Roland Marti (Saarbrücken)

(Un)articulated definiteness. Nominal determination in Sorbian:Moving from an articleless language to a language with articles?*

Abstract

Slavonic languages in general do not use articles to indicate (in)definiteness. The development of anarticle in some of them is the result of language contact. In the case of Sorbian the influence of Germanled to the use of the demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ and the numeral ‘one’ to indicate definiteness andindefiniteness, respectively. Originally the German system was copied almost without changes, buteventually specific rules developed, subject to phonotactic constraints and restricting the use of thearticle mainly to intratextual and pragmatic definiteness. The use of the article depended on the kind oftext and language (spoken language, Bible translation and original texts, translations from German).Grammatical purism managed to eliminate the use of the article in today’s written variants as well as inmost official uses of spoken Sorbian almost completely. In colloquial language and in the dialects, how-ever, the article is very much alive but its use differs considerably from German. There are also dif-ferences between Upper and Lower Sorbian, the latter being closer to German usage.

Keywords: Sorbian, typology, definiteness, language contact, purism

1. General remarks

Determination makes a general, rather “abstract” statement or concept more concreteby adding a reference to intra- or extra-linguistic entities.1 Determination occurs in variousareas of a language, most notably in the nominal domain. There are several ways ofindicating nominal determination. It may exist semantically, as it were, when reference is made to unique objects (cases such as the sun, on the one hand, or proper nouns, on the other hand). In such cases indicating determination by special markers is redundant.

STUF, Akademie Verlag, 65 (2012) 3, 296–316

* I am indebted to the Sorbisches Institut e.V./Serbski institut z.t. for allowing me to use manuscripts, toPeter Riemer for assistance in interpreting a difficult text, to Bert Hornback for linguistic adviceand to the other authors of this volume as well as to an anonymous reviewer for critical remarks.

1 Unfortunately, there exists no generally accepted terminology for determination and there is no agreement on the theoretical background (cf., e.g., Hawkins 1978 and Lyons 1999 or the contribu-tions in van der Auwera 1980 and Müller & Klinge 2008). For the purposes of this article (exceptfor quotations) the following terminology will be used: “nominal determination” stands for the phenomenon as a whole (on determination as a more general concept, affecting the verbal domain aswell, cf. n. 10 below). Its most prominent and typical representatives are referred to as definitenessand indefiniteness. On the basis of German and taking into consideration Sorbian correspondences I shall distinguish three different forms of the main means to express determination: i) the definite article (d-article in German, i.e. der/die/das, and t-form in Sorbian, i.e. tón/ta/te[to] in Upper Sorbianand ten/ta/to in Lower Sorbian [or corresponding dialect forms]), ii) the indefinite article (e-article in German, i.e. ein/eine/ein, j-form in Sorbian, i.e. jedyn/je[d]na/je[d]ne in Upper Sorbian and jaden/ja[d]na/ja[d]no in Lower Sorbian), and iii) the Ø article. Referring to Sorbian in general I shall notspeak of t- or j-articles but rather of t- or j-forms since the status of these forms is still debated.

In lexical determination by morphemes that, in addition to their lexical meaning, carry information on determination (e.g. demonstrative or indefinite pronouns), additionalmarking is redundant. Determination may also be expressed syntactically albeit indirectlyby using information structure, since theme as the known part of a phrase is generally moredetermined than rheme as the new information. If a language marks theme (with a ten-dency of being more determined) and rheme (usually less determined) by the order ofelements in the phrase this syntactic property may provide secondary information ondetermination (cf. Berthoud 1992). In the cases mentioned so far determination is notgrammaticalised in the sense that it is expressed by obligatory (grammatical) morphemes.Considering the importance of determination in communication it is not surprising, how-ever, that in many languages there are grammatical means to express determination. Thepreferred means of doing this is the article, at least in Indo-European languages. Most ana-lyses of nominal determination thus concentrate on the article.2

In Indo-European languages nominal determination is usually expressed using pro-nominal morphemes (cf. Nocentini 1996). In the case of definiteness it is especially thedemonstrative pronoun that is used. The change from demonstrative pronoun to definitearticle takes place in a continuum; i.e. there may be intermediate stages both in a dia-chronic and a synchronic perspective. This transpires, e.g., in Germanic languages wherethe article can have the function of a demonstrative pronoun (in German, e.g., the dif-ference is marked by the presence or absence of stress). The Macedonian standard lan-guage is an even better example of the continuum since it has a triple post-positive articleexpressing, in addition to determination, conceptual deictic regions as well: t-article forneutrality, e.g. covek-ot/reka-ta/magare-to [the man/river/donkey], v-article for proximity(hic-deixis), e.g. covek-ov/reka-va/magare-vo [the man/river/donkey here] and n-article for distance (ille-deixis), e.g. covek-on/reka-na/magare-no [the man/river/donkey there], cf. Koneski 1957, Topolinjska 2006, Sonnenhauser 2010.3 In the case of indefiniteness asimilar situation obtains for the indefinite article and its relation to the indefinite pronounand the numeral “one”.4

Nominal determination is complicated by the fact that it may express quite differentforms of determination that are compressed into the dichotomy definite/indefinite. Thecomplex structure of nominal determination transpires, e.g., in Germanic languages whereregionally there exists more than one definite article (cf. for North Frisian Ebert 1970, forGerman dialects Hartmann 1982, for a critical appraisal Himmelmann 1997: 54–56). Thesedifferent articles express various forms of determination. This, too, supports the idea of acontinuum of determination rather than of a clear-cut dichotomy.

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2 The present contribution follows this tradition since other means of marking determination in Sorbian (especially word or constituent order) have not yet been analysed properly. A complex description of determination would be especially helpful in the case of Sorbian since here theword/constituent order has also been heavily influenced by German. As far as I can see only G. Schaarschmidt analysed the use of articles in a larger context (word order), cf. Schaarschmidt(1988) and, referring to his findings, Breu & Scholze (2006), esp. 45 and 84–86.

3 In spite of the deictic component in the v- and n-forms all three are generally referred to as articlessince the forms with additional deictic information behave otherwise exactly like the t-form lackingsuch information.

4 Definiteness has been researched more thoroughly than its lesser brother indefiniteness, both in general terms and with specific reference to articles. This is justified, at least partly, by the fact thatthe definite article is more widespread than its indefinite counterpart. Cf. specifically on indefinitenessDanon-Boileau & Morel (1994).

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Nominal determination may be classified variously. For the present purpose text inter-nal, grammatical, pragmatic, and semantic definiteness will be distinguished.5

Text internal definiteness is established by anaphoric or cataphoric relationships, theformer existing in a direct and an indirect variety:

• anaphoric direct definiteness: “Ein Mann … der Mann [a man … the man …]”; the noun (“der Mann”) is definite because it refers back to a noun (“ein Mann”) that hasbeen introduced in the preceding text;

• anaphoric indirect definiteness: “Zwei Kinder … der Junge … das Mädchen … [twochildren … the boy … the girl …]”; the nouns (“der Junge … das Mädchen”) are definite because they refer to a precedingnoun (“zwei Kinder”) that implicitly contains them;

• cataphoric definiteness: “die Frau, die … [the woman which …]”, “das Schwein im Stall[the pig in the sty]”;6

the noun (“Frau”) is made definite by additional information following it (a relativephrase, an attribute).

