comparison with non-Slavic languages
Unit 3: Syntax and Lexicon
Week 6: Word Order and Information Structure. SVO, SOV, and free word order in Slavic.
Week 7: Negation and Polarity in Slavic. Negative concord in Russian, Polish, Czech.
Week 8: Slavic Loanwords and Contact LinguisticsGermanic, Romance, and Turkic borrowings. Lexical influence from Russian in post-Soviet states
Unit 4: Historical and Computational Perspectives.
Week 9: Diachronic Syntax and Historical Change. Changes in clitic positioning.
Week 10: Slavic Languages in the Digital Age. Corpus linguistics and digital tools for Slavic linguistics. Computational approaches to morphological analysis

Unit 5: Final Discussions and Student Research
Week 11: Case Studies in Comparative Slavic Linguistics
Student presentations on phonetic/morphological comparisons
Discussion of ongoing research topics

Week 12: Future Directions in Slavic Linguistics

Innovations in contemporary Slavic languages

Language policy and standardization debates
Reading: Sussex & Cubberley (2006), Ch. 12

Assessment & Activities
Comparative Analysis Paper (30%): Analyze a grammatical feature across three Slavic languages

Corpus-Based Assignment (20%): Use a digital corpus to compare word frequency or syntactic structures

Midterm Exam (20%): Short essays on historical and comparative topics

Final Presentation (30%): Case study of a phonetic, morphological, or syntactic phenomenon

Books
Sussex, R. & Cubberley, P. (2006). The Slavic Languages. Cambridge University Press.
Andersen, H. (1985). Typological Change in Slavic, Baltic, and Other Indo-European Languages. Mouton de Gruyter.
Lunt, H. (2001). Old Church Slavonic Grammar. Mouton de Gruyter.
Bailyn, J. (2012). The Syntax of Russian. Cambridge University Press.
Timberlake, A. (1978). Morphosyntax of Old Russian. Mouton.
Articles & Chapters
Comrie, B. (1987). Slavic Languages. In The World’s Major Languages.
Dickey, S. (2000). Parameters of Slavic Aspect: A Cognitive Approach.
Franks, S. & King, T. (2000). A Handbook of Slavic Clitics.
Digital Tools
Slavic Linguistic Corpora: Russian National Corpus, Aranea Corpus, NKJP (Polish)
Online Etymological Dictionaries: Vasmer’s Russian Etymological Dictionary
Morphological Parsers: UniMorph, UD Treebanks for Slavic Languages

The verification of knowledge combines traditional evaluation methods with interactive assignments

written and oral

Evaluation of activities
Tesina of comparatve analysis (30%)
Analysis of a grammatical phenomenon in three Slavic languages

Assignment based on use of corpora (20%)
Use of a digital corpus for identifying lessical frequency or syntactic structures

Short essay on a comparative and/or historical topic (20%)

Presentation (30%)
Case study of a linguistic phenomenon

This course is blended and it allows for a mix of in-person discussions and online interactive elements.
1. Online Comparative Linguistic Challenges (Asynchronous)
Phonetic Shift Matching: Provide words in different Slavic languages and have students identify historical sound changes.
Cognate Hunt: Students use digital corpora (e.g., Aranea, Russian National Corpus) to find cognates and analyze their semantic shifts.
Case System Puzzle: Give sentences with missing case endings and let students reconstruct them based on their knowledge of Slavic morphology.

2. Synchronous Live Activities (Online & In-Person)
Morphosyntactic Speed Debates: Students will be assigned different Slavic languages and will have to argue which has the most “complex” case or aspect system, using examples.
Word Order Experiment: Analyzing sentences with scrambled word orders in different Slavic languages.
Linguistic Escape Room: Students solve linguistic puzzles (phonological, morphological, syntactic).

3. Corpus-Based Assignments (Online & Hybrid)
Frequency Analysis: Students will have to use a corpus to compare the frequency of specific grammatical structures (e.g., aspect usage in Russian vs. Polish).
Translation & Variation: Students will compare translations of the same text across Slavic languages, identifying key syntactic and lexical differences.
AI & Computational Linguistics Task: Students will be introduced to tools like UniMorph or Universal Dependencies to analyze cross-linguistic patterns.

4. Collaborative Projects (Online & In-Person)
Comparative Linguistic Wiki: Students contribute to a shared online document analyzing a specific linguistic phenomenon across Slavic languages.
Crowdsourced Etymology Map: Using Google MyMaps, students will trace the geographic spread of loanwords and sound shifts.