Canadian Slavonic Papers

Das direkte Objekt in verneinten Sätzen des Russischen. (Symbolae Slavicae No. 5) by HelmutWilhelm SchallerReview by: Gunter SchaarschmidtCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 24, No. 1, CONFERENCEPAPERS 1981 (March 1982), pp. 96-98Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40859986 .

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96 I Canadian Slavonic Papers March 1982

mainly in terms of authors, and this makes for some awkwardness in organization. Such reactionary writers as Kochetov, Kozhevnikov, and Chakovskii have been omitted on the grounds that "The literary level of their works is low, and when they are not being boring they are simply ludicrous" (p. 19). In a survey work, however, some discussion of their writings would seem obligatory, however unacceptable we may find them; they represent a powerful constituency in the Soviet Union. Despite such omissions an amazing number of writers has been covered with com- mendable accuracy, though the emphasis is rather more on social significance than on literary values: Evtushenko gets seven pages, Brodskii only four. Some readers may feel that Oleg Chukhontsev deserves more space, while Gennadii Aigi is not mentioned at all.

The primary use of this book will be as a work of reference and as a guide for further reading. The discussions of literary-political background, of literary themes and trends, and the summaries are, on the whole, more successful than the accounts of individual writers (the excellent chapter on Siniavskii being an exception). Points that could have been examined in greater detail are: the influence of Hemingway and Salinger (only briefly noted on p. 218); and the importance of the ocherk as a genre halfway between fiction and journalism (Ovechkin's works are treated here as "short stories").

There is a select bibliography of criticism but, unfortunately, none for the writers and works discussed in the text, nor does the index help much in this regard. This seems a surprising omission in view of the probable readership of the book. In all other respects readers will find it a helpful and reliable guide to the subject.

R. D. B. Thomson, University of Toronto

Helmut Wilhelm Schaller. Das direkte Objekt in verneinten Sätzen des Russischen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1978 (Symbolae Slavicae No. 5). 214 pp.

The choice between the genitive case and the accusative case of direct objects in negated sentences is one of the most elusive problems in the grammar of Modern Standard Russian. Native speakers seem to handle the problem without any difficulty, but linguistic descriptions have thus far failed to provide any set of hard and fast rules for choosing unambiguously. For the most part, past research on the subject has concentrated on isolated aspects of this problem in Russian grammar, which in turn is reflected in the absence of any book-length study of the phenomenon.

The present monograph seeks to close this gap and add to existing research by examining all possible variables involved in genitive/accusative selection in negated sentences. These variables are (1) linguistic conditions for choosing be- tween the genitive and the accusative (morphology, syntax, semantics, and con- text); (2) extralinguistic conditions, such as the objective or subjective existence or non-existence of the denotatum; and (3) the attitude of the speaker/writer. To compensate for these wide-ranging and frequently intersecting sets of variables,

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Vol. XXIV, No. 1 Book Reviews | 97

Schaller restricts the data variable to sentences from Soviet short prose fiction since the early 1950s.

Schaller's conclusions confirm in the main the results obtained by previous investigators. Thus, the exclusive use of the genitive case in constructions with the intensifying negative particle ni, or with an adverb or pronoun prefixed by ni-, has been noted repeatedly as one of the few firm rules governing case selection in negative sentences. Similarly, the conditioning influence of the scope of negation, as in those cases where only part of the verb phrase is negated, or where negation extends over a verb governing an infinitive, is an established fact in research on the subject. Schaller's main contribution consists in explaining the conditioning factor of the semantic and contextual property "definite/indefinite" of the direct object in the choice of genitive vs. accusative. As a general rule, the accusative is used with negation when the object is definite, the genitive when the object is indefinite. Schaller is able to explain the numerous exceptions to this rule by appealing to an extralinguistic feature which overrides the semantic/contextual feature, i.e., even if the object is definite, the genitive will be used when that object is seen as being subjectively or objectively non-existent.

