# A quantitative and typological study of Early Slavic participle clauses and
their competition

Nilo Pedrazzini
University of Oxford (Oxford, United Kingdom)
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
###### Abstract

This thesis investigates the semantic and pragmatic properties of Early Slavic
participle constructions (conjunct participles and dative absolutes) to
understand the principles motivating their selection over one another and over
their main finite competitor (jegda-clauses). The issue is tackled by adopting
two broadly different approaches, which inform the division of the thesis into
two parts.

The first part of the thesis uses detailed linguistic annotation on Early
Slavic corpora at the morphosyntactic, dependency, information-structural, and
lexical levels to obtain indirect evidence for different potential functions
of participle clauses and their main finite competitor. The goal of this part
of the thesis is to understand the roles of compositionality and default
discourse reasoning as explanations for the distribution of participle
constructions and jegda-clauses in the Early Slavic corpus. The investigation
shows that the competition between conjunct participles, absolute
constructions, and jegda-clauses occurs at the level of discourse
organization, where the main determining factor in their distribution is the
distinction between background and foreground content of an (elementary or
complex) discourse unit. The analysis also shows that the major common
denominator between the three constructions is that all of them can function
as frame-setting devices (i.e. background clauses), albeit to very different
extents. In fact, conjunct participles are more typically associated with the
foreground constituent of a discourse unit, whereas dative absolutes and
jegda-clauses are typically associated with the background content.

The second part of the thesis uses massively parallel data, including Old
Church Slavonic and Ancient Greek, and analyses typological variation in how
languages express the semantic space of English when, whose scope encompasses
that of Early Slavic participle constructions and jegda-clauses. To do so,
probabilistic semantic maps are generated and statistical methods (including
Kriging, Gaussian Mixture Modelling, precision and recall analysis) are used
to induce cross-linguistically salient dimensions from the parallel corpus and
to study conceptual variation within the semantic space of the hypothetical
concept when. Clear typological correspondences and differences with Early
Slavic from linguistic phenomena in other languages are then exploited to
corroborate and refine observations made on the core semantic-pragmatic
properties of participle constructions and jegda-clauses on the basis of
annotated Early Slavic data.

The analysis shows that ‘null’ constructions (juxtaposed clauses such as
participles and converbs, or independent clauses) consistently cluster in
particular regions of the semantic map cross-linguistically, which clearly
indicates that participle clauses are not equally viable as alternatives to
any use of when, but carry particular meanings that make them less suitable
for some of its functions. The investigation helped identify genealogically
and areally unrelated languages that seem typologically very similar to Old
Church Slavonic in the way they divide the semantic space of when between
overtly subordinated and ‘null’ constructions. Comparison with these languages
reveals great similarities between the functions of Early Slavic participle
constructions and of linguistic phenomena in some of these languages
(particularly clause chaining, bridging, insubordination, and switch
reference). Crucially, new clear correspondences are found between these
phenomena and ‘non-canonical’ usages of participle constructions (i.e.
coreferential dative absolutes, syntactically independent absolutes and
conjunct participles, and participle constructions with no apparent matrix
clause), which had often been written off as ‘aberrations’ by previous
literature on Early Slavic.

T2AcmrTempora-TLF

A quantitative and typological study of Early Slavic participle clauses and
their competition

Nilo Pedrazzini University of Oxford (Oxford, United Kingdom)
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>

Citation Note: This manuscript is a version of the author’s PhD thesis
(Pedrazzini 2023b), formatted for readability and broader dissemination.
Please cite this work as: Pedrazzini, Nilo. 2023. A quantitative and
typological study of Early Slavic participle clauses and their competition.
Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford. DOI: 10.5287/ora-8gv0b4qyo.

###### Contents

  1. 0.1 The problem
  2. 0.2 Background
    1. 0.2.1 Defining conjunct participles and dative absolutes
    2. 0.2.2 Conjunct participles according to Bary & Haug 2011
    3. 0.2.3 Frame setters and fronted adjuncts
    4. 0.2.4 Segmented Discourse Representation Theory
  3. 0.3 What’s with when?
  4. 0.4 A token-based typological approach to the study of language-internal variation
  5. 0.5 The Early Slavic corpus
    1. 0.5.1 Identification of the constructions in the corpora
  6. 0.6 Thesis overview
  7. 1 Participle constructions in deeply-annotated treebanks
    1. 1.1 Introduction
    2. 1.2 Position in the sentence and aspect distribution
      1. 1.2.1 A remark about bystъ-clauses
      2. 1.2.2 Summary
    3. 1.3 Subjects
      1. 1.3.1 Realization and position
      2. 1.3.2 Parts of speech
      3. 1.3.3 Summary
    4. 1.4 Lexical variation among participles
    5. 1.5 Greek-Old Church Slavonic mismatches
      1. 1.5.1 Conjunct participles
      2. 1.5.2 Absolute constructions
    6. 1.6 Remarks on the discourse-relation annotation on the Gospel of Luke
    7. 1.7 Summary
  8. 2 Participle constructions in standard treebanks
    1. 2.1 Introduction
    2. 2.2 Dative absolutes and conjunct participles in standard treebanks
      1. 2.2.1 Position and aspect distribution
      2. 2.2.2 Properties of subjects
      3. 2.2.3 Lexical variation among participles
    3. 2.3 Conjunct participles and dative absolutes in strategically-annotated texts
      1. 2.3.1 Position, aspect and lexical variation of participles
      2. 2.3.2 Zooming in: dative absolutes and conjunct participles in a Middle Bulgarian text
    4. 2.4 Summary
  9. 3 Finite competitors: jegda-clauses
    1. 3.1 Jegda-clauses as finite competitors
    2. 3.2 Jegda-clauses in the corpus
      1. 3.2.1 Position in the sentence and tense-aspect distribution
      2. 3.2.2 Properties of subjects
      3. 3.2.3 Aktionsart and lexical variation
      4. 3.2.4 Clause length
      5. 3.2.5 Summary
  10. 4 Temporal relations and discourse representation
    1. 4.1 Jegda-clauses and temporal relations interpretation
      1. 4.1.1 Summary
    2. 4.2 Rhetorical relations and the discourse structure of jegda\- and participle clauses
      1. 4.2.1 Competing motivations, competing relations
      2. 4.2.2 INDEPENDENT RHEMES as triggers for Strong Narration
      3. 4.2.3 Formalizing FRAMES as Background-triggers
    3. 4.3 Summary
  11. 5 The semantic map of WHEN and its typological parallels
    1. 5.1 Massively parallel Bible corpora: beyond ancient Indo-European translations
    2. 5.2 Data
    3. 5.3 Methods
    4. 5.4 Analysis
      1. 5.4.1 Overtly-subordinated versus ‘null’ constructions
      2. 5.4.2 Classification
      3. 5.4.3 Overall precision and recall for the GMM clusters
    5. 5.5 Summary
  12. 6 Early Slavic participle clauses and their typological parallels
    1. 6.1 Participle constructions in the Old Church Slavonic WHEN-map
    2. 6.2 Lexified counterparts to Early Slavic participle constructions in the world’s languages
    3. 6.3 Null constructions in a cross-linguistics perspective
      1. 6.3.1 Clause chaining
      2. 6.3.2 Bridging
      3. 6.3.3 Switch reference
      4. 6.3.4 Insubordination
    4. 6.4 Summary
  13. 7 Conclusions
    1. 7.1 Overview of the main findings
    2. 7.2 Where to from here?
  14. A Massively parallel dataset: corpus representativeness
    1. A.1 Language families
  15. B Language classification by pattern of co-expression
    1. B.1 Pattern and subpattern assignment

## List of Abbreviations

Glossing and abbreviations follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules, with the
following additions.

a | transitive subject function; Actor macrorole; Actor
---|---
aor | aorist
coll | collective
ds | different subject
exist | existential
impf | imperfect
narr | narrative
nsbj | non-subject
pred | predicate marker
ptc | discourse particle
remp | remote past tense
result | resultative
seq | sequence
sim | simultaneous
ss | same subject
sup | supine
todp | today’s past tense
vis | visible, speaker’s area
u | undergoer macrorole
univ | universal

## Introduction

###  0.1 The problem

Participial clauses are employed widely in Early Slavic and are in evident
competition with finite clauses introduced by the generic temporal
subordinator jegda ‘when’ (b.)-(0.1).111Citations under the examples use
italics for the (conventional) title of the text and regular font for the name
of the manuscript. Citations of the Early Slavonic New Testament are all from
the Old Church Slavonic Codex Marianus in PROIEL, so the manuscript name is
omitted throughout the thesis. Citations of the Greek New Testament are
instead all from von Tischendorf’s (1869–1872) version in PROIEL. Translations
of biblical passages are mostly adapted from the King James Version and the
New King James Version. Translations of all the examples from the Life of Mary
of Egypt from the Bdinski Sbornik are by Coelho 2020. Translations of other
examples, both Early Slavic and other languages, are my own unless otherwise
noted.

