Definiteness in Old Church Slavonic : A Study of How Long and Short Form in Adjectives Reflect Information Status

Abstract

The aim of this master’s thesis is to statistically examine how the use of short and long form of attributive and nominalized adjectives and participles in canonical Old Church Slavonic relates to the information status of the NPs concerned. In other words: is the long form of the adjective a marker of definiteness, and does the short form mark the head as indefinite? The study is based on data from the PROIEL corpus, which contains OCS texts that have been annotated for morphology, syntax and information status. Since long form has traditionally been considered a marker of definiteness, the hypothesis is that indefinites should display short form and definites long form. Previous research has claimed that nominalizations show a tendency to use an increasing amount of long form – regardless of the semantics or pragmatics involved – and therefore particular attention will be paid to differences between attributes and nominalizations. The results will show that SF and LF are used based on semantic as well as pragmatic factors and that nominalizations show no erratic behavior.