Oceni / Reviews 
,Ypmchtypologie und UniverLsalienforschungr.schung (Language Typology a n d  
Universa1.s): Slovenian ,from a Typological Perspective, Volume 56, Issue 
3; ed. by Janez OreSnik and Donald F. Reindl, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 
2003. 171 pp. 
This issue of STUF is a collection of typological studies on the Slovenian 
language which contrast Slovenian either with other Slavic languages or with 
languages in general, mostly English, French, German and Italian. The volume aims 
to achieve at least two goals. First, it intends to shed light on the issues in Slovenian 
grammar for which this language is particularly interesting for general linguistic 
theory, such as clitic placement, verbal aspect, dual number, word order, and word 
prosody, to name just a few. To achieve this goal, the articles, both theory and 
data-oriented, list and deal with Slovenian data pertaining to the grammatical 
phenomena in question, at the same time tying them into linguistic theory accord- 
ing to the theoretical frameworks adopted by individual authors. Second, as most of 
theoretical work on these issues is only found in the Slovenian language and is 
therefore less accessible or inaccessible to linguists who would wish to include this 
language in their studies, the volume aims to present the issues to a wider, 
non-Slovenian-reading audience. Written in English, this volume provides an invalu- 
able source of knowledge and information about Slovenian for such research, at the 
same time helping to promote the knowledge of Slovenian in the international arena 
of theoretical linguistic research. 
The collection consists of a general introduction on the Slovenian language and 
nine articles on different issues in the grammar of Slovenian from a typological 
perspective. In this review I shall first summarize and comment on different parts 
(the Introduction and the articles) and then offer a general review of the whole. 
"Introduction" (Janez Oreinik, Ljubljana, and Donald F. Reindl, Blooming- 
ton, Indiana; 153-164) 
The Introduction begins with some basic geo-political facts about Slovenia, the 
country in which Slovenian or Slovene is the national language.' The first part of 
the Introduction that follows is a short overview of the study of Slovenian (published 
either in Slovenian or other languages) from the first grammatical literature about 
Slovenian in the late 16th century to the present day. The summary includes only 
the most important general works, such as grammars and dictionaries. The editors 
stress two important points with respect to the literature on Slovenian. Firstly, most 
of the literature on all aspects of its grammar is in Slovenian-for a rich biblio- 
graphical data the reader is referred to the reference sections of ToporiSiC (2000). 
And secondly, it is pointed out that despite the extensive literature on Slovenian, 
there is a lack of modern descriptive monographs-either in Slovenian or in some 
other language-on its basic syntactic phenomena. 
'English dictionaries and encyclopaedias generally list Slovene and Slovenian both as possible 
options. In this review, I use the variant chosen by the authors in quotations (of the titles or the 
text) and Slovenian, my personal choice, elsewhere. 
170 Slovenski jezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 5 (2005) 
The second part of the Introduction brings a few brief notes on special fea- 
tures of Slovenian. These are: 1. Sounds and phonemes (Slovenian has a large num- 
ber of allophones of /v/; the tonemes); 2. Gender (in some dialects female persons 
refer to themselves and are referred to by others as masculine or neuter despite the 
existence and the full use of the feminine gender in Slovenian); 3. Possession (in 
Slovenian, a distinction can be made between alienable and inalienable possessions); 
4. The passive (there are two passive variants in Slovenian, copular BE + n-parti- 
ciple or the SE-passive; the latter option has two variants with the patient either tak- 
ing the nominative or the accusative case); 5. The clitic cluster (Slovenian has a cli- 
tic cluster in the so-called Wackernagel position, the order of clitics within the clus- 
ter being rather rigorous and difficult to explain); 6. Word order (Slovenian appears 
to be an SVO language, though functional sentence perspective properties allow for 
a relatively free order of sentence elements). 
The third part of the Introduction summarizes the contributions to the volume, 
justifying the selections. The contributors were chosen because in the editors' o- 
pinions they provide a most versatile approach to Slovenian linguistic phenomena. 