  * a.

viděv že ḟeklu celova ju see.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg ptc Thecla.acc kiss.aor.3.sg
3.sg.f.acc ‘When he saw Thecla, he kissed her’ (Life of Thecla, Bdinski
Sbornik f. 50v)

  * b.

Egda že se vidě Zosima, too v ь veštši strach vьpade when ptc this.n.acc.sg
see.aor.3.sg Zosima.nom then in greater.acc terror.acc fall.aor.3.sg ‘When
Zosima saw this, he fell in a greater terror’ (Life of Mary of Egypt, Bdinski
Sbornik ff. 169r-169v)

  * a.

tože takože i ot boljarъ mъnozi prichodęšte povědachutь jemu gněvъ knęžь na
togo suštь i molęchutь i ne suprotiviti sę jemu also so ptc from Boyars.gen.pl
many.nom.pl come.ptcp.ipfv.nom.pl speak.impf.3.pl 3.sg.m.dat anger.acc.sg
prince’s.acc.sg on that.gen.sg be.ptcp.ipfv.acc.sg and beg.impf.3.pl ptc neg
oppose refl 3.sg.m.dat ‘And many of the Boyars, when they came to him, would
speak of the prince’s anger and begged not to oppose the prince.’ (Life of
Feodosij Pečerskij, Uspenskij Sbornik f. 58v)

  * b.

i jegda že sii prichožaachu kъ njemu to že si i tako po bžьstvьněmь tomь
učenii prědъstavljaaše těmъ trępezu ot brašьnъ těchъ manastyrьskyichъ and when
ptc this.nom.pl come.impf.3.pl to 3.sg.m.dat then ptc this.nom.sg ptc so after
divine.loc.sg that.loc.sg teaching.loc.sg treat.impf.3.sg that.dat.pl dining
table.acc.sg from food.gen.pl that.gen.pl monastery’s.gen.pl ‘And when someone
came to Theodosius, in the same way, after the spiritual conversation, he
would treat those who came to dinner with the supplies of the monastery.’
(Life of Feodosij Pečerskij, Uspenskij Sbornik f. 46b)

The focus of previous scholarship on Early Slavic participle clauses has been
overwhelmingly on their origin and relationship with their Ancient Greek
counterparts (e.g. Birnbaum 1958; Růžička 1958, 1961, 1963; Večerka 1961,
1997; Skupskij 1993), which show very similar functions, rather than on the
motivations governing their distribution from the synchronic perspective in
the Early Slavic corpus. Several works (e.g. Trost 1958; Růžička 1961;
Andersen 1969; Berent 1973; Worth 1994; Corin 1995; Collins 2004, 2011) have
also been dedicated to the specific functions of Early Slavic absolute
constructions, a type of participle clause structurally akin to English
absolutes (e.g. all things considered or weather permitting), but which
receives special dative marking, both on the participle and on its subject, if
overt. Absolute constructions are regularly found in distributional overlap
with jegda-clauses, as in (b.). As (b.) shows, particularly sentence-
initially, competition can also be observed between absolute constructions and
agreeing participle clauses (‘conjunct participles’).

  * a.

i koncęjuštju sę lět tomu. vygnaša žiroslava is posadnicьstva. i daša zavidu
nerevinicju and finish.ptcp.ipfv.n.dat.sg refl year.dat.sg that.dat.sg drive
out.aor.3.pl Žiroslav.gen.sg from posadnichestvo.gen.sg and give.aor.3.pl
Zavid.dat.sg Nerenevic.dat.sg ‘And towards the end of that year [lit. when
that year was ending], they drove Žiroslav out of the posadnichestvo and gave
it to Zavid Nerenevic’ (Novgorod First Chronicle, Synodal Manuscript f. 40r)

  * b.

egda končaša sę dnьe .e. desętьnii. snide dchъ styi na aply when
finish.aor.3.pl refl day.gen.pl fiftieth.nom.pl descend.aor.3.sg spirit.nom.sg
holy.nom.sg on apostle.acc.pl ‘When fifty days had passed, the Holy Spirit
descended on the apostles’ (Primary Chronicle, Codex Laurentianus f. 35v)

  * a.

i prišedšju emu v korsunь uvidě jako is korsunę blizь ustьe dněprьskoe and
arrive.ptcp.pfv.m.dat.sg 3.sg.m.dat in Korsun.acc learn.aor.3.sg that from
Korsun.gen close.nom mouth.nom Dniepr’s.nom ‘When he arrived in Korsun, he
learned that the mouth of the Dnieper was not far from Korsun’ (Primary
Chronicle, Codex Laurentianus f. 3v)

  * b.

i prišed vъ vizantiju vidě na tomъ městě z gorъ i glušicь morskychъ mnogo and
arrive.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg in Byzantium.acc see.aor.3.sg in that.loc.sg
place.loc.sg seven hill.gen.pl and bay.gen.pl sea.gen.pl much.acc.sg ‘And when
he arrived in Byzantium, he saw seven hills and many sea gulfs’ (The Tale of
the Fall of Constantinople f. 283r)

To pinpoint the factors explaining the distribution of competing
constructions, one needs to draw from several levels of analysis at once.
Consider (0.1a)-(0.1d).

  * a.

Having finished his thesis, he cried with relief

  * b.

His thesis (being) finished, he cried with relief

  * c.

When he finished his thesis, he cried with relief

  * d.

He finished his thesis and cried with relief

To various extents, all these sentences relate two clauses in semantically
underspecified ways. The nonfiniteness of the participle clause in (0.1a) and
(0.1b) indicates dependency on the following (matrix) clause. In the absence
of an explicit connective, however, their semantic relation must be
pragmatically inferred, often similarly to syntactically coordinated
independent clauses (0.1d). In (0.1c) the first finite clause is introduced by
the temporal subordinating conjunction when. Yet, the precise temporal
relation between the when-clause and the matrix clause is not established by
the subjunction itself, since, unlike more explicit subjunctions, such as
after or before, when is temporally underspecified and compatible with
different core temporal interpretations (e.g. anteriority, simultaneity,
inclusion). Whichever the surface realization, however, all these examples
intuitively convey that the crying event is an effect of the thesis-finishing
event, and that the second situation occurs at some point (sooner or later)
after the first situation.
On one level, we may consider the compositional semantics of participle
clauses at the clause- and sentence-level and understand how far
compositionality can go in explaining functional differences between
constructions. As we will see, the core temporal semantic properties of Early
Slavic participle clauses, for example, can be accounted for, to a large
extent, by the compositional semantics of the tense-aspect system of Early
Slavic, specifically how the aspect of participles interacts with their matrix
clause. On another level, the use of different participle clauses or jegda-
clauses entails the strategic selection of one construction over another at
the level of discourse structure. This involves temporal relations across
sentences and the broader level of text organization, in which information
structure and the rhetorical relations between discourse units play a crucial
role.
The goal of this thesis is to investigate the semantic and pragmatic
properties of Early Slavic conjunct participles and absolute constructions to
understand what principles motivate their selection over one another and over
jegda-clauses at the synchronic level. The issue is tackled broadly using two
different approaches. First, it uses detailed linguistic annotation on Early
Slavic corpora at the morphosyntactic, dependency, information-structural, and
lexical level, as well as parallel Ancient Greek data (when available) aligned
at the token level, to obtain indirect evidence for different potential
functions of participle clauses. This approach is broadly concerned with the
aforementioned tension between compositionality and default discourse
reasoning in accounting for the distribution of participle constructions and
jegda-clauses in the Early Slavic corpus. Second, it uses ‘massively parallel’
data (Mayer and Cysouw 2014) and leverages typological variation in how
languages express the semantic space covered by these constructions to assess
the extent to which the division of labour observed among participle
constructions and jegda-clauses is reflected cross-linguistically. Clear
correspondences and differences with Early Slavic are then exploited to make
generalizations about the core semantic-pragmatic properties of different
competing temporal constructions in Early Slavic.
In the rest of this introduction, I first provide a preliminary formal
definition of conjunct participles and absolute constructions (Section 0.2.1)
and introduce the main theoretical frameworks to which this thesis will make
consistent reference to. In particular, Section 0.2.2 summarizes Bary and
Haug’s (2011) compositional-semantic account of the temporal semantics and
discourse properties of conjunct participles in Ancient Greek, on which the
first three chapters of the thesis will be based, while Section 0.2.3 touches
on Charolles’s (2005) framing adverbials, Fabricius-Hansen and Haug’s (2012b)
fronted adjuncts, and Chafe’s (1976) and Krifka’s (2007) frame setters.
Section 0.2.4 introduces Segmented Discourse Representation Theory, a formal
framework for discourse representation which will be used as a tool to reason
about and formalize rhetorical relations between clauses beyond compositional-
semantic accounts such as Bary and Haug’s (2011). Section 0.3 gives an
overview of some of the main issues in the interpretation of when-clauses, on
the basis of previous extensive research on event structure, temporal
relations, and the anaphoric properties of tense, while Section 0.4 elaborates
on the need for a gradient approach to the study of competition and introduces
the concept of token-based typology, which is central to the methodology used
in the second part of the thesis. Finally, Section 0.5 presents the Early
Slavic corpus used in this work and Section 0.6 summarizes the structure of
the thesis.