Pragmatic definiteness exists when the object referred to is assumed by the speaker to bedefinite in the given context:

“Gib mir die Flasche! [Give me the bottle!]” (There is only one bottle.)

Grammatical or automatic definiteness means that definiteness is assumed by default forcertain grammatical forms/categories or for certain word classes. This may differ from lan-guage to language and makes additional marking by articles redundant: either articles areomitted obligatorily or they must be used. Examples for German are:

• possessive and demonstrative pronouns: “(*das) dieses Haus [(*the) this house]”,“(*das) mein Haus [(*the) my house]”;7

• superlative: “das größte Haus (*Ø größtes Haus) [the largest house (*Ø largesthouse)]”.

Semantic definiteness holds when the particular meaning of a given word entails that it isdetermined. This kind of definiteness is typical for:

• generic statements: “Es irrt der Mensch, solang er strebt [Man errs as long as he willstrive]”;

• proper nouns: “(*Der) Peter … [(*the) Peter …]”;• unica: “Die Sonne … [the sun …]”.8

Roland Marti, (Un)articulated definiteness

5 In general I follow the classification proposed by Breu (2004). The only difference is the extent ofpragmatic determination. Breu subsumes text internal and grammatical determination under prag-matic determination whereas I consider each of them as a separate entity.

6 The different kinds of determination are illustrated by examples of the use of the d-article in Germansince Sorbian is heavily influenced by German.

7 The possessive pronoun in Italian is not determined per se and may thus be used with a definite, in-definite or Ø article. This is also the case in Sorbian, cf. Breu (2004: 15) for the contemporary UpperSorbian colloquial language (facultative use), Pful (1866: 742) (sub 3.) for the older standard language (more or less mandatory use), and Schwela (1906: 99) for Lower Sorbian. For other Slavonic languages cf. Miseska Tomic (1974). Sometimes proper names (see below) are also classifiedin this group, cf. Greenberg (1990 [1978]: 255).

8 Unica may be subdivided into absolute and situational unica. The latter are akin to pragmatic defi-niteness.

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In these cases, marking definiteness is also redundant.9 Outside of the categories justmentioned there are some special cases such as nominalised adjectives, emphasis and in-alienable possession; they will not be treated in a systematic fashion.

Another aspect of nominal determination that must be taken into consideration is thefact that constituents may have different degrees of affinity to determination depending ontheir function (cf. the statement above that the theme of a sentence tends to be more deter-mined than the rheme). Since the theme is frequently the subject of a sentence the lattertends to be definite by default so that definiteness need not specially be marked here, thisin contradistinction to the object. On the level of semantic case this corresponds to a closerdefiniteness affinity of the agentive as compared to the patient (cf. Berger 1999: 16–17who refers to Givón 1984: 421).

Sorbian, i.e. Upper and Lower Sorbian, is of particular interest as far as grammaticaliseddetermination expressed by the article is concerned because it has always (or at least as far back as it is documented) been in a contact situation with German. It must be assumedthat Sorbian, being part of the Slavonic linguistic continuum, did not express deter-mination by using an article before coming into contact with German whereas German as a Germanic language did (at least since the time contact between German and Sorbian wasestablished).10

There are, however, articles or “articloid” phenomena in Slavonic languages. The articleis fully grammaticalised in the Eastern part of the South Slavonic continuum, i.e. in Bulgar-ian and Macedonian on the standard language level, taking the form of the definite post-positive article; cf. also similar phenomena in North Russian dialects (Wissemann 1939,Koduchov 1953) and in Old Serbian (Reichenkron 1966).11 More or less developed

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9 Proper nouns may therefore either demand a definiteness marker or disallow it, depending on thelanguage: whereas the German standard language forbids the use of an article with anthroponymsGerman dialects often demand it. The use in colloquial speech is somewhere in the middle betweenthose two extremes. Cf. in more detail and for several European languages Glaser (2008: 92–98).

10 Slavonic and Germanic languages seem to be quite different with regard to determination. WhereasSlavonic languages emphasise verbal determination and neglect the nominal counterpart in the grammatical system, it is just the opposite in the case of Germanic languages and thus also of German(cf. Hodler 1954 and, on the interplay between nominal and verbal determination in the history ofGermanic languages, Leiss 2000 and Leiss 2007). In Slavonic languages the determination of the verbal action is expressed grammatically by the perfective aspect. As a consequence of this nominaldetermination may be indicated indirectly through aspect in some Slavonic languages (cf. for RussianBirkenmaier 1977); a similar relationship may be observed with regard to tense (cf. Borodic 1961,Kabakciev 1984) in Bulgarian. Bulgarian is particularly interesting since it also has nominal deter-mination (cf. on the interrelationship Radanova-Kuseva 1996). In the nominal domain determina-tion could originally be expressed in Slavonic in noun phrases containing an adjective (cf. a similar situation in Germanic languages). This led to the development of a simple (indefinite) and compound(definite) declension paradigm of the adjective. This paradigm was still fully operational in OldChurch Slavonic (cf. Kurz 1937/38, Vaillant 1942, Tolstoj 1957 and Borodic 1963 as well as the discussion in the context of the IV. International Congress of Slavists in Moscow, cf. Sbornik 1958:86–95). The two paradigms are, however, irrelevant for West Slavonic and especially for Sorbian.Other Slavonic languages still have some remnants of the distinction.

11 There is still some discussion regarding the existence of an indefinite article in Bulgarian and Macedonian. The older grammatical tradition denies this but today at least an indefinite article instatu nascendi is assumed; cf. for Bulgarian Nicolova (2008: 78–114) (this is, as far as I can see, thefirst example of a grammar of Bulgarian that assumes a grammaticalised indefinite article; an earlierindication, however, can already be found in De la Grassière 1896: 315), for Macedonian Weiss(1996).

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vestiges of an article may be observed in West Slavonic languages (especially in Czech andin Polish) and in Slovenian (cf. Trovesi 2004). In the case of Bulgarian and Macedonian thereason for the development of an article is seen in language contact between the membersof the Balkan sprachbund, in the case of the West Slavonic languages and of Slovenian it isthe contact with German. Even more than Czech, Polish and Slovenian, Sorbian was sub-ject to German influence and it is thus hardly surprising that the development of an articlewas (and is) most advanced here.12

The question of the existence of an article system in Sorbian is further complicated bythe fact that Sorbian was subject to linguistic purism inspired by corresponding tendenciesin other Slavonic languages, especially in Czech.13 The Slavonic brand of purism markedcertain linguistic elements as Germanisms and tried to eliminate them without checkingwhether the respective languages had already developed a system independent of German.Puristic influence can be observed in Upper Sorbian from the middle of the 19th centuryonward; in Lower Sorbian purism is of a slightly later date and it was not as pervasive.Even though purism is generally directed towards the vocabulary (elimination of “wordsof foreign origin”) it is grammatical purism that is more significant since it aims not at iso-lated lexemes but at recurrent structures.14 In the area of grammatical purism the activitiesof the purists were aimed at avoiding linguistic elements that could be interpreted as “Ger-man(ic)”. This applied especially to the article. This strategy of avoidance did not onlyinfluence the purists’ own writings but all texts (sometimes by authors that had no puristleanings) that were published in their journals.15 Purism was most pronounced after 1945since in the GDR a centralised cultural policy was put into practice everywhere. (Beforethat date purism had been characteristic mainly of the intellectual elites.) As of that date itwas a tenet that the Sorbian standard languages had no article. In all areas where languagecould be controlled, i.e. above all in its written form, in schools, broadcasting and in thepublic use of language in general, linguistic elements considered to be articles wereeliminated. Exceptions were only made for dialects. Purism thus extended also to thespoken standard language. Colloquial language was hardly analysed at all so that everyday

