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2Philological Studies 21, 2, (2023)
Prikaz
y^K 81'362(082) y^K 81-115(082) DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.55302/PS23212328k
THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BELGRADE DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL LINGUISTICS: CONFERENCE AND THEMATIC COLLECTION OF PAPERS BELGRADE LINGUISTIC DAYS
(BeLiDa 1)
Virna Karlic
Filozofski fakultet Sveucilista u Zagrebu Zagreb, Hrvatska
Panic Cerovski, Natalia; Kovacevic, Borko; Dinic Marinkovic, Milica (Eds). 2022. BeLiDa 1: Thematic Collection of Papers. Belgrade: Department of General Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, pp. 463.
In October 2021, the Department of General Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, celebrated its 30th anniversary. The department was founded in the academic year 1990/1991 under the leadership of Professor Ranko Bugarski, and the following year the first cohort of General Linguistics students was enrolled. Previously, General Linguistics at the Belgrade Faculty of Philology was taught within the Department of Serbian Language, with the first General Linguistics course having been taught by Professor Aleksandar Belie at the beginning of the 20th century. To date, the Department of General Linguistics has ten employees. Academic staff from other faculty departments and visiting professors from other scientific institutions also contribute to its work.1
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary, the Department of General Linguistics organized an international scientific conference titled Belgrade Linguistic Days (BeLiDa2021), which was held on December 3 and 4, 2021. Over 70 researchers from 28 universities from all over the world participated
http://www.fil.bg.ac.rs/lang/sr/katedre/opsta-lingvistika/ <12/04/2023>
in the conference. Selected contributions to this conference were published in 2022 as the book BeLiDa 1: Thematic Collection of Papers (edited by Natalija Panic Cerovski, Borko Kovacevic, and Milica Dinic Marinkovic). This book contains a collection of 18 papers presented at the BeLiDa2021 conference; prior to publication, all contributions were reviewed by experts from Austria, Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, and Serbia.
The papers collected in the book are organized into the following three thematic blocks: Current Trends in Grammar Studies, Discourse -From Conversation to Construction, and Language and Culture. The book opens with "Editors' Preface", by Natalija Panic Cerovski, Borko Kovacevic, and Milica Dinic Marinkovic, that briefly outlines the conference and the contents of the book.
The first thematic block includes eight contributions concerned with the study of various grammatical phenomena in a variety of European languages, as well as a range of theoretical issues. In the first contribution, titled "Formalism and, not vs., Functionalism", Zeljko Boskovic (University of Connecticut) offers a theoretical discussion of the relationship between functionalist and formal (generative) approaches to typology, i.e., between traditional typology and generative theoretical syntax. In this paper, Boskovic argues for a unification view where both approaches—namely, functionalist and generative—are considered to be mutually complementary, rather than mutually exclusive. Furthermore, in "Cyclical Suppletion in Slavic: What Priming Effects Reveal About Velar Alternations in Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian", James Joshua Pennington (Concordia College CNN, Semiring Inc.) reports the results of a WUG experiment on BCMS. The aim of the experiment is to test whether priming effects can trigger the mutation of k, g, h > c, z, s upon the addition of the plural morpheme -i (e.g., feminine dative -i and imperative -i) or the retention of the final velar with the addition of the plural allomorph -ovi. Along with finding that priming can affect the choice of the allomorph, Pennington discusses other metalinguistic factors that can also affect it. Next, in "System of Strong Conjugation in Contemporary German and Norwegian: A Contrastive and Typological Perspective", Branislav Ivanovic and Sofija Bilandzija (University of Belgrade) contrastively analyze the features of strong verbs and strong conjugations in German and Norwegian from a diachronic and synchronic-typological perspective. The aim of this contrastive analysis is to determine whether the systems of strong conjugation in the two languages are synchronically part of the same typological paradigm. Furthermore, in "Adnominal Arguments in Phrases Headed by Deverbal Nouns in Slovenian", Tatjana Marvin (University of Ljubljana) conducts a case study