###  0.2 Background

####  0.2.1 Defining conjunct participles and dative absolutes

Under a Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) framework, the participle
constructions under analyses are classified as adjuncts, namely grammatical
functions that are not subcategorizable (i.e. required as arguments) by a
predicate (Dalrymple et al. 2019: 12).
We can distinguish two main types of participial adjuncts in Early Slavic. In
so-called (co-)predicative222The term copredicative participles is used by
Haspelmath (1995: 17–20), rather than only predicative, used, for example, by
Eckhoff et al. (2009), Bary and Haug (2011) and Haug (2011). or conjunct
participles, the subject is coreferential with an argument of the matrix VP,
most typically the subject, which determines the case of the participle form
itself. In other words, conjunct participles are functionally controlled by an
argument of the matrix clause. Control constructions are defined in LFG as
those in which ‘either syntactic or lexical constraints require coreference
between an argument of the matrix clause [controller] and an argument of a
subordinate or modifying adjunct clause [controllee]’ (Dalrymple et al. 2019:
543). In functional (as opposed to anaphoric) control, the case of the
controllee is determined by the grammatical function (e.g. subject, object,
etc.) of the controller.
(0.2.1)-(0.2.1) are typical examples of conjunct participles.

azъ prišedъ iscěljǫ i 1.sg.nom come.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg heal.prs.1.sg 3.sg.m.acc
‘I will come and heal him’ (Matthew 8:7)

vykradše pervoe svętoslava po tomъ ubiša kytana i družinu jego vsju izbiša
kidnap.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.pl first Svyatoslav.gen after that.loc.sg kill.aor.3.pl
Kytan.gen and retinue.acc.sg 3.sg.m.gen entire.acc.sg thrash.aor.3.pl ‘After
kidnapping Svyatoslav first, they killed Kytan and thrashed his entire
retinue’ (Primary Chronicle, Codex Laurentianus f. 75d)

i padši kolěnoma i čelomь tlьkjuštii [sic] na zemli prěd ikonu styje bce i sia
slovesa načech glati and fall.ptcp.pfv.f.nom.sg knee.inst.du and brow.inst.sg
touch.ptcp.ipfv.f.nom.sg on ground.loc.sg before icon.acc.sg holy.gen.sg
Mother of God.gen.sg and this.acc.pl word.acc.pl start.aor.1.sg speak.inf
‘Falling on my knees and touching the ground before the icon of the holy
Mother of God with my brow, I started speaking the following words’ (Life of
Mary of Egypt, Bdinski Sbornik f. 177r).

Conjunct participles are thus adjuncts with an external argument, an ‘open
slot’ which needs to be filled—in LFG terms, they are xadjuncts of verb-headed
(as opposed to noun-headed, as in attributive uses) $f$-structures (as in
(0.2.1), from example (0.2.1)), or verb-headed open adjuncts in other
frameworks (e.g. Fabricius-Hansen and Haug 2012a).

$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it ic\v{e}liti $\mskip-3.0mu\left\langle\hskip
0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
subj,obj \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right\rangle\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces' \\\ \sc asp &10.00002pt\sc pfv
\\\ \sc tense &10.00002pt\sc prs \\\ \sc subj &\hskip 10.00002pt\lower
0.86108pt\vbox{\hrule\hbox{\vrule\kern 1.25pt\vbox{\kern
1.25pt\hbox{$\scriptstyle 1$}\kern 1.25pt}\kern 1.25pt\vrule}\hrule}
$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it azъ'\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\\\ \sc obj
&10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it i' \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\\\ \sc xadj
&10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it priti $\mskip-3.0mu\left\langle\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
subj \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right\rangle\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces' \\\ \sc asp &10.00002pt\sc pfv
\\\ \sc subj &\hskip 10.00002pt\lower 0.86108pt\vbox{\hrule\hbox{\vrule\kern
1.25pt\vbox{\kern 1.25pt\hbox{$\scriptstyle 1$}\kern 1.25pt}\kern
1.25pt\vrule}\hrule}\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$

Absolute constructions, on the other hand, are not functionally controlled by
any argument of the matrix VP. They thus have an internal subject which needs
not be coreferential with any constituent in the superordinate clause. As in
several other early Indo-European languages (e.g. Ancient Greek, Latin,
Gothic, Sanskrit), both the participle and its subject generally appear in
oblique cases, dative in Early Slavic, which is why we often refer to this
construction as dative absolute. (0.2.1)-(0.2.1) are typical examples of
dative absolutes from the same sources as (0.2.1)-(0.2.1).

i sъchodęštemъ imъ sъ gory zapovědě imъ isъ glę and
come.down.ptcp.ipfv.m.dat.pl 3.pl.dat from mountain.gen.sg command.aor.3.sg
3.pl.dat Jesus.nom say.ptcp.prs.m.nom.sg ‘As they came down from the mountain,
Jesus commanded them saying’ (Matthew 17:9)

i umnoživšemъ sę člvkomъ na zemli pomysliša sozdati stolpъ do nbse vъ dni
nektana i faleka and multiply.ptcp.pfv.m.dat.pl refl person.dat.m.pl on
earth.loc.sg plan.aor.3.pl create.inf pillar.acc.sg to heaven.gen.sg in
day.acc.pl Nectan.gen.sg and Peleg.gen.sg ‘And when people had multiplied on
earth, they planned to build a pillar to heaven in the days of Nectan and
Peleg.’ (The Primary Chronicle, Codex Laurentianus f. 2v)

lětu skončavšu se i priide paki zosima vь pustynju year.dat.n.sg
end.ptcp.pfv.n.dat.sg refl ptc come.aor.3.sg again Zosima.nom in desert.acc.sg
‘When the year was ending Zosima came again to the desert’ (Life of Mary of
Egypt, Bdinski Sbornik f. 187r)

If conjunct participles are open adjuncts, then absolutes can be considered
closed adjuncts. In LFG terms, they are adjuncts of verb-headed f-structures,
as represented in (0.2.1) from example (0.2.1).