Roland Marti, (Un)articulated definiteness

12 The parallel between the contact situation on the Balkans and in the West Slavonic area has beenpointed out most clearly by R. Lötzsch (Lötzsch 1969; 1970: cf. the subtitle “Balkanismen im öst-lichen Südslawischen – Germanismen im Westslawischen [Balkanisms in Eastern South Slavonic –Germanisms in West Slavonic]”). Sorbian and its system of nominal determination is also a primewitness for contact-induced grammatical change in Heine & Kuteva (2005).

13 On purism in general see Thomas (1991) and Jernudd & Shapiro (1989). Purism is, of course, not anexclusively Slavonic phenomenon but to my knowledge it is only in the Slavonic field that the attemptwas made to reconcile purism and descriptive positions in linguistics. This happened in the frame-work of Prague structuralism (cf. Stary 1995, Thomas 1996).

14 The concentration on the lexical aspects of purism can also be observed in linguistic research, cf. Stone (1968), Jentsch (1999) on Upper Sorbian. On grammatical purism in (Upper) Sor-bian cf. Lötzsch (1968) and (1998) as well as Sol/ cina (1997: 170–173).

15 An example of this are the only texts documenting the Slepe/Slepo/Schleife variant of Sorbian fromthe 18th/19th century, viz. the manuscripts written by Hanso Nepila. For the publication “kn. spisacel[je] Nepilowy tekst porjedzeny podal/ we woprawdzitej a cistej Slepjanskej nareci [the author sub-mitted Nepila’s text in corrected form in the true and pure Slepe dialect]” (note of the editor ArnostMuka in Handrik-Slepjanski (1896: 75). These “corrections” included inter alia the use of t-forms inarticle function (cf. Brijnen 2004: 31–32). Handrik-Slepjanski (1896) contains the parallel text ofthe original and the purified variant whereas Handrik-Slepjanski (1898–1900) has only the purifiedversion.

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linguistic reality remained largely outside the scope of interest of linguists.16 It was notuntil the political changes of 1989 and the end of state control over the public and thepublished word that a certain tolerance could be noted; the article (or at least “articloid”phenomena) can be found in recent publications (especially in Lower Sorbian, cf. theweekly newspaper Nowy Casnik).

The situation is equally unsatisfactory for earlier periods, but for different reasons. Hereone must rely on written texts, up to the 19th century largely (in the case of Lower Sorbianalmost exclusively) translated from German; in many cases the translations were made bynon-native speakers of Sorbian. Since the Bible with its traditional tendency to encourageone-to-one translations dominated in print this might have enhanced the influence ofGerman even more. On the other hand, the translators of biblical texts into Sorbian some-times used other Slavonic translations of the Bible for comparison and this weakened theGerman influence. This might explain the general impression that translations of non-biblical writings of a religious nature in the framework of the Protestant church are moreinfluenced by the language of the German originals since there were hardly any trans-lations into other Slavonic languages available that a translator into Sorbian might haveturned to.

Even grammars of Upper or Lower Sorbian should be used with caution since they wereoften written on the basis of German grammars. A sure indicator of German influence isthe fact that the article is often seen as a “declension indicator”.17 This function, however,is largely superfluous in Sorbian: gender, unless determined by sex, is usually indicated bythe desinence; similarly syncretism of case and number in the desinences is less pronoun-ced than in German.18 In addition to that, grammars were usually normative and eitherassumed the existence of a “German” article system or condemned the article as an ex-pression of German influence. The idea that Sorbian could have developed an articlesystem of its own was first voiced in the 19th century (Seiler 1830, cf. infra).

Further considerations complicate the interpretation. One of the problems is the homo-nymy of t- and j-forms with the demonstrative pronoun and the numeral or the indefinitepronoun, respectively. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether the use of one ofthese forms should be interpreted as a(n) (in)definite article or rather as a demonstrativepronoun, a numeral or an indefinite pronoun. A further difficulty arises when there is no t- or j-form in a context where German would require an article. How is this to be inter-preted: as a Ø article within an existing article system in Sorbian or as the expression of thelack of such a system? Last but not least, the particular situation of Sorbian today com-plicates matters since it is characterised by intensive linguistic contact (or even “totaler

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16 It must be noted, however, that the standard grammars for Upper and Lower Sorbian hint at the existence of the definite (Fasske 1981: 568; Sewc 1968: 124; Janas 1984: 203) and the indefinite article(Sewc 1968: 138; Janas 1984: 151) for the “Umgangssprache” or “ludowa rec/rec” [popular lan-guage]. (It is possible that Fasske 1981: 603, § 1304, contains a veiled allusion to the existence of an indefinite article.) Research on spoken language (cf. Michalk & Protze 1967: 38–39; 1974: 83–88)and on dialects (e.g. Jentsch 1980: 160–163) was to some extent exempt from puristic dogma.

17 In German the article expresses gender, number, and case more clearly than the desinences of thenoun. This also explains the definition of the article as a “Geschlechtswort [gender word]”.

18 The oldest printed grammar of Upper Sorbian indicates “[d]aß die Sorabische oder Wendische Spra-che keinen Articulum præpositum habe [that the Sorbian or Wendish language does not have a preposed article]” (Matthæi 1721: 9), but tón/ta/to (with the translation “der die das Oder dieser,diese, dieses” is dealt with even before the noun is addressed (p. 10) and in the index gender is “mitden Wörtlein ton, ta, to, angedeutet [indicated by tón/ta/to]” in the case of nouns (p. 195).

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Sprachkontakt [total language contact]”, Breu 2003: 27; cf. also Scholze 2008). The livinglanguage is in a sandwich position between the dominating German language and thepuristic Sorbian standard languages. Only in a small area of Upper Lusatia Upper Sorbianis still in existence as a “normal” colloquial language.

