Anaphora, relative pronouns and *jo- in Slavic

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2744
Date: 2000-06-29

An anaphoric pronoun is one that has the same reference as another word previously used in the same discourse. For example, one and that are used anaphorically in the following examples:

I forgot to bring a pen; can you lend me one?

His position was more comfortable than that of his brother.

Anaphoric pronouns may assume relative functions, since a relative clause also refers to a person or thing already mentioned.

Schematically:

{HERE IS WOLF}; {THAT

(anaphoric = ‘this wolf’) I KILLED} > {HERE IS WOLF {THAT (relative) I KILLED}}

Dialectal IE *jo- (definitely not a Nostratic pronoun, pace Illich-Svitych and his poetry) is obviously a variant of anaphoric *i- with a thematic vowel added (*i-o-), apparently in order to increase its inflectional potential. In Proto-Slavic it came to be used as a relative pronoun (often, though not exclusively, accompanied by the reinforcing particle *-že < PIE *ge). As an example, let me quote some Old Polish forms (the Modern Polish relative pronoun is który, identical with interrogative ‘which’):

Nom. jen(że) ‘which, who (rel.)’

Acc. ji(ż) ‘which, who(m)’

Gen. jego(ż) ‘of which, whose’

Dat. jemu(ż) ‘to which, who(m)’, etc.

Additionally, the non-nominative forms without the reinforcing particle served (and most of them still serve) as 3rd person pronouns (e.g. jemu ‘[to] him’); the suppletive nominative on/ona/ono ‘he/she/it’ is an old demonstrative.

In Slavic (and Baltic) *jo- was also added to adjectives as a clitic; this gave rise to a special adjective declension with pronominal inflections (cf. ‘weak’ adjectives in Germanic):

*newos ‘new’ > novU (with noun-like inflections)

*newos+jos > OCS novU-jI (pronominal endings), Gen. nova-jego/nova:go

In modern Russian the two types contrast functionally: nov is predicative and novyj is attrributive (i.e., occurring in a noun phrase). Originally, however, the longer forms were probably definite and the shorter ones indefinite:

*dobra roda ‘of a good family’

*dobrajego roda ‘of that good family’

Piotr