$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it zapov\v{e}d\v{e}ti $\mskip-3.0mu\left\langle\hskip
0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
subj, obj, obl${}_{\textsc{goal}}$ \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right\rangle\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces'\\\ \sc asp &10.00002pt\sc pfv
\\\ \sc tense &10.00002pt\sc pst \\\ \sc subj
&10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it Isusъ'\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\\\ \sc obl${}_{\textsc{goal}}$
&10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &\hskip 10.00002pt`\it i*'${}_{\lower
0.60275pt\vbox{\hrule\hbox{\vrule\kern 1.25pt\vbox{\kern
1.25pt\hbox{$\scriptstyle 1$}\kern 1.25pt}\kern 1.25pt\vrule}\hrule}}$
\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip 0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\\\ \sc
obj &10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr...\crcr}\vskip
1.65761pt}\hskip 0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\\\ \sc adj
&10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it sъchoditi $\mskip-3.0mu\left\langle\hskip
0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
subj,obl${}_{\textsc{source}}$ \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right\rangle\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces' \\\ \sc asp &10.00002pt\sc ipfv
\\\ \sc subj &10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &\hskip 10.00002pt`\it i*'${}_{\lower
0.60275pt\vbox{\hrule\hbox{\vrule\kern 1.25pt\vbox{\kern
1.25pt\hbox{$\scriptstyle 1$}\kern 1.25pt}\kern 1.25pt\vrule}\hrule}}$
\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip 0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\\\ \sc
obl${}_{\textsc{source}}$ &10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip
0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it sъ $\mskip-3.0mu\left\langle\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
obj \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right\rangle\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces'\\\ \sc obj
&10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it gora' \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\\\ \sc xadj
&10.00002pt$\mskip-3.0mu\left[\hskip 0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
pred &10.00002pt`\it glagolati $\mskip-3.0mu\left\langle\hskip
0.0pt\vbox{\vskip
1.65761pt\halign{\avmjfont\strut#\unskip\hfil&&\hskip\avmjhskip\avmjvalfont#\unskip\hfil\cr\sc
subj\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right\rangle\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces' \\\ \sc asp &10.00002pt\sc ipfv
\\\ \sc subj &\hskip 10.00002pt\lower 0.86108pt\vbox{\hrule\hbox{\vrule\kern
1.25pt\vbox{\kern 1.25pt\hbox{$\scriptstyle 1$}\kern 1.25pt}\kern
1.25pt\vrule}\hrule} \crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$\ignorespaces\crcr}\vskip 1.65761pt}\hskip
0.0pt\right]\mskip-3.0mu$

Traditionally, subject non-coreferentiality (or switch reference) between the
absolute construction and the matrix clause has been considered obligatory,
but, as it has often been pointed out, this is by no means always the case in
the Early Slavic sources (cf. Worth 1994; Collins 2004, 2011), similarly to
what we also independently observe in Ancient Greek (cf. Fuller 2006). (0.2.1)
and (0.2.1) are examples of subject co-reference in Early Slavic dative
absolutes.

i bystъ idǫštemъ imь. ištistišę sę and happen.aor.3.sg go.ptcp.ipfv.dat.pl
3.pl.dat cleanse.aor.3.pl refl ‘And it came to pass that, as they went, they
were cleansed’ (Luke 17:14)

i všedšim v gorodъ utěšista volodimercě and enter.ptcp.pfv.dat.pl in
city.acc.sg console.aor.3.du people of Vladimir.acc.pl ‘And when they entered
the city, they consoled the people of Vladimir’ (Suzdal Chronicle, Codex
Laurentianus f. 126r)

Such cases of subject co-referentiality have sometimes been called
‘nonstandard’ (Worth 1994) or ‘non-canonical’ (Collins 2011), if not outright
‘aberrations’ or signs of ‘decay’ (e.g. Večerka 1961: 49; Večerka 1996: 190;
Corin 1995: 268). There are other frequently observed instances of ‘non-
canonical’ absolutes (as well as conjunct participles), most notably those
which are overtly coordinated to their matrix or which do not have a clear
matrix clause they attach to. Conjoined absolutes have been commented on
particularly in the literature on Old East Slavic (cf., for example, Nečásek
1957; Večerka 1961; Borkovskij and Kuznecov 1963; Alekseev 1987; Gebert 1987;
Remneva 1989; Corin 1995), but it is in fact well attested in South Slavic
recensions of Church Slavonic as well (cf. Grković-Major 2007 and Collins
2011). As argued by Collins (2011), several ‘non-canonical’ absolutes should
be interpreted by taking into account the broader discourse context rather
than the inter-clausal or inter-sentential level. As I will show in the second
part of this thesis, these occurrences are not at odds with the core functions
of dative absolutes as discourse devices. In fact, most, if not all, the non-
canonical usages of absolutes previously observed in the literature are
phenomena frequently observed to co-occur cross-linguistically on
constructions with similar functions as Early Slavic absolutes.

####  0.2.2 Conjunct participles according to Bary & Haug 2011

According to Bary and Haug (2011), conjunct participles in Ancient Greek
fulfil one of three main discourse functions (labelled as Frames, Independent
Rhemes, Elaborations), each involving a specific temporal relation to the
matrix clause and certain discourse effects that can be modelled at the
compositional level. As the corpus evidence in Haug (2012) shows, each
function is more likely to surface in specific syntactic, semantic and
information-structural configurations. Bary and Haug’s (2011) analysis is
based on Ancient Greek, but we can easily exemplify the concept, in a
nutshell, using Early Slavic participles, leaving the semantic formalization
aside for simplicity. Since both Old Church Slavonic and Ancient Greek
participles have been shown to express aspect, rather than relative tense
(Eckhoff and Haug 2015; Kamphuis 2020), I will talk about the ‘aspect’ of
participles and refer to what is traditionally called ‘past participles’ and
‘present participles’ as ‘perfective participles and ‘imperfective
participles’ instead, which is reflected in the glossing criteria.

  * •

Frames set the stage for and provide temporal anchoring for the matrix event.

    * –

They are strictly anaphoric/presuppositional: they depend on the context for
their own temporal reference, thus referring to previously mentioned or easily
inferable situations. In (• ‣ 0.2.2), for example, there is no explicit
mention of Mstislav leaving for Pereyaslav, so the motion event is
contextually inferred and used as anchor for the matrix event.

    * –

Because they are presuppositional, they tend to occur sentence-initially.

    * –

They are not modally dependent on the matrix verb, so that if the matrix verb
is an imperative, for example, the participle is not interpreted as part of
the command, as (• ‣ 0.2.2) shows.

    * –

When perfective, they always induce narrative progression, whereby the matrix
eventuality is interpreted as taking place (just) after the participle event.
When imperfective, the adjunct event includes the matrix event, as in (• ‣
0.2.2).

    * –

Their dominant verbal aspect within a corpus is likely to vary with the genre:
‘both while x-ing and after x-ing are possible ways of linking to a previously
mentioned or accessible event’ (Haug 2012: 311-312).

    * –

They are more likely to constitute ‘predictable’ (Haug 2012) predications in
the discourse in which they appear, which may be expected to be reflected as
overall lower lexical variation (Haug 2012: 312).

i prišedъ mstislavъ v perejaslavlь. poima ženu svoju ide v lučeskъ. and
arrive.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg Mstislav.m.nom in Pereyaslav.acc
take.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg wife.acc.sg his.f.acc.sg go.aor.3.sg to Luchesk.acc
‘And when Mstislav arrived in Pereyaslav, he went to Luchesk, taking his wife
with him’ (Suzdal Chronicle, Codex Laurentianus f. 115r)

ty že postę sę pomaži glavǫ svojǫ i lice tvoe umyi 2.sg.nom ptc
fast.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg refl anoint.imp.2.sg head.acc.sg your.acc.sg and
face.acc.sg your.acc.sg wash.imp.2.sg ‘But when you fast, put oil on your head
and wash your face’ (Matthew 6:17)

ischodęšte že obrětǫ čka kẏriněiska go out.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.pl ptc
receive.aor.3.pl person.gen.sg of Cyrene.gen.sg ‘As they were going out, they
met a man from Cyrene’ (Matthew 27:32)

  * •

Independent Rhemes are discourse-coordinated, therefore information-
structurally very similar to independent clauses.

    * –

Like frames, they relate to the preceding context for their temporal
reference, but unlike frames, they generally introduce new events.

    * –

They also provide the temporal reference for the next event in line and can be
stacked up similarly to a series of independent clauses, as in (• ‣ 0.2.2).

    * –

Unlike frames, they are modally dependent on the matrix verb. They are, for
example, interpreted as part of the command if the matrix is an imperative, as
in (• ‣ 0.2.2).

    * –

Like frames, they also always produce narrative progression when perfective.

    * –

They are predominantly perfective and precede the matrix verb.

    * –

They are expected to encode new information: this could surface as overall
more lexical variation among participles with this function.

i abie tekъ edinъ otъ nichъ. i priemъ gǫbǫ. isplьnь ocьta. i vьznezъ na
trьstь. napaěše i and immediately run.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg one.m.nom.sg from
3.pl.gen and take.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg sponge.acc.sg fill.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg
vinegar.gen.sg and put.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg on reed.acc.sg
give.to.drink.impf.3.sg 3.m.sg.acc ‘Immediately one of them ran and took a
sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to him
to drink’ (Matthew 27:48)

i ně li ti tamo povoica. a krьvoši prisoli and not be.3.sg.prs.act if 2.sg.dat
there veil.sg.gen then buy.ptcp.pfv.f.nom.sg send.imp.2.sg ‘And if you don’t
have a veil there, then buy one and send it.’ (Birch bark letter 731;
translation by Schaeken 2018a)

  * •

Elaborations add granularity to the semantics of the main event and typically
express manner or means/instrument.

