The Evolution of the System of Long and Short Adjectives in Old Russian

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Karin Larsen. The Evolution of the System of Long and Short Adjectives in Old Russian. Slavistischc Beitrage, Band 439. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2005. 283 pp. Appendices. Bibliography, euro26.00, paper.

Karin Larsen's monograph results from her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of California-Berkeley and is concerned with clarifying, largely through empirical means, an important and rather nebulous area of Russian historical morphology-namely, the development of the system of long-form (LF) and short-form (SF) adjectives in Old Russian (OR). The essence of the problem is that "[i]n prehistoric Slavic, the long (pronominal) form of the adjective was used as a means of expressing definiteness, whereas the short (nominal) form expressed indefiniteness. In this system, attributive adjectives could be short or long, whereas predicative adjectives could only be short" (p. II). In contrast, in Modern Russian "the short form can no longer be declined, but exists in the nominative case only. It has disappeared altogether from the attributive position (with the exception of a few fixed expressions), whereas in predicative position, both forms are possible. That is, attributive adjectives can be long, whereas predicative adjectives can be long or short." Larsen's book is concerned with this "profound transformation of the system," concentrating on "the process through which attributive position changed from an environment in which both SFs and LFs occurred to an environment in which only the LF is possible" (loc. cit.). Given the fact that the outcome of the development of attributive adjectives is, of course, known, the somewhat unusual (for such an empirical piece of research) a priori nature of the book is clearly evident: in a sense, Larsen's task is actually to trace and explain the details of the rather sorry decline of the "vertically challenged" forms, both from a linguistic and from a statistical point of view. On both counts this study delivers strongly.

Larsen's methodology is essentially empirical, using seven texts of the chronicle genre ranging chronologically from the ... (1054-1110) to the ... (1646-1691). Although, as she explains, chronicle texts cannot be taken to represent spoken Russian, their chronological scope gives a clear idea of the sequence and scale of changes to the adjectival forms in question, albeit not necessarily at the same time as the corresponding changes in the spoken language were occurring. The first chapter gives a lucid account of the background to the problem and previous scholarship in the area. The key to understanding the use of SFs in OR, according to Larsen, is to be found within the framework of Functional Sentence Perspective and "mode of presentation": essentially SFs are found very regularly in the earlier texts when the noun phrase has rheme status, but also (and this is vital) when "the link between noun and adjective is presented as established at the point of the utterance" (p. 249). Thus, it is not enough for a noun phrase to be the rheme to contain a SF adjective: it may contain a LF if it does not meet both conditions. One other key, and rather complex, issue is the absence of a clear distinction between attributive and predicative adjectives in OR. Larsen's answer is to classify as predicative those NPs (functioning as rheme) where the noun is theme and the adjective gives essential information, and as attributive those NPs where the noun is new in the context and its referent is known to have the quality denoted by the adjective.

The seven chapters which follow-each one devoted to one of the chronicle textsuse a uniform approach in terms of their organisation and subheadings. With the theme/rheme framework in the foreground, Larsen carries out a detailed study of the occurrence of adjectival forms, in particular concentrating on those displaying contextdetermined variation between long and short forms. An appendix giving all the nouns and adjectives in their contexts serves as a useful reference.

Much of the text of the individual chapters consists of detailed analysis of individual cases in an effort to determine contexts giving rise to LFs/SFs, and the Functional Sentence Perspective of the noun and adjective in question. Larsen's considerable achievement in this monograph amounts to a detailed and thorough account, based on a systematic application of Functional Sentence Perspective and of the decline of the SFs. By the 17th century, the chronicle texts clearly show a preference for LFs. even in contexts where previously one could expect a SF. At this point one wonders whether Larsen's explanations for LFs (where SFs would normally be expected) are not becoming increasingly strained or even fanciful, and whether, perhaps, it would not make more sense merely to speak of a breakdown in the system, so that in many instances it may simply not have mattered or been clear to the scribes which form was more suitable. The question of word order also seems to have been overlooked: gradually in Russian, one presumes, adjectives positioned before the noun became attributive, and so it would seem logical that an increasing number of adjectives in this position would have been LFs. On page 217, for example, one wonders if this is not the reason for ... rather than the explanation which follows. Although mention is made of this question, i.e. the importance of the position of adjectives vis-�-vis nouns, on the very last page of the book (p. 250), one would certainly have preferred to see more evidence of it being considered within the core of the book.

Larsen's book is throughout characterised by clarity of style and offers an academically rigorous analysis of the subject matter: this is solid, empirical research, and, as such, represents a most useful service to the discipline of Slavic. In terms of the historical study of (short- vs. long-form) adjectives, it has shed much light on a somewhat murky area of Russian linguistics and it will surely be one of the key studies in this area of the language for many years to come.

[Author Affiliation]

Robert Lagerberg, University of Melbourne