In view of this situation it is clearly impossible to describe “determination in Sorbian” asa more or less uniform phenomenon. Instead the use of t- and j-forms in article or articloidfunction will be described separately for Upper and Lower Sorbian (distinguishing writtenand spoken variants) with special emphasis on their development. In addition to thescholarly literature on the subject the description is based on grammars and texts. Withinthe limits of this article they could not be analysed exhaustively, however. A comprehen-sive analysis of both the synchronic and the diachronic dimension of the phenomenon isnot possible yet.19

2. Upper Sorbian

Upper Sorbian began to be used as a written language in the wake of reformation andthe oldest texts are almost exclusively translations from German. The comparison of textsby different translators show both a widespread use of t- and j-forms in article function andthe conspicuous absence of such forms.20 This allows for the conclusion that the use of“articles” in written Upper Sorbian in those days was largely a result of the influence of German originals and not an indication of the existence of grammaticalised articles inUpper Sorbian. The close match of German and Upper Sorbian is best demonstrated by a text written by the “founder of the Upper Sorbian written language” (Schuster-Sewc1993: 1), Michael Frentzel:

(1) Die Gnade unsers HErrn JEsu Christi / und die Liebe GOttes / und dieTa Hnada nascheho Knesa JEsu Krysta / a ta Luboscz Boscha / a to

Gemeinschafft des Heiligen Geistes / sey mit uns allen Amen. Gmeinstwo teho Swáteho Ducha / bycz s nani [sic] wschitkimi Amen.

Roland Marti, (Un)articulated definiteness

19 Important contributions to such an analysis are the publications by W. Breu and L. Scholze on theSorbian colloquial language (“Serbska wobchadna rec (SWR)”) i.e. the Upper Sorbian colloquiallanguage of the Catholic area (Breu 2003; 2004; cf. in general Scholze 2008), the comparative ana-lysis of Czech, Slovenian and Upper Sorbian by A. Trovesi (2004, on Upper Sorbian especially118–142) and the article by T. Berger regarding the situation in the history of Upper Sorbian (Berger1999); valuable information on Sorbian grammars can be found in S. Wölke’s habilitation thesis(Wölke 2005: 180–183), and for non-standard-language Sorbian also in the analyses of linguistic interference and the descriptions of dialects mentioned above. An earlier attempt to describe the regularities of article use in these texts can be found in Schaarschmidt (1983) and (1988). On thewhole it must be said that Sorbian is conspicuously absent from most typologically oriented publica-tions (as it is from many comparative Slavonic studies, cf., e.g. Benacchio et al. 1996). A noteworthyexception is Heine & Kuteva (2005: 71–73) where the article in (Upper) Sorbian is described as acontact-induced “incipient category”.

20 Thus the manuscript fragments of Gregorius’ hymn book (Wölkowa 2007) largely lack such formswhereas the first printed Upper Sorbian book, Warichius’ German-Upper Sorbian catechism (Schuster-Sewc 2001: 15–162), employs t- and j-forms more or less according to German usage (t-forms are often absent after prepositions and in the case of substantivised adjectives); examples forthe use of j-forms by Warichius can be found in Breu (2003: 55). Both texts date to the end of the 16th century.

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Auserwehlte: wenn der hocherleuchtete Apostel Paulus in der Epis- Wuswoleni: gdysch ton wussoce roßwjtleny Japoschtol Pawol / we tei Epis-

tel an Tit. c.3. v.5. diese [Ø] merckwürdige Worte führet: tole k Titewi / we ceczem stawe / taike teho wopomnená dostoine Slowa wo-

nicht umb der Wercke willen der Gerechtigkeit / die wir gethan haben / pische: Nic [Ø] skutkow dla teje prawdoscze / kotresch my bychmy czinili /

sondern nach seiner Barmhertzigkeit machet uns GOTT seelig / durch ale po swojei smilnoscze czini nas Buh sboschnych (wosboschi nas) prsches

das Bad der Wiedergeburt / und [Ø] Erneuerung des H. Geistes.tu Kupel teho wospet naroda / a [Ø] wobnowená teho Swáteho Ducha.

[Schuster-Sewc 1993: 236–237; Frentzel 1688: 1–2]21

[The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the community of theHoly Spirit be with us all, amen. You chosen ones: since the highly enlightenedapostle Paul in his epistle to Titus chapter 3 (verse 5) writes these words worthy ofbeing remembered: not by works of righteousness which we have done but ac-cording to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing ofthe Holy Ghost.]

It seems that in the course of time a more or less stable norm evolved, regulating the useof t-forms in cases where they do not serve as demonstrative pronouns.22 In general the t-forms correspond to the German definite article. Their use is especially systematic in thecase of genitive attributes and appositions; in this case they fulfil the function of a so-called“Gelenkartikel [linking element]”.23 The reasons for the frequent use of the gelenkartikel inUpper Sorbian are primarily of a prosodic nature. The insertion of an (unaccented) t-formwas beneficial to the rhythmic structure of a language with initial accent. The gelenkartikelin Upper Sorbian often provoked an additional t-form for the head noun (cf. the exampleabove: “to [additional t-form] Gmeinstwo teho [= gelenkartikel] Swáteho Ducha”) in orderto express cataphoric definiteness. The actual linking function was probably lost very early,cf. examples with anteposition of the attribute where the t-element is retained:

(2) A laj, teho Knesa jandzel pschistupi knim … (NT 1727, 99)Und siehe, des Herrn Engel trat hin zu ihnen … (Lk 2, 9)[And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them …]

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21 The text is printed in two columns (German and Upper Sorbian) in the original; it is not clear whichof the two is the translation. An interesting case is the article in “taike teho wopomnená dostoineSlowa” that is lacking in German.

22 Cf. on this and the following Berger (1999: 18–20).23 The gelenkartikel is an article linking a noun to its immediately preceding nominal head, e.g. ‘der

(= normal article) Engel des (= gelenkartikel) Herrn’ [the angel of the Lord]. The original designation“Gelenkspartikel” was presumably coined by Gamillscheg (Wissemann 1958: 67; cf. more generallyHimmelmann 1997: 159–188). In any case, it is quite an adequate rendering of the etymological meaning of “articulus” or “arthron [joint]” i.e. the Latin and Greek terms for “article”, cf. “tu Kupelteho wospet naroda” in the text quoted above or the formulaic “Bóh ten knez [God the Lord]”, treated almost as a compound. Berger points out the fact that in contradistinction to the classical gelenkartikel (cf. North Great Russian “dusa-ta Christova”) Upper Sorbian does not have con-gruence of the article with the head but with the dependent element (Berger 1999: 20). This, how-ever, is a consequence of the fact that the t-forms are not postpositive in Sorbian.

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Another tendency well-known from the literature on the subject24 consists in avoiding t-forms in prepositional phrases between the preposition and the noun/adjective, and thiseven in cases where the preposition is not pronounced (as in the case of w [in] below). Thereason for this is probably the linguistic (surface) structure of Sorbian and it is again pro-sodic.25 The introduction of a t-form would break up the unity of preposition and noun.This unity is evident from the fact that the accent moves to the preposition in these con-structions. The dissolution of the unity was to be avoided.26

(3) a namakachu […] to dzjeczatko wzl/obi lejzo (NT 1727, 100)und fanden […] das Kind in der Krippe liegen (Lk 2, 16)[And found […] the babe lying in a (German “the”) manger …]

The validity of these “rules” is demonstrated by comparing the Upper Sorbian andGerman text of Luke 2, 1-20.27 Of the 27 positions with a definite article not preceded by apreposition in the German text 22 are rendered by the t-form in the Upper Sorbian text(among these three of the four examples for gelenkartikel). Of the 12 examples in whichthe German text has the definite article after preposition only one has a t-form in UpperSorbian.28

It is interesting to note that the use of t-forms in article function differs between the con-fessions. F. Michal/ k could show that the Protestant tradition from the first partial trans-lation of the New Testament by M. Frentzel (1670) up to the 20th century is an example ofremarkable continuity of the system described above. It was not until the edition of 1960that strict grammatical purism was adopted in the Protestant Bible text in this regard. TheCatholic tradition, on the other hand, had an almost “German” article system (with theexception of prosodically conditioned deviations) from the earliest translations (1690) upto the middle of the 18th century (edition of 1750). In the 19th century (edition of 1848) thesystem was changed to resemble the Protestant tradition but then it dropped t-formsalmost completely, adopting a very puristic attitude at the beginning of the 20th century(editions of 1862 and 1909; cf. Michalk 1980: 82–84).