    * –

They are more likely to be imperfectives since their function is to provide
more information on the matrix event by describing ‘“concomitant
circumstances” that are cotemporal with the main event’ (Haug 2012: 312).

    * –

They are more likely to encode new information.

    * –

They are more likely to follow the matrix clause, because they are temporally
dependent on the main verb and because they are non-topical and non-focused.

    * –

Like independent rhemes they are modally dependent on the matrix verb, as (• ‣
0.2.2) shows.

ašte ty esi chъ. rъci namъ ne obinǫję sę if 2.sg.nom be.pres.2.sg Christ.nom
say.imp.2.sg 1.pl.dat neg conceal.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg refl ‘If You are the
Christ, tell us plainly’ (John 10:24)

Bary and Haug’s (2011) framework is mostly built on the analysis of conjunct
participles,333The authors only include one example containing an absolute
participle, which is treated as a Frame (see Bary and Haug 2011: 8). which
begs the question of whether absolute constructions also fulfil all three
functions with some frequency. The intuition is that absolute constructions
should typically show properties of frames, given the main characterization of
dative absolutes in the literature as ‘backgrounding’ or ‘stage-setting’
devices (Worth 1994: 30; Corin 1995: 259; Collins 2011: 113).
As already mentioned, earlier scholarship on Early Slavic adjunct participle
clauses has overwhelmingly focussed on their origin and relationship with
Ancient Greek conjunct participles and genitive absolutes. More recently,
Sakharova (2007, 2010) analysed the pragmatic motivations for the differences
in the distribution of participle constructions and finite independent clauses
for a number of verbs in Old East Slavic Novgorod First Chronicle. Sakharova
suggests that the usage of participle constructions (dative absolutes and
conjunct participles alike) mostly depends on their ‘secondary status’
(второстепенности) in the discourse (Sakharova 2010: 88), which in most cases
has to do with discourse properties typical of ‘backgrounded’ units.
Background and foreground, according to Sakharova, can be defined on the basis
of ‘what information is to be considered more or less relevant to the
rhetorical goal’:444‘[…] какую информацию считать менее соответствующей
риторической цели’ (Sakharova 2010: 89). foreground refers to ‘unexpected,
non-sterotypical’ situations, whereas background refers to predictable
information about ‘stereotyped sequences of situations’.555‘‘Ожидаемой и,
следовательно, менее выделенной прагматически, оказывается информация о
стереотипных последовательностях ситуаций.’ (Sakharova 2010: 89).

This characterization of background and foreground unit bears, in fact, great
similarities with the properties of frames and independent rhemes,
respectively, as described by Bary and Haug (2011) and outlined above.

####  0.2.3 Frame setters and fronted adjuncts

Much of the discussion in Chapters 1-4 revolves around the possible framing
function of participle constructions and jegda-clauses, and the configurations
in which their interpretation as frames is, in fact, available. As we will see
already at the beginning of Chapter 1, the sentence-initial position is where
conjunct participles may be ambiguous between a frame and an independent rheme
function, and it is also where the vast majority of dative absolutes in the
Gospels are found, which, I will argue, is in itself indicative of their
typical function as frames. As argued by Bary and Haug (2011), frames are
generally found sentence-initially, since they are presuppositional and
because they set the stage and provide temporal anchoring for the matrix
event. In this, they are similar to Charolles’s (2005) framing adverbials,
Fabricius-Hansen and Haug’s (2012b) fronted adjuncts, and Chafe’s (1976) and
Krifka’s (2007) frame setters, all of which are most naturally fronted because
of their discourse-cohesive function of providing ‘the frame in which the
following expression should be interpreted’ (Krifka 2008: 269), and because
‘they are topical (i.e. "anchored" in the preceding context)’ (Charolles 2005:
13) and locate ‘the matrix event relative to an eventuality that […] has
already been explicitly established in or is inferable from the preceding
context’ (Fabricius-Hansen and Haug 2012b: 54). It is important to keep in
mind some of the properties in common to these notions and Bary and Haug’s
(2011) frames since they will be particularly useful to account for a group of
absolute constructions that, outside of the dataset used in Chapter 1, occur
in post-matrix position but whose function is still compatible with Bary and
Haug’s (2011) frames, despite these being overwhelmingly more frequent in pre-
matrix position, as already mentioned.
Frame setters, according to Chafe (1976: 50), are used ‘to limit the
applicability of the main predication to a certain restricted domain’. Krifka
(2007) built on Chafe’s (1976) definition by adding that, where a frame setter
is not explicit, the domain or precise evaluation of the main predicate is
unspecified (hence presumably inferred). Explicit frame setters specify this
domain by choosing one out of a set of possible frames, thereby stating that
the main predicate holds within that frame—which is why, according to Krifka,
frame setters always contain a separate focus, which is meant as ‘the presence
of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic
expressions’ (Krifka 2007: 247). Krifka’s treatment of frame setters (like
that of co-eventive adjuncts in Fabricius-Hansen and Haug 2012b, as well as
that of participle adjuncts in Bary and Haug 2011) is based on the assumption
shared by several theories of information structure and non-linear prosody
(e.g. Truckenbrodt 1995, 2007; Büring 2006; Féry 2007, 2008) that sentences
present a double bipartition into background-focus666Note that this is not the
same as background as used so far, which is more in line with the usage of the
term in formal theories of discourse representation such as SDRT. and topic-
comment (also called theme-rheme). While focus always refers to the presence
of alternatives, topic can refer to aboutness topic, in broad terms
corresponding to ‘the entity that a speaker identifies, about which then
information, the comment, is given’ (Krifka 2007: 265), but also to frame
setters, sometimes also referred to as frame topics (e.g. Fabricius-Hansen and
Haug 2012b: 41) or frame setting topics (e.g. Féry 2007; Song 2017: 25). Both
aboutness and frame-setting topics refer to entities that are already
established or inferrable from the preceding discourse—‘individuals in the
case of aboutness topics, time and places in the case of frame topics’ (e.g.
Fabricius-Hansen and Haug 2012b: 41). While sentences always have explicit
foci, topics are not necessarily expressed (as in [the HOUSE is on
fire]Comment; Krifka 2007: 267).777The example given by Krifka (2007)
leverages prosody (as the all-capitals on house indicates), to make certain
arguments stronger—something which we cannot obviously rely on for a dead
language.
The relation between topic-comment and background-focus is much more complex
than the mere equivalences topic $=$ background and comment $=$ focus.
Crucially, a topic can contain a focus. Though not pursuing the issue in
depth, Fabricius-Hansen and Haug (2012b) suggest that closed adjuncts (i.e.
absolutes), because of their internal subject, may have a topic of their own
serving as a contrastive partial topic of a common topic (i.e. the referent
introduced by the subject of the matrix). A contrastive topic, in Krifka’s
(2007) treatment, is ‘an aboutness topic that contains a focus, which is doing
what focus always does, namely indicating an alternative’ (Krifka 2007: 267),
which in the case of contrastive topic is an alternative aboutness topic, as
in (0.2.3).

(From Krifka 2007: 268)

  * A:

Does your sister speak Portuguese?

  * B:

[My [BROther]Focus]Topic [[DOES]Focus]Comment

.

Fabricius-Hansen and Haug (2012b) argue that clause-final restrictive adjuncts
(which, they note, often receive either mildly or strongly contrastive
readings) semantically correspond to frame-setting fronted adjuncts, so that
the former must be syntactically analysed on a par with fronted adjuncts,
namely adjoined high up in the sentence—‘above rather than below the subject
of the matrix clause’ (p.54). In (e.a), for instance, the closed adjunct with
the leaves on the trees may receive the restrictive interpretation which is
instead explicitly triggered in its paraphrasis in (e.b). Similarly, Krifka
(2007: 270) compared contrastive topics and frame setters, saying that what
they have in common ‘is that they express that, for the communicative needs at
the current point of discourse, the current contribution only gives a limited
or incomplete answer’. This is one of the information structural differences
between (e.e), which has no adjunct, and the others in (e.). The domain of
(e.e) has to be inferred from the context, since there is no frame-setter
providing one out of a set of alternatives within which the eventuality holds.

(a. and b. from Fabricius-Hansen and Haug 2012b: 48)

  * a.

The cave entrance is easy to miss with the leaves on the trees

  * b.

The cave entrance is easy to miss when the leaves are on the trees

  * c.

With the leaves on the trees the cave entrance is easy to miss

  * d.