of word order in Slovenian nominalizations with three adnominal arguments (agent, theme, and recipient) appearing simultaneously as post-modifiers in a nominal phrase whose head is a deverbal process/event noun. In this contribution, Marvin presents the results of her analysis carried out to derive the fixed order of arguments: theme genitive > agent genitive > recipient dative. The next paper, "Analysis of Syntactical Stylistic Elements in Swedish" by Zorica Kovacevic (University of Belgrade), deals with sentence structure viewed from the stylistic perspective. In her analysis of various stylistic syntactic features of the Swedish language (which has a predominantly strict word order), Kovacevic highlights the importance of these features for advanced language learning and translation. Furthermore, in a contribution "A Corpus Investigation of the Ordering of Selected Attributive Adjectives in Slovenian", Vesna Plesnicar (University of Nova Gorica) investigates attributive adjective ordering in Slovenian against the background of the cartographic model of natural language syntax. Applying the corpus analysis of the frequency of attested orders of selected attributive adjectives, Plesnicar seeks to determine whether the use of such adjective can be reliably predicted using a cartographic model. In another contribution, "The Effect of Context on the (A)symmetry of Serbian Adjective Antonyms", Tijana Vesic Pavlovic (University of Belgrade) and Milena Jakic Simsic (Institute for the Serbian Language of SASA, Belgrade) analyze the symmetry of antonymic relationships of 22 polysemous Serbian adjectives (i.e., 11 posited antonym pairs) in sentence- or phrase-level contexts that activate the specific senses of those adjectives. To determine whether their posited opposition is stable across different contexts, Vesic Pavlovic and Jakic Simsic conduct two empirical studies. Finally, in the last contribution to the first thematic block, "Complexité syntaxique à l'écrit en l2: Le cas du Français (Syntactic Complexity in L2 Writing: The Case of French)", Emilija Milojevic (University of Belgrade) examines syntactic complexity of the texts written by 3rd-year French students of the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. Milojevic presents the results of her analysis of syntactic complexity of two groups of essays (lower- and higher-quality) and identifies language features by which these two groups of essays differ the most.
The second thematic block of the book, Discourse - From Conversation to Construction, contains seven papers from the areas of (Critical) Discourse Analysis, (Socio)pragmatics, and Grammar. All contributions to this section use a range of research methods applied to various types of linguistic material. The section opens with the paper titled "A Glimpse at Semiotic Landscapes and Student Population of Zagreb's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences: Socio-pragmatics of Public Toilet Graffiti" by Lana Jurcevic (University of Zagreb). In her contribution,
Jurcevic presents the results of a socio-pragmatic and semiotic analysis of graffiti in the public restrooms of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. Assuming that this type of graffiti bears important socio-cultural meanings and significance in their discursive structures and social functions, Jurcevic reviews the (re)production of ideologies and identity performance in this type of discourse. In the next contribution to the second thematic block, titled "Argument Narrativization Through Discourse Representation: Example of One Public Appearance ", Igor Ilic (University of Strasbourg) analyzes the functions and features of various forms of discourse representation. Specifically, in a case study of a transcript of an 80-minute political speech, Ilic analyzes several examples of direct and indirect speech, arguing that discourse representation not only serves as an indicator of what another speaker had stated, but also has other functions in discourse, such as persuading or indicating the speaker's credibility. Next, in a paper titled "The Importance of the Headline and Lead for the Interpretation of Media Articles", Maja Brkljac (University of Belgrade) examines the role of headlines and leads in the interpretation of articles in popular Serbian web portals, as well as analyzes linguistic features and functions of such headlines and leads. Specifically, based on the analysis of articles about three events— namely, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Serb graffiti in Zagreb, and protests against the new