In spite of the rather stable use of t-forms functioning as articles the description in gram-mars varies widely (cf. Wölke 2005: 180–183). This makes it even more difficult to decidewhether the use of t-forms is only typical of translated texts or reflects normal (oral) lan-guage use.

Roland Marti, (Un)articulated definiteness

24 Cf. the quantitative indications in Michalk & Protze (1974: 84–85). In my view they wrongly con-sider contraction of article plus preposition (zum, im etc.) to be the reason for this (similarlySchaarschmidt 1983a: 153–154, cf. the critical remarks of Berger 1999: 13). Incidentally, this tendency seems to be largely absent from the material analysed by Trovesi (2004: 123).

25 There seems to be a general tendency in many languages to drop the article in prepositional phrases(cf. Himmelmann 1998).

26 Berger assumes that the reason for the absence of t-forms is the fact that in the case of circum-stantials there is less of a functional necessity to express definiteness (Berger 1999: 18–19). Thiswould be in line with observations in general typological literature (cf. Greenberg 1990 [1978]: 257).

27 A similar comparison can be found in Berger (1999: 7–8). For heuristic reasons he counted all occur-rences of t-forms as examples of the demonstrative pronoun. My point of reference are the Germand-article forms.

28 The numbers given here deviate slightly from those given by Berger since I use older versions of the text (both German and Upper Sorbian). Furthermore the demonstrative pronouns have beenexcluded (see preceding note).

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On the one hand, the existence of t-forms functioning as articles in Upper Sorbian isconsidered to be alien to the language and branded as a Germanism, this judgment beingbased on the situation in other Slavonic languages. This position can already be found inthe oldest (manuscript) grammar of Upper Sorbian by Georgius Ludovici (middle of the17th century):

Hæc lingva sicut et cognatæ, carent Articulo. Cæterum, cum in Pronomine Demon-strativo (Ton, Ta, To,) non tantum Genus et Declinationis ratio se w™ v e ¬ntópwostendat, verum, etiam vulgus eô ex kakozhlía Germanorum vice Articuli fre-qventer utatur; præmittendum illud hic omnino videtur.

[This language, just as its cognates, has no article. Since, however, the demonstra-tive pronoun (ton, ta, to) does not only indicate gender and declension but since thepeople use it in bad imitation of German in the function of an article it seems ad-visable to put it in front here.] (Ludovici s.d.: 3r; Jenc 1962: 24)29

On the other hand, the existence of an article is tacitly assumed. Thus the oldest printedgrammar of (Catholic) Upper Sorbian by Jacobus Ticinus (1679) does not doubt theexistence of the t-article and offers the paradigm (“Articuli Declinatio [declension of thearticle]”) in the second chapter (“De Articulo & Pronomine [on the article and the pro-noun]”, Ticinus 1679: 6–7).30

This equivocal treatment of the question is also typical of the grammars of the 18th cen-tury. The most important of them is the grammar by Georgius Matthæi from 1721 since itis the first comprehensive printed grammar (and the first printed grammar in the traditionof the Upper Sorbian Protestant written language). It denies the existence of a t-article inUpper Sorbian:

Bei dem Nomine hat man in acht zu nehmen, 1.) Daß die Sorabische oder Wendi-sche Sprache keinen Articulum præpositivum habe, wie wohl bishero viele das Pro-nomen Demonstrativum oder Emphaticum (ton, ta, to,) dafür gehalten und ex KaKozulia [sic! R.M.] Germanorum gebrauchet, dieweil die Sprache mit ihren cogna-tis nicht der Deutschen und Griegischen Sprache, welche solchen Articulum haben,sondern der Hebräischen und Lateinischen, nachartet. (Matthæi 1721: 9)31

[Regarding the noun it has to be taken into consideration 1.) that the Sorbian orWendish language has no prepositive article even though many so far consideredthe demonstrative or emphatic pronoun (ton, ta, to) to be such an article and used itin bad imitation of the Germans; but the language and its relatives does not followGerman or Greek, which have such an article, but Hebrew and Latin.]

Since the demonstrative pronoun in its function as a “declension indicator” is presentedright after this quotation (p. 10–11) it is not treated in the chapter on pronouns. The nu-merous examples in the chapters on syntax and prosody (p. 160–194) show a certain vari-

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29 Quoted here according to the original (the edition by Jenc deviates in some cases).30 It is worth noting, however, that the Latin correspondence to ton, ta, te/to is the demonstrative

pronoun hic, hæc, hoc and that the demonstrative pronoun is not mentioned in the remainder ofchapter 2. Furthermore the t-form corresponds to Latin iste, i.e. a demonstrative pronoun, in some of the examples (cf. Ticinus 1679: 59). It is therefore possible that Ticinus’ use of the t-form is onlycaused by grammaticographic considerations.

31 Matthæi obviously relies on Ludovici here (cf. also Wölke 2005: 23–26, 181): the comparison withother languages besides German is his, and with regard to Hebrew it is incorrect (pointed out to meby B. Comrie).

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ance. The quotations from the Bible and from hymns correspond to the general usagedescribed above whereas Matthæi’s own examples usually lack t-forms in the function ofan article.32

The manuscript grammar by Johann Friedrich Gottfried Schmutz from 1743 (Wölke2005: 41–46, 182) considers the article to be superfluous and classifies tón, ta, to as demon-strative pronouns, albeit with the translation “der, die, das” (Schmutz 1743: 150 [f. 76v]).In contradistinction to him Johann Michael Georg considers the t-article to be a part ofthe system and devotes a chapter of his handwritten grammar (1788) to it.

§ 74. Der Artikel ist ton, ta, to, er wird aber nicht so häufig wie bey den Griechenund Teutschen, sondern nur des Nachdrucks wegen gebraucht, und stehet oft anstatt des Pronominis demonstrativi. (Schaller 1986: 33; Hs. p. 43–44)

[The article is ton, ta, to. It is, however, not used as often as in Greek and Germanbut rather to indicate emphasis and it can often be found in place of the demonstra-tive pronoun.]

This is probably a reference to the pragmatic function of the article. It is hard to tellwhether this also implies the use of a t-article to mark text-internal definiteness.