They work at institutions in the following countries: Slovenia, Germany, Macedonia, 
Poland and the United States. 
The last part of the Introduction provides a list of references of works on Slov- 
enian that are published in languages other than Slovenian, though the first section 
(General and grammars) naturally includes a few entries that are written in Sloven- 
ian (such as dictionaries and grammars). The works are listed according to six cate- 
gories: General and grammars, Phonetics and phonology, The word as lexeme, 
Word- formation, Morphology and Syntax. This part of the Introduction is important 
for several reasons. It provides valuable information about what has been published 
on Slovenian in languages other than Slovenian. Furthermore, the references are 
important for Slovenian linguists writing in languages other than Slovenian, since 
they help such authors become acquainted with the relevant terminology used in 
these languages. Finally, to my knowledge, this list is the only existing list of works 
on Slovenian published in languages other than Slovenian and as such of great im- 
portance also for the future listings of such works-it could, for example, serve as a 
basis of a database that could be available on the Internet and regularly updated. It 
is important to note that the list is not exhaustive-as stated in the volume, there is 
work on dialectology, historical grammar and history of the language that is not in- 
cluded. It also goes without saying that there is also a great amount of equally im- 
portant work on Slovenian written in Slovenian that is not included simply because 
this volume focuses on studies published in languages other than Slovenian. 
"The dual in Slovenian" (Aleksandra Derganc, Ljubljana; 165-181) 
The article describes the category of the dual in Slovenian, shedding light on 
several different aspects: the use of the dual in paired nouns, the use of the dual in 
the standard and colloquial language, the dual and the notion of markedness, the 
pragmatic value of the dual, the dual from the historical perspective, and the dual 
in child language. The first two aspects appear as the core issues discussed in the 
article, while the rest are presented in the form of short comments or potential 
areas for further research. As to the use of the dual in paired nouns (e.g., Roke me 
bolijo 'My hands-PL hurt', *Roki me bolita 'My hands-DU hurt'), Derganc argues 
T. Marvin, Review of Slovenian from a Typological Perspective 171 
against Corbett's (2000) analysis, in which he claims that the use of the plural with 
paired nouns shows that the dual in Slovenian is optional. Derganc stresses that 
paired nouns represent a special category in terms of their meaning-they should be 
considered a kind of pluralia tantum, denoting a body part or a garment that is in- 
cidentally composed of two parts. In this meaning, the speaker has to use these 
nouns in their plural forms; the dual in such cases would be considered ungram- 
matical and comical. When the speaker uses these nouns as regular countable 
nouns, he or she has a choice of all three numbers. Derganc also focuses on the use 
of the dual in the standard and colloquial language. She observes that in dialects 
and the colloquial language of major towns, the dual is replaced by the plural in 
certain forms, and that in the colloquial language of Ljubljana, the dual is pre- 
served in the sentences in which the subject is either a personal pronoun, a noun of 
masculine gender, or a coordinate phrase, i.e., in all examples that were classified as 
most common already by TesnEre (1925a, 192513). 
"Verbal aspect in Slovene" (Stephen M. Dickey, Lawrence, Kansas; 
182-207) 
The article describes the category of verbal aspect in Slovenian by providing a 
description of aspectual morphology and by analyzing the main functions of aspect 
in Slovenian, comparing them with other Slavic languages and stressing those that 
are most uniquely characteristic of Slovenian. According to Dickey, the prototypical 
function of the Slovenian imperfective is the processual meaning (Janez je sestavljal 
dopis 'Janez was writing a letter'), while the two other functions of the imperfective 
are habituality (unlimited repetition of a single situation type) and a general-factual 
function (the imperfective used to confirm the occurrence of a situation without 
reference to the specific context in which it took place). Comparing Slovenian to 
Russian, Dickey establishes that in Slovenian, the imperfective is not as widespread 
in the general-factual function as it is in Russian (Enkrat je dobill*dobival ukor 
zaradi zamude 'He has already once received a reprimand for coming late'). The 
main functions of the perfective aspect in Slovenian discussed by Dickey are the 
ones that are most characteristic of Slovenian in contrast to other Slavic languages. 
