Slavic languages: comparative morphosyntactic analysis

This paper discusses the results of a comparative study of distributional equivalences among adjectivals in four Slavic languages, namely, Rus-sian, Czech, Polish and Serbo-Croatian. A procedure for determining equivalence is defined, and is applied to the results of analyzing the adjectivals of each language with respect to gender, animateness, and case and number. A appropriate goal for present-day linguistics is the development of a general theory of relations between languages. Classification which is based on common origin is fundamental for historical and comparative linguistics. A group of four major Slavic languages— Russian, Czech, Polish and Serbo-Croatian—was selected for comparative investigation because of the similarities stemming from their common origin and from subsequent parallel development. The comparative computer-oriented analysis of this group of Slavic languages was conducted in order to ascertain whether the similarities in structure of a group of related languages might permit of developing a common system of morphology and syntax which would facilitate machine translation to and from those languages. The research might also indicate whether a core system of morphology and syntax is useful for groups of languages which are not related. The possibility of a common general syntax for a group of related languages was suggested by L. E. Dostert. 2 It should be stressed that this report refers only to a small part of a major problem and is not intended to assert general conclusions about the results of an overall linguistic analysis. Morphosyntactic Analysis The first stage of our investigation was concentrated on the identification and classification of inflected forms in terms of their morphosyntactic properties. An attempt was made to set up classifications by choosing criteria which are common for all four Slavic languages mentioned above. First of all, a computer-oriented transliteration system was established. The total number of Cyrillic and Latin characters in the four languages is 80. These are represented in the translitera-tion by 51 signs, of which 25 consist of single symbols and 26 are digraphs. The objective of our comparative research was limited to the establishment of the patterns of the distributional identity of two major classes of morphological components: (a) the class and sub-class of adjectival stem morphemes, and (b) the class for their valuable suggestions at various stages in this study. of inflectional morphemes which are automatic in respect to the class of stem morphemes. The relationship between the major classes of stem morphemes and in-flectional morphemes …