Both tendencies coexist in the beginning of the 19th century. There is even an attempt to describe the use of t-forms in Upper Sorbian as differing both from German and “Slavonic” and thus to underline the independence of Upper Sorbian in this respect. It canbe found in the grammar of Handrij Zejler (Andreas Seiler 1830). His description hasbeen presented in detail by T. Berger (1999: 10–11).33 According to this description Upper

Roland Marti, (Un)articulated definiteness

32 On the other hand, there are even examples of j-forms in the function of an indefinite article in thegrammar: “Kak wulki je jeden muz? [...] wie lang ist ein Mann? [How tall is a man?]” (Matthæi 1721:167, emphasis added)

33 Two points have to be added. On the one hand, the use of the t-form in the function of an article is already addressed in the chapter on morphology (“Biegung der Wörter [flexion of words]”): “Tón, ta,to, ist ursprünglich das demonstrative Pronom. dieser, diese, dieses, wird aber gegenwärtig meist nachArt des deutschen Artikels, der, die, das, gebraucht. Für dieser, e, es, gebraucht man jetzt tónlej, talej,tolej, tutón, tuta, tuto, dieser, e, es hier, da. [Tón, ta, to is originally the demonstrative pronoun dieser,diese, dieses but it is nowadays generally used in the manner of the German article der, die, das. Torender dieser, diese, dieses, tónlej, talej, tolej, tutón, tuta, tuto, dieser, -e, -es hier, da is used nowadays.]”(Seiler 1830: 42). On the other hand, Zejler describes the cataphoric use in the chapter on syntax(“Fügung der Wörter [concatenation of words]”): “Tón, ta, to, ist nicht nur in Verbindung mit denfragenden, relativen, persönlichen und andern Fürwörtern rein demonstratives und determinativesFürwort, z. B. schtu je tón Muz, kiz by ßo skróblil/; wón je tón prawy Bóh; dyz pak tamny, tón Duchteje Wjernoscje; ta Wucz, na kotruz; po tej Mozy, kotraz, sondern bleibt es auch im weitern Umfangebei Substantiven, mag es auch nur im Deutschen durch: der, die, das, übersetzt werden. [Tón, ta, to re-mains a purely demonstrative and determinative pronoun not only in combination with the interroga-tive, relative, personal and other pronouns, e.g. schtu je tón Muz, kiz by ßo skróblil/; wón je tón prawyBóh; dyz pak tamny, tón Duch teje Wjernoscje; ta Wucz, na kotruz; po tej Mozy, kotraz but it remainsso in general with nouns even though it is translated by der, die, das in German.]” (Seiler 1830: 114;this text can be found immediately before the one quoted by Berger). Zejler’s description capturesthe Upper Sorbian usage quite precisely. He could only be criticised for not having described the rules of German article usage properly, maintaining, e.g., that German uses the article “um nur dieEinzahl oder Mehrheit der Subjekte oder gewisse Kasus, besonders nach Präposizionen, zu bezeich-nen [only to indicate singular or plural of subjects or certain cases, especially after prepositions]”(Seiler 1830: 114). This refers, as far as I can see, to the use of the article as a “declension indicator”(Berger 1999: 10 is of a different opinion). This, however, is only an additional function in Germanthat does not affect the primary function: even in cases where the desinences are unequivocal the article must be used.

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Sorbian has a t-article in the case of text internal (anaphoric and cataphoric) and pragmaticdefiniteness as well as in cases of emphasis and as a gelenkartikel, but not in cases of seman-tic definiteness (and of inalienable possession).

With the advent of the national renascence the use of t-forms in the function of articlesbecomes suspect for ideological and not linguistic reasons. This is spelt out clearly for thefirst time in Jan P. Jordan’s grammar (Jordan 1841). In the beginning the use of t-forms inthe older (religious) writing tradition and in the “popular language” is usually mentionedbut already branded as an incorrect Germanism. The only one to accept the “Wendisharticle” without questioning it is Franz Schneider in his grammar of (Catholic) UpperSorbian. Still he suggests to restrict its use as much as possible (Schneider 1853: 79). Thispuristic line eventually carries the day but it did not influence “popular language”, cf. onthis the “critical remarks” of A. Sykora, who defends the use of the article at least for textinternal definiteness (Sykora 1904).34

The Upper Sorbian grammars of the 20th century are equally reluctant to accept the existence of an article and the same can be said of editors and publishers (cf. supra). Linguistic descriptions present the deviations of “popular language” from the standardlanguage but they usually see it as a result of German influence and do not try to find therules governing the use of t-forms (except for the prosodically motivated phenomena). Thefirst one to do this was W. Breu, albeit only for a part of the Upper Sorbian area. Accord-ing to his description the t-article is restricted to text internal and pragmatic definiteness(both referred to as pragmatic by Breu); there are, however, quite a few “transgressions”(i.e. uses of t-articles outside of this area and in cases where German has a definite article).Some of these examples must be interpreted as a result of spontaneous interference (cf. Breu 2004 and Scholze 2008: 157–181).

It is worth noting that in general the description of article use in Upper Sorbian is re-stricted to t-forms; j-forms are hardly ever mentioned. This is even true of the purists in the19th century. As a matter of fact there are fewer examples of j-forms in the function of thearticle than of t-forms in the written tradition; this is especially true of Biblical texts. In thecase of 19th century Upper Sorbian F. Schneider, who, albeit reluctantly, admitted theexistence of a t-article (cf. supra), could claim: “Das deutsche Geschlechtswort ein,eine, ein wird im Wendischen nicht ausgedrückt. [The German article ein, eine, ein is notexpressed in Wendish.]” (Schneider 1853: 110).35 It has to be assumed, however, that thedevelopment of j-forms was similar to that of the t-forms. The analysis in the area of lin-guistic interference supports this assumption (Michalk & Protze 1967: 39; 1974: 87–88).Here, too, W. Breu was the first one to describe the rules governing the use of j-forms inthe function of an indefinite article (cf. Breu 2003 and Scholze 2008: 145–156).

It is difficult to interpret this equivocal evidence and to arrive at a plausible line of de-velopment. It seems that the article system influenced by (or largely borrowed from)German that is to be found in printed texts was originally modified in the position afterprepositions due to prosodic reasons. It may be assumed that spoken Upper Sorbian in

STUF 65 (2012) 3

34 The text is quoted, i.a., in Berger (1999: 11). It is hardly surprising that it was never published eventhough it had been submitted to the Macica Serbska. In the manuscript there is a note by A. Muka,one of the proponents of purism: “Tu we tej Sykorowej knizy je wjele wopacnosci, tam a sem pak tezdobre strowe zornjesko [In this book by Sykora there are many mistakes but every now and thenthere is a good healthy seed.]” (Sykora 1904: 2).

35 This is reminiscent of R. Lötzsch’s statement over a hundred years later: “Indefinitneho artikla njeje.[There is no indefinite article.]” (Lötzsch 1966: 69).

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those days had no t-article at all. The emergence of today’s system in the colloquial lan-guage with its restriction to text internal and pragmatic definiteness would then be a newerdevelopment and is not connected immediately to the earlier rules of the written language.