Unfortunately, the author's conclusions are marred to some extent by the difficulties he seems to have in interpreting his data as well as by the seemingly arbitrary exclusion of other possible variables at play in given cases. For example, in the phrase za shumom motora on ne slyshal, he mistakenly interprets motora as the direct object (p. 66). Similarly, in the sentence Strast' ne liubit, kogdapro nego khudoe kaliakaiut, Schaller apparently considers strast' as the object, when in fact this form is the substandard version of the colloquial adverb kak strast' (or strast' kak) "awfully; frightfully" (p. 89). In another case, he manipulates the data to suit his hypothesis. In discussing the opposition existent/non-existent object, he ignores the possible factor of the scope of negation in case selection, caused by the presence of a modal: Novykh stikhov ia eshche ne napisal, a starye pet' ne khochetsia (p. 124). A combination of a serious error of analysis and of juggling the data occurs on p. 125, when the author juxtaposes the two sentences Esli oni vecherom Hi noch'iu vkhodili ν zarosli tarn zhe, to ruzh'e oni ne mogli pochuiat' and ... vet er budet ot nee - ruzh'ia ona ne pochuet. First of all, the author takes to in the first sentence to be a demonstrative pronoun modifying ruzh'e; to is of course a subordinative con- junction here. This error obviously invalidates his assumption that ruzh'e is definite. Second, he argues that ruzh'ia in the second sentence is indefinite, because it trans- lates into German as ein Gewehr "a rifle." The German translation, however, could just as well be das Gewehr "the rifle," and thus the entire argument becomes hope- lessly circular.

Even though the data, for the reasons given above, must be approached with some caution, this book will otherwise appeal to the specialist and to the uninitiated reader alike, primarily because of its methodology and multifaceted approach to a limited set of data. The value of the book is further enhanced by a complete biblio- graphy (except for one or two very recent items); a chapter with remarks on the negated object in other Slavic languages; and a chapter with a fairly detailed out-

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98 I Revue Canadienne des Slavistes Mars 1982

line of the historical development of case government in negated sentences in Russian.

Gunter Schaarschmidt, University of Victoria

Catherine V. Chvany and Richard D. Brecht (Eds.)· Morphosyntax in Slavic. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1980. v, 316 pp. $12.95 (paper)

The present volume is designed as a sequel to Richard D. Brecht and Catherine V. Chvany (Eds.), Slavic Transformational Syntax (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1974). The body of the volume consists of fifteen papers which are divided into four sections reflecting their major theoretical orientations. The volume is introduced by a very useful lead paper in which the editors provide justification for their groupings as well as what amounts in essence to brief abstracts of all the con- tributions.

Aside from a broader range of theoretical frameworks, Morphosyntax in Slavic surpasses Slavic Transformational Syntax in its emphasis on Slavic languages other than Russian. While Russian is still the major focus of the volume, reflecting the teaching emphasis in universities in the US and Great Britain, there are two papers dealing primarily with Polish (Rothstein, Sussex), one with Bulgarian (Scatton), one with Czech (Kucera), and one with Macedonian (Rappaport). Data from Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian are touched upon in several articles. Another new feature is the inclusion of two papers on historical syntax (Klenin, Yokoyama), an area that was only marginally treated in the 1974 volume.

The editors' attempt to give this volume a degree of unity in spite of the various different theoretical frameworks has on the whole been successful, with many con- tributions exhibiting an impressive complementarity. This complementarity is not always reflected in the editorial groupings, with the exception of the papers in Section II which all deal with changes affecting the linear and/or hierarchical order of syntactic constituents. Two of these papers are reprints and reflect syntactic work of the early 'seventies (Comrie, Klenin). The other two are applications of more recent theoretical models to Russian data: relational grammar (Channon) and trace theory (Berent). One could also include here Comrie's second paper, a re- printed version, dealing with movement transformations and derivational mor- phology. Three papers in Section IV deal with problems of coreferentiality as encountered in reflexivization (Timberlake), gerund subject deletion (Yokoyama), and adverbial participles (Rappaport). Two spatially separated papers address themselves to pivotal notions in Prague School linguistics, viz., the theory of markedness (Kucera) and the theme/rheme bipartition of sentences (Babby).

Morphosyntax proper, or syntactic "housekeeping rules," are the subject of five articles, three in Section I (Corbett, Klenin, Rothstein), and two in Section III (Sussex, Scatton). The articles by Corbett and Rothstein stand out methodological- ly from the rest: Corbett makes claims about Slavic languages in general on the

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