When the leaves are on the trees the cave entrance is easy to miss

  * e.

The cave entrance is easy to miss

Crucially, in all of (e.a)-(e.d) the adjunct is very much frame-like from the
temporal perspective. The (mildly) contrastive reading possible in at least
(e.a) and (e.b) does not change our observations about the type of semantic
contribution these make compared to that in (e.c) and (e.d).

####  0.2.4 Segmented Discourse Representation Theory

Bary and Haug’s (2011) framework intentionally leaves aside semantic effects
that derive from default discourse reasoning (cf Bary and Haug 2011: 36-37)
and only formally models the temporal dimension. Their formalization is thus
not fully specified as far as the rhetorical links introduced by participle
clauses are concerned. However, frames, independent rhemes and elaborations
are primarily associated with specific discourse functions, as we have seen.
Frames, as Bary and Haug (2011: 13) say, are similar to Krifka’s (2008: 269)
stage topics or frame setters, which provide “the frame in which the following
expression should be interpreted”. Independent rhemes are like independent
clauses from the discourse perspective. Elaborations provide more information
(elaborate) on the matrix event, similarly to how the Elaboration relation is
described in formal theories of discourse representation like Segmented
Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT; Asher and Lascarides 2003), on which
Bary and Haug’s (2011) discourse analysis is loosely based.
SDRT is a theory of discourse interpretation which, like classic theories in
dynamic semantics (Groenendijk and Stokhof 1991; Kamp and Reyle 1993; Kamp et
al. 2011), works under the assumption that ‘the interpretation of an utterance
is made relative to the interpretation of the preceding utterance’ (Asher and
Lascarides 2003: 39) so that every incoming sentence updates the discourse as
it unfolds. SDRT models the semantics-pragmatics interface using rhetorical
relations (such as the aforementioned Elaboration relation), which are logical
links computed on the basis of commonsense reasoning (in the sense of Hobbs et
al. 1993) with non-linguistic information (e.g. domain knowledge) (Asher and
Lascarides 2003: 39), which allows accounting for semantically underspecified
links between clauses. This captures what was mentioned above, namely that,
much like a sequence of two main clauses, the precise semantic relation
between participle clauses and their matrix clause (e.g. non-temporal effects
such as causality, condition, instrument) must be pragmatically inferred.
An important aspect of SDRT is that its so-called Glue Logic (i.e. the set of
inference rules applied to pragmatically enrich the ‘underspecified logical
forms’ derived by the syntax and the compositional semantics) is non-
monotonic. Namely, it captures defeasible inferences, meaning that the
discourse representation structure can be modified if other cues emerge later
in the discourse licensing different rhetorical relations than previously
inferred. One of Bary and Haug’s (2011) reasons for avoiding a fully-fledged
SDRT formalization of discourse is that, in SDRT, aspect (which SDRT broadly
captures as an eventive versus stative distinction) is only used as a non-
monotonic cue for certain rhetorical relations, whereas, as Bary and Haug
(2011) showed, aspect can be represented to a large extent in the
compositional semantics of Ancient Greek participles. In SDRT, for example, a
sequence of two eventive discourse units may (non-monotonically) trigger a
Narration relation (0.2.4), but not a Background relation, which instead
requires a stative and an eventive unit (0.2.4).888?($\alpha$,$\beta$) simply
indicates an underspecified link between the discourse units $\alpha$ and
$\beta$.

Event($e_{\beta}$) $\land$ Event($e_{\alpha}$) $\land$ ?($\alpha$,$\beta$) $>$
Narration($\alpha$,$\beta$)

Event($e_{\alpha}$) $\land$ State($e_{\beta}$) $\land$ ?($\alpha$,$\beta$) $>$
Background($\alpha$,$\beta$)
State($e_{\beta}$) $\land$ Event($e_{\alpha}$) $\land$ ?($\alpha$,$\beta$) $>$
Background($\alpha$,$\beta$)

Unlike SDRT, Bary and Haug (2011) also do not make specific assumptions
regarding the form a discourse structure should take, whereas in SDRT
discourse structures are represented as graphs, which aptly captures the core
concepts of defeasible inference and discourse update. An SDRT discourse
representation structure is thus incrementally and hierarchically built and
updated with each incoming discourse unit. To take a classic SDRT example,
consider (0.2.4) from Asher and Lascarides (2003: 8).

  * a.

John had a great evening last night.

  * b.

He had a great meal.

  * c.

He ate salmon.

  * d.

He devoured cheese.

  * e.

He then won a dancing competition.

A possible structure for (0.2.4) could be built by inferring that (0.2.4b)
adds granularity to (0.2.4a), thus attaching to it via the SDRT relation
Elaboration. Both (0.2.4c) and (0.2.4d), then, jointly elaborate on (0.2.4b).
(0.2.4c) and (0.2.4d) are therefore linked by the rhetorical relation
Narration and together form a complex discourse unit attaching to (0.2.4b) via
Elaboration. Finally, (0.2.4e) continues the elaboration of (0.2.4a) in the
same way as (0.2.4b) does. (0.2.4d) is therefore linked to (0.2.4b) via
Narration and forms a complex discourse unit with it, so that they now jointly
elaborate on (0.2.4a). Figure (1) shows the discourse structure in a simple
graph form.

Figure 1: Discourse structure for (0.2.4), from Asher and Lascarides (2003:
9).

As we will see in the thesis, both the non-monotonic logic and the graph
representation of discourse structure of SDRT are particularly useful to
formally capture the discourse functions of participle constructions and
jegda-clauses in more complex discourses. When several adjuncts co-occur in
the same discourse, each adjunct can be interpreted as triggering a particular
rhetorical relation at the clause-level, but may then be combined with
subsequent units in the discourse structure to form complex discourse units
that may attach to the subsequent discourse via a yet different relation.

###  0.3 What’s with when?

There are several factors that heavily interact with tense-aspect in the
interpretation of finite temporal clauses and their temporal relation to the
matrix. These have been investigated specifically with regard to when-clauses
since at least Steedman (1982) and include, most importantly, the distinction
between events and states (DRT & SDRT), between durative and non-durative
situations (Heinämäki 1972), between point and interval (Ritchie 1979),
between achievements, accomplishments, activities and states (Vendler 1967),
and, similarly, Comrie’s (1976) higher-level categorization of these
distinctions into three main Aktionsarten, namely telic, atelic and stative.
The precise differences between some of these categories are often marred by
terminological discussions continuing since the sudden plethora of works,
often very influential, published in the 1970s on tense and aspect (among
others, Verkuyl 1972; Dowty 1972, 1977, 1979; Heinämäki 1972; Bennett 1975;
Comrie 1976; Steedman 1977; Ritchie 1979; Isard 1974; Smith 1978) and in the
1980s on event structure, temporal relations, and the anaphoric properties of
tense (e.g. Steedman 1982; Partee 1984; Comrie 1985; Nerbonne 1986; Passonneau
1987; Webber 1983, 1987, 1988; Dowty 1986; Hinrichs 1986; Moens and Steedman
1987, all drawing from Reichenbach 1947).
In common to many theories is that initial (i.e. pre-matrix) temporal
adverbials, such as when-clauses, provide the reference time within which the
situation described by the main clause holds temporally, a temporal frame that
establishes how the main eventuality is to be interpreted. The main issue has
long been explaining how different types of temporal referents introduced by
an adverbial (e.g. a punctual event versus a period of time) interact with the
temporal referent introduced by the matrix clause, which depends on the
temporal adverbial for its interpretation.
It has long been observed (e.g. Kamp and Rohrer 1983; Partee 1984; Hinrichs
1986; Sandström 1993; Bonomi 1997; Sæbø 2012) that when either the temporal
adverbial clause or the matrix clause (or both) describe a
stative/imperfective eventuality there is a temporal symmetry between the two
clauses, whereby if the role is switched the temporal interpretation is
preserved, as in (0.3) from Sæbø (2012: 1422).

  * a.

My s Iroj gotovili dokumenty, kogda pozvonil Borja. we with Ira prepared.ipfv
documents when called.pfv Boris ‘Irina and I were preparing the documents when
Boris called.’

  * b.

Kogda my s Iroj gotovili dokumenty, pozvonil Borja. when we with Ira
prepared.ipfv documents called.pfv Boris ‘When Irina and I were preparing the
documents Boris called.’

As pointed out by Sæbø (2012: 1422), (0.3a) and (0.3b) may have information-
structural differences or may involve different discourse relations, but the
temporal relation is unchanged. When both eventualities are
eventive/perfective, the symmetry does not hold, as (0.3) shows.