3. Lower Sorbian

The oldest texts in Lower Sorbian date also back to the time of the Reformation. In itshistory translations from German dominate even more than in the case of Upper Sorbian.It has to be assumed therefore that Lower Sorbian will show greater affinity to German as far as the rules for the use of t- and j-forms in the function of articles are concerned. A proof for this assumption can be found in the oldest known Lower Sorbian text, the manuscript translation of the New Testament by M. Jakubica dated to 1548 (Schuster-Sewc 1967). The translation of Luke 2, 1–20, shows this quite clearly.36 In every positionwhere German uses a definite article not preceded by a preposition the Lower Sorbian texthas a corresponding t-form (thus also in all cases of gelenkartikel). In those examples wherethe German text has a definite article after a preposition the Lower Sorbian translationfollows the original in two thirds of the cases, using a t-form. The similarity goes evenfurther: in the four cases with an indefinite article in German the Lower Sorbian trans-lation has j-forms. We have thus a far-reaching coincidence between German article usageand the Lower Sorbian use of t- and j-forms. The few exceptions that can be found shouldbe seen as phraseologisms or adverbialised expressions (e.g., “[w] notzy = in der Nacht [atnight]”). The first printed edition of the New Testament in Fabricius’ translation (1706)continues the tradition as far as t-forms are concerned without any change but the Germanindefinite article is not rendered by j-forms any more.37 The later editions up to the verylast one (NT 1895) merely replicate this feature of the text.

The oldest manuscript grammar of Lower Sorbian by J. Chojnan (1650) is of little usefor our purposes since it treats the t-form separately for grammaticographic reasons andthus supports the interpretation of these forms as articles (cf. the similar situation in thecontemporary Upper Sorbian grammar of Ludovici). Still his wording is more circumspectthan that of Ludovici and he avoids speaking of an article:

Licet particula Demonstrativa Ten, cum cæteris suis Generibus, in classem Pro-nominum pertineat, ejus tamen inflexionem, ante Declinationum diáskeyin, obnecessarium ejusdem, in iisdem, ad evidentiorem Casuum intelligentiam usum, hicpræmitto, et dein in Pronominum locatione eam omitto.

[Even though the demonstrative particle ten with all its other gender forms belongsto the group of the pronouns I put the paradigm before the analysis of the declen-sions because its use is indispensable in the latter to recognise case more clearly. Later on in the chapter on pronouns I shall omit it.] (Choinanus 1650: 13)

In a similar vein the first printed grammar of Lower Sorbian (Hauptmann 1761) treatsthe article before addressing the noun. Hauptmann is the first one in Sorbian to note theexistence of a discussion regarding the existence of a (definite) article in Lower Sorbian.

Roland Marti, (Un)articulated definiteness

36 The same text was analysed by Berger (1999) for Upper Sorbian, cf. above.37 The edition used is the fourth printing of 1759 (NT 1759).

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Ich will mich hier in keinen grammaticalischen Streit einlassen, ob die Wendeneinen Articulum haben oder nicht, und ob ten, ta, to, vielmehr ein pronomen, alsein Articulus sey. Genug, daß ten, ta, to an statt des Teutschen Articuli: der, die dasgebraucht wird, und in Ansehung dessen nenne ich es einen Articulum.

[I do not intend to enter into a grammatical argument whether the Wends have anarticle or not and whether ten, ta, to should not rather be a pronoun than an article.Suffice it that ten, ta, to is used in the place of the German article der, die, das. Consi-dering this I shall call it an article.] (Hauptmann 1761: 42)

On the whole, he seems to be of the opinion that Lower Sorbian has an article. Hestresses the function of the t-forms to indicate gender, case, and number (article as a“declension indicator”) and points out the parallel to Greek.

In the 19th century Lower Sorbian is also affected by the purist movement. It is, however,generally restricted to individual initiatives that concentrate on lexical loans as a rule (cf.,e.g., Tesnar 1853), whereas grammatical Germanisms are not addressed immediately. Stilldescriptive grammarians note a certain development in the language. This is spelt out quiteclearly in the manuscript grammar of A. Ebert (1864):

In der alten wendischen Sprache fehlt der Artikel; jetzt dient meist als bestimmterArtikel ten, ta, to (§ 75, zugleich dieser, diese, dieses und derjenige, diejenige, das-jenige), als unbestimmter jaden, jadna (jana), jadno (jano) (§ 90) (zugleich Zahl-wort: ein, eine, ein). Im gewöhnlichen Leben wird er ausgelassen, wo er entbehrlichist, und auch in der Schriftsprache pflegt man jetzt das Hauptwort häufig ohneArtikel zu setzen. […] Obgleich er da, wo kein besonderer Nachdruck vorhanden,an und für sich überflüssig ist, wird er doch in Volks- und Schriftsprachen nochhäufiger gebraucht, als ausgelassen.

[In the old Wendish language the article does not exist. Nowadays ten, ta, to (§ 75,meaning dieser, diese, dieses and derjenige, diejenige, dasjenige) is used as a definitearticle and jaden, jadna (jana), jadno (jano) (§ 90) (at the same time the numeralein, eine, ein) serves as an indefinite article. In everyday life it is omitted where it is superfluous and in the written language a noun is often used without article nowadays. […] Even though it [the definite article, R.M.] is superfluous in positionswhere there is no special emphasis it is used more often than omitted in the popularlanguage and in written language.] (Ebert 1864: 27v–28, 79)38

It seems that Ebert here assumes different systems according to time and function. Heposits an original system without articles. This is opposed by today’s colloquial languagewith a system of t- and j-articles, indicating pragmatic or at least deictic definiteness. Incontradistinction to this, he notes two kinds of written language: the traditional versionwith an article system, more or less corresponding to German, and the newer written lan-guage subjected to purism and consequently without articles.

Ch. Dahle’s grammar, used in teaching Lower Sorbian at the Cottbus gymnasium andtherefore rather influential, has the definite article, but its main function seems to be theindication of gender and case (Dahle 1857): the examples he gives have very few t-formsand even fewer j-forms. The detailed and ambitious grammar written by A. Muka (Mucke

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38 The wording suggests a kind of pragmatic definite article. A similar interpretation may be assumedfor the indefinite article “wo derselbe bezeichnet werden soll [where it is to be indicated]” (f. 84).

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1891) is part of the Young-Sorbian tradition and sees the use of t- and j-forms as a result of German influence.39 B. Swjela’s grammar of 1906 basically follows Muka40 but alsogives examples for the use of t-forms described as “abgeschwächtes Demonstrativum [toned-down demonstrative pronoun]”: in the case of “exponierte Stellung [exposed position]” and with numerals in fixed expressions of the type “die 12 Profeten [the TwelveProphets]”; different from German they are also used with possessive pronouns (Schwela1906: 99).

In this context it is instructive to analyse the language of the classic Lower Sorbian poet M. Kosyk. Many of his texts survived both in manuscript and in printed form. The manuscripts show numerous puristic changes introduced by the editors of the Sorbianjournals (A. Muka und M. Hórnik), many of them deleting t- and j-forms. On the otherhand, there are, at least in some manuscripts, similar changes that must be attributed to thepoet himself (cf. the facsimile edition Kosyk 1993–1994). These changes are most con-spicuous in the case of Branibora pad [The fall of Branibor], a long poem in 69 sestines inwhich the poet himself deleted t-forms in about eighty cases; in some instances this ex-tended to j-forms as well.41 Furthermore, Kosyk uses more t-forms in his journalistic prose(Kosyk 2006) than in his poetic texts. This is probably due to the fact that he strove for amore popular colloquial style in his prose.