These are: habituality, in which Slovenian is like Czech, Sorbian and Slovak, but 
very different from Croatian; the historical present, which is allowed with habituals 
more than in many Slavic languages, especially Croatian; running instructions, 
present intention, potential function, and directional perfectives, the last four being 
the most distinctive characteristics of the Slovenian aspectual system when compared 
to other Slavic languages. 
"Clitic placement and clitic climbing in Slovenian" (Marija Golden, Ljub- 
ljana; 208-233) 
Golden examines the two most influential proposals on clitic placement and 
clitic climbing within the framework of Chomskian generative grammar against 
Slovenian data. The first proposal is by BogkoviC (2001), the central claim of which 
is that in languages with clitics in the second position (2P languages) clitics do not 
have to cluster together under the same head position in syntax and that the 2P ef- 
fect is the result of a phonological requirement. By comparing Serbo-Croatian data 
from BogkoviC (2001) and StjepanoviC (1998) to Slovenian data, Golden argues that 
172 Slovenski iezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 5 (2005) 
the typological description of 2P cliticization in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian is 
not reducible only to the prosodic parameter, as claimed by BoSkoviC, but that in 
addition to the prosodic parameter, syntactic cluster formation may be open to 
parameterization among 2P clitic languages as well. The second proposal is 
Cinque's (2002) analysis of raising and control verbs that allow clitic climbing into 
the matrix clause from non-finite complements embedded under a modal or 
aspectual predicate or a verb of movement, e.g., Janez se ji ga je navelital hva- 
Ziti, where the clitics ji and ga (optionally) move from their basic position in 
Janez se je navelital hvaliti ji ga. In this part, Golden compares Slovenian data 
against Italian data, showing that in Slovenian, clitic climbing occurs in a wider 
range of contexts than in Romance languages. In addition, this part serves to 
show that BoSkoviC's analysis cannot be correct, since it cannot account for the 
phenomenon of clitic climbing. 
"Word prosody in Slovene from a typological perspective" (Marc L. 
Greenberg, Lawrence, Kansas; 234-251) 
The article describes the word-prosodic phenomena found in Slovenian dialects 
in comparison to the standardized system and typologically similar systems found in 
Croatian dialects (mostly the Kajkavian and the Cakavian dialects). Standard Slov- 
enian recognizes two types of accentuation: a pitch accent system and a system 
without pitch distinctions. As to the loss of pitch, Greenberg points out three rele- 
vant generalizations: first, very few words are distinguished only by pitch distinc- 
tions; second, in many dialects pitch contrasts have been replaced by quantity andlor 
quality distinctions; third, the role of language contact. An important part of the 
article is the discussion of key innovations that shaped the prosodic system of Slov- 
enian dialects, such as the elimination of vowel quantity, stress advancement, retrac- 
tion, the loss of pitch and the re-emergence of pitch. The relationship between quan- 
tity and quality is presented as one that crucially shaped Slovenian dialects-Sloven- 
ian dialects minimized or eliminated the role of quantity and were furthermore sub- 
ject to rephonologization of quantitative oppositions as vowel-quality oppositions. 
"Slovene from a typological perspective: inherent and contact-induced 
developments, with particular attention to Celtic" (Jadranka Gvozdanovid, 
Mannheim; 252-265) 
GvozdanoviC discusses Slovenian from a typological perspective as patterning 
with West Slavic languages in terms of the following parameters: archaic nominal 
morphology, simplification of the past tenses compensated for by the (western-type) 
verbal aspect, enclitic placement and quantity-sensitive right-edge stress system. Gvo- 
zdanoviC's analysis shows that in morhposyntactic areas the language has developed 
consistently in its hierarchies and markedness-conditioned elimination of opposition. 