  * a.

When she died she left a massive doll collection.
(Sæbø (2012: 1423))

  * b.

She died when she left a massive doll collection.

Sandström (1993) argues that the temporal referent introduced by a when-clause
in English must be a bounded referent: either the phase of a state (‘when I
was eight, I moved to Oslo’), a result state (‘when they had written the
letter, they sighed with relief’), or an individual event (‘when he saw him,
he smiled at him’). Even so, however, several other factors are at play in
determining whether a when-clause can be employed or not. Compare the pairs in

  * a.

She reached him, and said something in his ear.

  * b.

When she reached him, she said something in his ear.

  * a.

They chose violence and attacked innocent people.

  * b.

?When they chose violence, they attacked innocent people.

  * a.

He burped loudly and put the glass back on the counter.

  * b.

?When he burped loudly he put the glass back on the counter.

  * a.

?Sue killed her husband and put poison in his whiskey.

  * b.

When Sue killed her husband, she put poison in his whiskey.

  * a.

?When they built the fifth bridge, a man drowned in the river.

  * b.

When they were building the fifth bridge, a man drowned in the river.

These examples (from Sandström 1993, except (0.3) from Ritchie 1979 and (0.3)
from me) show that sequences of two event-type predicates can be felicitously
rendered either as a sequence of two main clauses, as when-structures, or
both, even though the sentences in each pair (0.3)-(0.3) are in fact
structurally identical. Parallel structures like (0.3), if deemed equally
acceptable, can hardly be considered to convey the same temporal relation
between the events predicated of—(0.3a) suggests a temporal sequence, where
they first chose violence and, as a result of it, they attacked. (0.3b)
instead suggests that every time they chose violence they attacked innocent
people (with the presupposition that they sometimes do not choose violence).
In other instances, as in (0.3), the main clause is a ‘constitutive part’
(Moens 1987) or ‘subevent’ (Sandström 1993) of the event referent introduced
by the when-clause, which ultimately shows how mere temporal inclusion of a
main-clause event in a given temporal referent cannot be felicitously conveyed
by an eventive when-clause (as in (0.3a), a reading that demands the
progressive instead (0.3b).
Even without wandering far from English in genealogical terms, it is clear
that these (sometimes very subtle) constraints are not identical cross-
linguistically. The scope of each when-equivalent varies widely across
different languages, which may favour other constructions in situations where
when-clauses are perhaps preferred or more commonly found in English. This is
not necessarily an observation about the lack of particular translational
equivalents in either English or any of the other languages, but rather about
(also potentially very subtle) differences in the way each language
categorizes meanings, and, therefore, in the division of labour among
competing constructions. Any when-clause in an English version of the Bible
may correspond to different constructions in other translations:

Acts 27:38

  * a.

And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship
(English Standard Version)

  * b.

En nadat hulle met voedsel versadig was, het hulle die skip ligter gemaak and
after they with food filled were had they the ship lighter made
(Afrikaans)9991933 [1953] South African Bible Society translation.

  * c.

Quando si furono saziati di cibo, alleggerirono la nave when refl had filled
of food, they-lightened the ship (Italian)1010101998 [1948-53] Bibbia di
Gerusalemme.

  * d.

I nasitivši se jela, olakšaše ladju and having-filled refl with-food they-
lightened ship (Serbian)1111111868 Daničić-Karadžić translation.

  * e.

Luego, satisfechos de la comida, aligeraban la nave later satisfied of the
meal they-lightened the ship (Spanish)1212122015 Reina Valera Actualizada
translation.

  * f.

După ce s’au săturat, au uşurat corabia After that self-have filled, they-have
lightened ship (Romanian)1313131921 Biblia Cornilescu translation.

(0.3) is only one of the possible scenarios, where the English version has a
when-clause and the other languages show a range of different possible
constructions, instead of the when-equivalents that do exist in each of those
languages. Several other scenarios are obviously possible and are, in fact,
widely attested, including those where all the languages in (0.3) use when-
equivalents or where all but English use a when-equivalent. Even among Indo-
European languages, the scope of when-equivalents can however be quite
different from the one of English when-clauses. In Ancient Greek, where non-
finite temporal adverbial clauses are much more extensively employed than in
English, we find that there is no direct way of employing when-equivalents
(hóte/hótan) to express simple temporal inclusion in the past, for which
imperfective participle clauses are generally employed instead, as in (0.3b)
where the English when-clause corresponds to a genitive absolute in Greek (and
similarly a dative absolute in Old Church Slavonic (0.3c)).

Matthew 28:11

  * a.

Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and
shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done.
(King’s James Version)

  * b.

Poreuomenōn de autōn idou tines tēs koustōdías elthontes eis tēn polin
apēngeilan tois archiereusin hapanta ta genomena go.ptcp.ipfv.gen.pl ptc
3.pl.gen behold some the.gen.sg watch.gen.sg come.ptcp.pfv.nom.pl in the.acc
city.acc announce.aor.3.pl the.dat.pl chief priest.dat.pl all.n.acc.pl
the.n.acc.pl happen.ptcp.pfv.n.acc.pl

  * c.

idǫštama že ima. se edini otъ kustodiję prišedъše vъ gradъ. vьzvěstišę
archiereomъ vьsě byvъšaa. go.ptcp.ipfv.dat.du ptc 3.du.dat behold some.nom.pl
from watch.gen.sg come.ptcp.pfv.nom.pl in city.acc.sg announce.aor.3.pl chief
priest.dat.pl all.n.acc.pl happen.ptcp.pfv.n.acc.pl

Based on our knowledge of Ancient Greek aspectual semantics, we might expect
to find when-equivalents in the imperfect to enable mere temporal inclusion of
an eventive main clause, similarly to how the progressive in English enables
simple temporal inclusion in the when-clause, as in (0.3). Corpus data,
however, indicates that such a configuration (i.e. an imperfect when-
equivalent followed by an eventive–aorist–main clause) is exceedingly rare in
the Ancient Greek corpus141414Only 1 occurrence of pre-matrix hóte-clause with
an imperfect verb followed by an aorist main verb was found in PROIEL, and
none of hótan. The verb in the imperfect is a form of eimí ‘to be, to exist’
(kaì hóte ēn dekaétēs ho paīs, prēgma es hautòn toiónde genómenon exéphēné min
‘Now when the boy was ten years old, the truth about him was revealed in some
such way as this’, Herodotus 1:114). There are 3 occurrences of post-matrix
imperfect hóte-clauses, 2 of which are forms of eimí and 1 of the verb záō ‘to
live’. In such cases, we could argue that the order of the eventualities
involved is aorist-imperfect, not imperfect-aorist, which is somewhat less
rare, although still relatively uncommon (13 occurrences).. Both imperfective
participles and imperfect jegda-clauses with an aorist main clause are instead
found in Early Slavic, as the dative absolute in (0.3c) and the jegda-clause
in (0.3c) show. Once again, Greek does not use a hōte\- or hōtan-clause, but
this time a nominalized accusative with infinitive (0.3c).

Luke 11:27

  * a.

And it came to pass, as he was saying these things a woman from the crowd
called out

  * b.

Egeneto de en tôi legein auton tauta eparasa tis phônên gunê ek tou okhlou
eipen autôi happen.aor.3.sg ptc in the.m.dat.sg say.inf.prs 3.sg.m.acc
this.n.acc.pl raise.ptcp.pfv.f.nom.sg certain.m.nom.sg voice.f.acc.sg
woman.f.nom.sg from the.gen.sg crowd.gen.sg say.aor.3.sg 3.sg.m.dat

  * c.

bystъ že egda glaaše se. vъzdvigъši glasъ edina žena otъ naroda reče emu
happen.aor.3.sg ptc when say.impf.3.sg this.n.acc.sg raise.ptcp.pfv.f.nom.sg
voice.acc some.f.nom.sg woman.f.nom.sg from crowd.gen.sg say.aor.3.sg
3.sg.m.dat

It is clear that the competition between participle adjuncts and jegda-clauses
cannot simply be captured in terms of discrete, categorical variables, but it
should be modelled as a continuum allowing a degree of overlap and should aim
to reveal broader patterns in a probabilistic, rather than a fully
deterministic way. This is what token-based typology can help us achieve.