Unfortunately, there are no analyses of today’s (spoken) Lower Sorbian that could becompared to those by W. Breu for Upper Sorbian. There can’t be any because the actuallinguistic situation and the low number of speakers that are not concentrated in one centralarea do not allow of the existence of a stable colloquial language.

4. Conclusion

As far as the incomplete and selective documentation allows of a conclusion, Sorbianshows a clear development in the marking of determination by definite and indefinitearticles (or rather by t- and j-forms). This development is undoubtedly the result of lan-guage contact with German. As is usual in cases of linguistic contact this did not lead to awhole-sale adoption of the rules of the dominating language but rather to the emergence

Roland Marti, (Un)articulated definiteness

39 “Im Ns., zumal in der Schriftsprache, noch häufiger und allgemeiner als im Os. als bestimmter Artikelverwendet […]; es ist dies aber jedenfalls eine Nachahmung des deutschen Sprachgebrauchs. [In Lower Sorbian, above all in the written language it is used as a definite article, more often and moregenerally than in Upper Sorbian […]; at any rate this is an imitation of German usage]” (Mucke 1891:395) “In der ns. Schriftsprache wird jaden sehr oft fälschlich als unbestimmter Artikel gebraucht. Inder ns. Volkssprache hört man diesen Germanismus seltener. [In the Lower Sorbian written languagejaden is often incorrectly used as an indefinite article. In the Lower Sorbian popular language thisGermanism is heard less often.]” (Mucke 1891: 436)

40 “Das Pronomen ten, ta, to wird häufig aber fälschlich anstelle des deutschen Geschlechtswortes der, die, das gebraucht. Das Wendische bedarf weder eines unbestimmten noch eines bestimmten Artikels. […] In guter Sprache sind ten und jaden als Geschlechtswörter unbedingt zu meiden. [Thepronoun ten, ta, to is often but incorrectly used to stand for the German article der, die, das. The Wendish language needs neither an indefinite nor a definite article […] In correct language ten andjaden in the function of articles are to be avoided at all costs.]” (Schwela 1906: 99)

41 Cf. Kosyk (2001: 160–195). The original version, containing t- and j-forms, and the later variant without many of these forms are printed side by side. A synopsis of the puristically motivated changesis given in the critical apparatus (p. 365).

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of an independent system. This system is not uniform, but it varies according to the func-tions and levels of the language.

The point of departure for both Upper and Lower Sorbian was most likely a systemwithout indicating determination by articles. This situation may be posited for the 16th

century in the core linguistic area. When Sorbian became a written language as a result ofReformation and later of Counterreformation, it adopted the German article systemalmost without changes (exceptions were motivated prosodically). The German definitearticle (d-article) was rendered by Sorbian t-forms, the indefinite (e-article) by Sorbian j-forms. This corresponded to the German system on the diachronic level as well (d- and t-forms both evolved out of the demonstrative pronoun, e- and j-forms out of numerals or indefinite pronouns). In the course of time this adopted system evolved into an in-dependent system for the written language. It ousted j-forms to a large extent, and reducedthe use of t-forms to cases of text internal and pragmatic definiteness while still observingthe prosodically conditioned restrictions.42 Most remarkable is the functional and strati-ficational differentiation. The system just described applied to biblical and original texts,whereas other texts translated from German followed their originals more closely andtherefore reflected a system of determination that was closer to German usage. Thespoken language, on the other hand, as far as may be judged from indications in grammars,seems to have used t- and especially j-forms even less often than the original written language; the exact rules governing the use of t- and j-forms are not known to us. In the 19th and 20th century the written language and later on also the oral use of the standard language ousted t- and j-forms to an even greater extent, this being a result of puristic influence. In the spoken colloquial language and in the dialects, however, these forms con-tinued to exist and even spread somewhat, most likely as a result of increasing, eventually“total” language contact.

This system, as far as it can be reconstructed, distinguishes the various forms of deter-mination in a way different from German. This means that article forms are not usedwhere they are obligatory in German (cf., e.g., absolute unica), on the one hand, and thatarticle forms are used where they may not appear in German (e.g., with possessive pro-nouns), on the other hand.

There are marked differences between Upper and Lower Sorbian as far as the use ofarticle forms to mark determination is concerned. In the written tradition the influence ofthe German article system was stronger in Lower Sorbian where, furthermore, puristictendencies set in later and were less pervasive. In spoken Lower Sorbian an article systemsimilar to the one still in existence in the Catholic Upper Sorbian colloquial languageseems to have developed. The differences between the two systems cannot be describeddue to the lack of pertinent analyses and of a critical mass of speakers. It may be assumed,however, that the German influence is even more pronounced in Lower Sorbian, and thisfor two reasons. Firstly, Lower Sorbian lacks a core area where the language is used inpublic on an everyday basis so German dominates every aspect of life. Secondly, those whostill speak the language use German more often than Lower Sorbian. It is therefore highly

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42 The independence of the system transpires also from the fact that proper nouns and especially possessive pronouns were not inherently definite and could therefore admit both t- and j-forms (cf. Scholze 2008: 148 on the use of j-forms with proper nouns).

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probable that the use of t- and j-forms in the function of the article in spoken LowerSorbian is influenced by the German system more strongly.43

Due to the still prevalent purist attitude of the elites today’s Sorbian standard languageslargely avoid the use or t- and j-forms to indicate determination; only in the case of LowerSorbian can a certain relaxation be noted. The imposition of puristic positions led to astrongly divergent development of the written and the spoken language. In view of theweak position of Sorbian vis-à-vis German this endangers the position of Sorbian evenmore. The general impression of many native speakers, inculcated by purist teaching, isthat the Sorbian language they use is not correct. This is a strong incentive to switch toGerman except for intimate occasions. Those advocating a puristic line should thereforeponder the question whether it makes sense to keep the language pure and thus to reduceits spontaneous use. This question is even more justified regarding the use of the articlesince the rules in the colloquial language and in the dialects are obviously quite differentfrom those of the German language. It is therefore only partially correct to interpret themas Germanisms.

References

Benacchio, Rosanna; Fici, Francesca & Gebert, Lucyna (eds.) (1996): Determinatezza e indeter-minatezza nelle lingue slave. Atti del Convegno svoltosi a Firenze, 26–28 ottobre 1995. Padova: Uni-press.

Berger, Tilman (1999): Die Gebrauchsbedingungen des bestimmten Artikels im älteren Obersorbi-schen, in: Letopis 46, Wosebity zesiwk, 7–23.

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43 Lower Sorbian would then have anticipated a development that can already be sensed in the UpperSorbian colloquial language: “Das könnte letztendlich dazu führen, dass die SWR den definiten Artikel TÓN möglicherweise bei allen semantisch definiten Fällen verwenden wird, wie das Deut-sche, und ihr Artikelsystem sich dem der Kontaktsprache völlig angleicht. [This [the spreading of the definite article into the domain of semantic definiteness, R.M.] might in the long run lead to a situation where the Upper Sorbian colloquial language will probably use the definite article TÓNin all semantically definite contexts just as in German and that its article system will thus becomeidentical to that of the contact language.]” (Scholze 2008: 182)

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