However, such consistency is not found in terms of its prosodic system. Slovenian 
underwent a typological restructuring during the progressive accent shift, taking 
place sometime during the 9th and loth century AD, which determined its contempo- 
rary idiosyncratic shape. This shift is neither shared with other Slavic languages nor 
with Romance and Germanic languages. GvozdanoviC's major claim is that the typo- 
logical restructuring of Slovenian prosody in the 9th century was a contact-induced 
one and due to Celtic influence. 
T. Marvin, Review of Slovenian from a Typological Perspective 173 
"Verb movement in Slovenian: a comparative perspective" (Gagper Ilc and 
Milena Milojevid Sheppard, Ljubljana; 266-286) 
Ilc and MilojeviC Sheppard discuss verb movement in Slovenian within the 
framework of Chomskian generative grammar, arguing that Slovenian exhibits 
V(erb)-to-I(nf1ection) movement different from V-to-I movement found in 
French-type languages (with obligatory V-to-I movement) and English-type lan- 
guages (with no V-to-I movement). The article introduces the three standard diag- 
nostics for V-to-I movement based on the linear order of sentence constituents: finite 
verb - IP, finite verb - sentential negator, and finite verb - floating quantifier. The 
authors then apply these tests to Slovenian. First, they show that the relative position 
of the sentential negator and the finite verb in Slovenian sentences cannot serve as a 
diagnostic for V-to-I movement in Slovenian. The relative position of floating quant- 
ifiers and adverbs, on the other hand, provides evidence that the verb in Slovenian 
indeed moves, though the landing position is not I, but a lower position Asp (As- 
pect). However, V(erb)-to-Asp(ect) movement in Slovenian is optional, which is evi- 
dent from the examples such as (Otroci vsi/pogosto jedo Cbkolado 'Children alllof- 
ten eat chocolate' and Otroci jedo vsi/pogosto Eokolado 'Children eat allloften 
chocolate'). This characteristic makes Slovenian interesting from a typological point 
of view, since it opens a new typological category, and from the theoretical perspec- 
tive, since the properties of verb movement require an adaptation of the overall the- 
ory. 
"Markedness as a criterion for establishing German influence in Slovene 
compound number constituency" (Donald F. Reindl, Bloomington, Indiana; 
287-299) 
Reindl discusses the "inverse" constituent ordering in Slovenian compound 
numbers, e.g., enaindvajset one and twenty. Such OT (Ones > Tens) ordering is an 
aspect of word-formation that distinguishes Slovenian from other South Slavic lan- 
guages. The OT ordering in Slovenian is established as a borrowing from German 
rather than a coincidental parallel development by a markedness criterion. Reindl 
argues that typological frequency, internal consistency and neurological evidence 
constitute evidence for markedness of OT ordering. First, OT languages are a 
distinct minority. Second, OT inversion is marked because it violates the predomi- 
nant pattern of descending quantity in higher numerals (i.e. thousands > hundreds 
> ones < tens). Finally, there may be neurological evidence that OT ordering is 
marked because it requires more cognitive processing than TO ordering. Reindl 
works under the following hypothesis: if a language begins with an unmarked 
feature and adopts a marked feature that is analogous to the same in a contact lan- 
guage, transfer has likely taken place. The fact that Slovenian, which originally 
displayed the unmarked TO order, developed a marked OT ordering, thus provides 
strong evidence for transfer of this feature from German to Slovenian. 
"Slovene phonetics in the Slavic context" (Irena Sawicka, Toruri; 300-305) 
Sawicka deals with Slovenian phonetics in the Slavic context, placing it in the 
transitional area between the two contrastive phonetic types that exist in the Slavic 
group-the North-East type and the South-West type. According to Sawicka, the 
following characteristics of the South-West phonetic type are found in Slovenian: 
174 Slovenski jezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 5 (2005) 
one-peak syllable pattern, lack of rich correlation of soft consonants, lack of assimi- 
lative palatalization, relatively low frequency of consonants, lack of geminates, pre- 
sence of long vocalic phonemes and polytony. In some respects, however, Slovenian 
is closer to the North-East type: the presence of two mid-level vocalic phonemes, re- 
duction of unstressed vowels, sandhi phenomena and a low frequency of vocalic 
clusters. 
