Slavic Morphosyntax is Primarily Determined by its Geographic Location and Contact Configuration.

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify causal factors constraining the diachronic dynamics of particular morphosyntactic categories of Slavic. It is suggested that the modern inventory of Slavic languages is not a result of accumulation of historically accidental changes and non-changes. Instead, it is argued that macro-areal pressures constrained by the geographic location and the particular language-contact configuration determine the selection of inherited properties for either retention or loss and, subsequently, innovation. I primarily provide evidence from two categories: verbal person-number indexes (subject agreement markers) and partitivity markers and I also briefly discuss some other fusional categories.