Montenegrin Law on Religious Freedom—Brkljac identifies the specific characteristics of tabloid and non-tabloid online media as compared to traditional print media. The next paper, "Overcoming the 'Bad Data' Problem: Examples of Spoken Language in Italian Epistolary Discourse" by Ana Lalic (University of Sarajevo), deals with the "bad data" problem in historical pragmatics. This problem concerns the selection of an adequate corpus for diachronic research on spoken language. In a case study of one letter from Lettere di Levante, an Italian epistolary corpus from the 15th century, Lalic demonstrates the possibilities and reviews the limitations of using this type of corpus for diachronic analysis, with a particular focus on the features of spoken language revealed by this corpus. Furthermore, in "The Use of Diminutives in Everyday Communication", Milena Oparnica and Natalija Panic Cerovski (University of Belgrade) study the morphological and pragmatic features of diminutives in spoken language. In their analysis of a custom-made spoken language corpus containing transcripts of everyday communication among students and transcripts of TV talk shows on politics, Oparnica and Panic Cerovski investigate the formation process of diminutives, explore their pragmatic functions within the discourse, and analyze potential differences in the use of diminutives in the two types of discourse covered by the corpora. In the next paper, "(Some Simple) Means for Extraction of Orthographically Unmarked
Fictional Dialogue", Milica Dinic Marinkovic (University of Belgrade) uses the corpus of Sally Rooney's novel "Normal People" in English (original) and Serbian (translation) to explore the possibility of extracting unmarked fictional dialogue from unannotated corpora by simple regex query. Finally, in the concluding paper in the second block of the book, "Non-Omission of Deictic Personal Pronouns", Vesna Polovina (University of Belgrade) investigates the use (omission and non-omission) of 1st and 2nd personal pronouns in the Serbian language. Starting from the observation that, in Serbian, these deictic pronouns are frequently used even when they can be easily omitted, Polovina seeks to identify the discourse/pragmatic factors that might impact the choice between using or omitting these deictic personal pronouns.
The third and concluding thematic block of the BeLiDa2021 collection includes three papers concerned with different aspects of the relationship between language and culture. In the first paper, "Uniformitarianism and 'Yes' and 'No' in Indo-European Languages", Yanuchi Toyota (Osaka City University) demonstrates how the 'yes'-'no' words can provide us with a rich historical insight into how people communicated in the past, even beyond recorded history. In the analysis of the evolution of the 'yes'-'no' words, Toyota sheds light on various issues pertaining to the historical changes in the Indo-European languages in Europe, with a particular focus on the Celtic languages. In the next paper, "Xiao — The Cultural Linguistics Perspective", Ana M. Jovanovic (University of Belgrade) analyzes the concept of xiao ("filial piety"), one of the most salient concepts governing interpersonal and family relations in China throughout its several millennia-long history. Along with a review of previous research on the origins of this concept, its philosophical interpretation, and cultural significance, Jovanovic also evaluates the productivity of the word xiao, as well as its antonyms and synonyms referring to closely related concepts. Finally, in the concluding contribution, titled "Some Illyrian Ethnonyms and Their Supposed Albanian Cognates: Taulantii, Delmatae, and Dardani", Danilo Savic (Institute for Balkan Studies SASA) explores the relationship between the names of three Palaeo-Balkan tribes and their previously proposed cognates in Albanian: Taulantii to Alb. dallendyshe "swallow", Delmatae to Alb. delme "sheep", and Dardani to Alb. dardhe "pear".
Taken together, all contributions to this extensive and thematically rich and versatile collection embody the fruitful cooperation of the Belgrade Department of General Linguistics with numerous domestic and international institutions and illustrate its development within the context of the latest
trends in contemporary linguistics. Bringing together contributions from a wide variety of fields—including but not limited to Grammar, Pragmatics, (Critical) Discourse Analysis, and Cultural Linguistics—this book illustrates a broad scope of up-to-date research methods, sources, and tools used to study various aspects of South Slavic, Germanic, Romance, and other languages.
