Citation

Meyer R. Russ Linguist 2010; 34(3): 285-306.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010)

DOI

10.1007/s11185-010-9063-6

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Reflexive passives and impersonals are present in all modern Slavonic languages, but vary in their synchronic properties. The present paper analyses the diachronic developments that lead to this variation in Czech, Polish, and Russian and includes some background on Old Church Slavonic. It is shown how the former three languages reached their differing positions in a typological hierarchy of passive constructions, by stepwise reanalysis. The diachronic comparative approach furthermore demonstrates the interdependence/independence of some of the empirical features of reflexive passives and impersonals in Slavonic.

Language: en