Syuzan Sachliyan, MA (Ms)
Room 46.21.05.05
Phone +49 211 81-03177
Fax +49 211 81-03170 (central fax, please include name of addressee)
Email sachliyan@phil.uni-duesseldorf.de
Subject
Linguistics
SToRE Membership
SToRE member since 21 Aug 2012
1. advisor: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Löbner
2. advisor: Prof. Dr. Hana Filip
3. advisor: Dr. Katina Bontcheva
PhD Project
Definiteness in Bulgarian and Macedonian
Only two standard Slavic languages – Bulgarian and Macedonian – have an enclitic definite article and only one – Macedonian – expresses definiteness by a three-way system. Moreover these languages are the only two members of the Slavic family which also belong to the Balkansprachbund. Unlike other Slavic languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost their case marking with the exception of the pronominal system. As a result, prepositions express case relations and word order becomes fairly rigid.
My research is a case study concerned with the phenomenon expressed by the definite article namely, definiteness. My dissertation has three parts: The first part gives an overview of the traditional view of definiteness over the last 50 years; the second part introduces the theoretical basis of my work, i.e., the Concept Types and Determination Theory (Löbner 2011). Finally, the third part investigates definiteness in Standard Bulgarian and Macedonian according to the new view of the CTD-theory.
My goal is to look at the use of the definite article regarding the inherent referential properties of nouns as introduced by Löbner’s theory of concept types and determination.Beyond this, my research makes an important contribution in three areas. For one, it compares the use of noun phrases and the definite article in Bulgarian and Macedonian. On another, it shows how Bulgarian and Macedonian fit into general claims of theory of determination. Last but not least it contributes to the body of research of definitenessin these two languages.
References:
Löbner, Sebastian (1985): Definites. Journal of Semantics 4: 279 – 326
Löbner, Sebastian (2011): Concept types and determination. Journal of Semantics 28(3): 279 – 333
Conference presentations
The three-way article system in Standard Macedonian. Presentation at the conference Semantik und Pragmatik im Südwesten 2014.
Last updated
13.05.2014