"Means for grammatical accommodation of finite clauses: Slovenian be- 
tween South and West Slavic" (Zuzanna Topoliliska, Skopje; 306-322) 
Topolinska discusses the means of formal accommodation of Slovenian finite 
clauses to their grammatical context, where the main topics of her research are: fin- 
ite clauses as part of a noun phrase (relative clauses), finite clauses as an argument 
expression and discourse-dependent finite clauses in dialogue. First, the author pre- 
sents the typological classification of relative clauses in Slavic languages and then 
the pattern that appears in Slovenian. Slovenian utilizes either the relativum gener- 
ale KI or an inflected adjectival relativizer KATERI, however, the pattern of con- 
texts in which the two appear is unique in the Slavic languages. In the second part, 
Topolinska discusses finite clauses as an argument expression, focusing on DA, the 
universal introducer of finite clauses encoding factive and non-factive arguments, 
and NAJ and BI, two modal particles. The status of NAJ is the most striking feature 
of the Slovenian system of complement clauses, since in other Slavic languages, par- 
ticles of this type are functionally more restricted and usually do not appear in 
complement clauses. 
Final remarks 
As was mentioned above, the volume is an extremely valuable contribution in 
terms of its content and references and in terms of spreading the knowledge of 
Slovenian. Still, there remain some challenges to be met and which are mostly in- 
herent in the form that the volume takes-a collection of articles couched in various 
theoretical approaches that compare Slovenian to different languages. 
First, each article presents us with a different typological comparison-some 
compare Slovenian to Slavic languages, others to languages such as French, English, 
Italian. In addition, within a single article, Slovenian is compared to several lan- 
guages, the comparisons cutting across different levels of one phenomenon. As an 
illustration, suppose that in an article, the phenomenon discussed is X and that Slo- 
venian is compared to the language A in terms of one aspect of X, XI, and to the 
language B in terms of another aspect of X, Xz. Even if the mentioned comparisons 
are carefully chosen and justified, the reader may still be left wondering about the 
relationship between Slovenian and the language B with respect to X1 and about the 
relationship between Slovenian and the language A with respect to Xz when these 
relationships are not explicitly stated in the article. In short, the fact that this vol- 
ume deals with a subset of Slovenian grammatical phenomena and several different 
comparisons occasionally makes it difficult for the reader to place Slovenian as an 
'unfragmented whole' within the group of the languages it is compared to. 
Second, different authors use different theoretical frameworks to express their 
ideas, some choosing a more neutral descriptive approach, others couching their 
work in a very specific linguistic theory, e.g. Chomskian generative grammar. This 
T. Marvin. Review of Slovenian from a Tvooloaical Pers~ective 175 
can of course be seen as an advantage-the volume is a true representation of what 
goes on in contemporary linguistics. On the other hand, a variety of different ap- 
proaches makes the volume appear less coherent than it would perhaps appear oth- 
erwise. 
Nevertheless, these are just minor considerations. All in all, this volume is a 
very good and interesting collection of papers, which can definitely be seen as a 
basis for a more comprehensive work of this kind. 
References 
BoSkoviC, ieljko (2001): On the Nature of the Syntax-Phonology Interface: Cliticiza- 
tion and Related Phenomena. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. 
Cinque, Guglielmo (2002): "Restructuring" and Functional Structure. Unpublished 
manuscript, University of Venice. 
Corbett, Greville G. (2000): Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
StjepanoviC, Sandra (1998): On the Placement of Serbo-Croatian Clitics: Evidence 
from VP-Ellipsis, in: Linguistic Inquiry 29, 527-537. 
Tesniere, Lucien (1925a): Les formes du duel en slov2ne. Paris: Champion. 
Tesniere, Lucien (1925b): Atlas linguistique pour servir a l'itude du duel en slov2ne. 
Paris: Champion. 
Prispelo decembra 2004 
Received December 2004 
Tatjana Marvin 
University of Ljubljana