###  0.4 A token-based typological approach to the study of language-internal
variation

In our exploration of the functions of participle clauses and jegda-clauses we
do not have access, a priori, to a (set of) comparative concept(s) (Haspelmath
2010) that can be leveraged for language comparison. We have simply observed
that there is overlap in the usage of certain language-particular
constructions, whose individual functional remit must still be defined—which
is, in fact, the very goal of this thesis. As we have seen, there are good
reasons to expect that the semantics of Early Slavic participial adjuncts,
like their Ancient Greek counterparts, can be defined compositionally to a
good extent, particularly with respect to the temporal-aspectual dimension.
However, simply by virtue of being juxtaposed forms, there are, especially
non-temporal, aspects of their semantics which are left underspecified. This
is, as we saw, why Bary and Haug’s (2011) framework is partly integrated with
SDRT as a discourse formalization tool, particularly for dealing with more
complex discourse structures.
The closest we get to a comparative concept encompassing the constructions
under study is what Cristofaro (2013b) refers to as when-clauses151515Small
caps is mine. Cristofaro (2013b) uses inverted commas (‘when’) to refer to the
concept when to distinguish it from the English token when., defined in
functional terms as a construction ‘encoding a temporal relation between two
events, such that there is a temporal overlap between the two’ and in which
‘the exact extent of the overlap is unspecified and subject to variation’.
Cristofaro’s definition encompasses both deranked verb forms (Stassen 1985;
Croft 1990; Cristofaro 1998, 2019), that is, verb forms lacking marking of one
or more tense, aspect, or mood distinctions compared to independent clauses in
the same language (e.g. participles in Early Slavic and Ancient Greek) and
balanced ones, which include not only finite clauses introduced by a
subordinator (e.g. jegda-clauses or English when-clauses), but also juxtaposed
independent clauses whose temporal relation needs to be pragmatically
inferred.
We have seen in Section 0.3 that English when-clauses, as well as jegda-
clauses, can express more than just overlap. Cristofaro’s when-clauses may
either reflect a misnomer, for lack of better generic alternatives, or their
definition may refer to a more general sense of overlap as co-temporality in
the sense of, for example, Behrens et al. (2012). Whichever the case, the
scope of English when-clauses does observably span both that of jegda-clauses
and that of conjunct participles and absolute constructions, as can be evinced
by the counterparts to each of these constructions in different English
versions of the Bible, that is, all three OCS constructions can correspond to
a when-clause in English, as the examples in this Introduction already
suggested. As a preliminary umbrella term for the functional continuum in
which conjunct participles, absolute constructions and jegda-clauses are set,
we may therefore stick to ‘when-clauses’.
With these assumptions in mind, we can use a token-based typological approach
(Levshina 2019, 2022) to explore the semantic ground covered by English when
and induce cross-linguistically common semantic dimensions from parallel
corpora available for Old Church Slavonic. Token-based typology ‘makes
generalizations and classifies languages using the tokens of specific
linguistic units or structures observed in language use, as approximated by
corpora’ (Levshina 2019: 534), allowing us to capture the gradience and
overlap between linguistic phenomena like when-clauses and the language-
internal variation which is inherent to the very concept of competition. This
is in contrast with traditional type-based approaches which compare languages
based on pre-defined categorical (e.g. balanced versus deranked; SV versus VS)
or ordinal variables (e.g. number of basic colour categories), as the discrete
categories in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS; Dryer and
Haspelmath 2013) indicate.
Like previous experiments in token-based typology that aimed to induce cross-
linguistically salient dimensions from a parallel corpus (e.g. Wälchli and
Cysouw 2012; Hartmann et al. 2014; Levshina 2015) probabilistic semantic maps
are employed in this thesis as a data-driven method to study conceptual
variation within the semantic space of the hypothetical concept when. As we
will see, the analysis based on this method provides us with clearer
functional boundaries between the Early Slavic constructions under analysis,
supporting and complementing the findings of the corpus-based and temporal-
semantic analysis of the first part of the thesis, while also setting Early
Slavic when-clauses in typological perspective.

###  0.5 The Early Slavic corpus

Most of the Early Slavic data used in this thesis is extracted from the
TOROT161616Tromsø Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian Treebanks (Eckhoff and
Berdičevskis 2015). The version used in this thesis corresponds to release
$20200116$, which can be obtained from http://torottreebank.github.io.
treebank. Table 1 shows a breakdown of the texts from which dative absolutes,
conjunct participles and jegda-clauses were extracted, with an indication of
the (high-level) variety of Early Slavic which each text can be ascribed to
and the total number of manually annotated tokens.
All TOROT data is lemmatized, morphologically analysed and syntactically
annotated, and all layers of annotation have either been manually post-
corrected or fully manually annotated.171717The Old Church Slavonic Codex
Zographensis in TOROT was excluded from the dataset because it mostly overlaps
in content with the Codex Marianus, which has more detailed annotation. The
modern Russian portion of the TOROT treebank is also excluded.
As an offspring of the Old Church Slavonic portion of the
PROIEL181818Pragmatic Resources in Old Indo-European Languages (Haug and
Jøhndal 2008), https://proiel.github.io. treebank, TOROT uses the PROIEL
annotation scheme, which is modelled on dependency grammar (DG). Like DG, it
uses overt elements in the sentences as nodes in a syntactic representation,
rather than adding phrasal nodes as in phrase structure grammar. The PROIEL
scheme, however, deviates from classic DG schemes (e.g. the one adopted by the
Prague Dependency Treebank) in some important ways, most notably by allowing
empty nodes (e.g. in cases such as asyndetic coordination and verb ellipsis)
and by explicitly signalling secondary dependency (whenever there is a
nonfinite construction whose subject is coreferent with an element of the
matrix verb, as is the case with conjunct participles) (Haug et al. 2009).
The Codex Marianus, an Old Church Slavonic tetraevangelion from the PROIEL
treebanks, also contains information-structural annotation, including
givenness status (e.g. new, old, accessible) and anaphoric links from anaphors
to their antecedents, as well as additional layers of semantic annotation,
such as animacy of nominal referents and Aktionsart at the level of verb
lemma. Furthermore, it is aligned to the Ancient Greek version of the New
Testament in PROIEL191919The Greek New Testament version in PROIEL is von
Tischendorf (1869–1872), which is not the source text of the Codex Marianus,
as is clear when comparing some of the mismatches between the Ancient Greek
and the Old Church Slavonic version. In the course of the relevant chapters, I
will point out whether potential mismatches between the two languages
according to the PROIEL version correspond to a match when compared to other
Ancient Greek versions.. Because of its alignment with the Ancient Greek
version and its more detailed annotation, the analysis will be carried out
separately on the Codex Marianus and on the rest of the TOROT treebank. I will
refer to the former as a deeply annotated treebank, to distinguish it from the
rest of the texts from the TOROT treebank, which contain only up to dependency
annotation, namely the minimum requirement for a corpus to be classified as a
treebank, and which I will refer to as standard treebanks.
Note that East Slavic is somewhat overrepresented in the standard treebanks,
especially as far as non-translated or ‘original’ Early Slavic texts are
concerned, but generally also in the time span covered. The East Slavic
subcorpus covers the whole period from Old East Slavic (11th-late 14th
century) to Early Middle Russian (15th century) and Late Middle Russian
(16-late 17th century), with a total of over 200,000 tokens, whereas the South
Slavic one (i.e. South Slavic texts excluding the Old Church Slavonic
subcorpus and all classified under the general label of Church Slavonic) are
represented by only around 13,000 tokens.
Although not meant to actually compensate for this imbalance, a smaller group
of South Slavic texts is used in a brief case study at the end of Chapter 2.
The case study summarizes the findings from Pedrazzini (2022), who looked at
the extent to which corpora with considerably fewer and shallower levels of
annotation can be exploited to investigate a discourse-driven syntactic
phenomenon, particularly as a means of corroborating results emerging from
treebanks with deeper, curated annotation. The small South Slavic corpus was
experimentally fully automatically annotated, including lemmatization,
morphological analysis, and dependency parsing.202020The simple script and
dictionary used to lemmatize is available at
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24166254. Part-of-speech and morphological
tags were added using Scherrer et al.’s (2018) pre-modern Slavic CLSTM tagger
Scherrer and Rabus (2019), while for dependency parsing I used Pedrazzini and
Eckhoff’s (2021) dependency parser, OldSlavNet (see also Pedrazzini 2020. A
breakdown of these texts can be found in Table 2. The case study from this
dataset, which was not manually post-corrected and hence contains many errors,
will be presented separately from both deeply-annotated and standard treebanks
and will be referred to as strategically annotated treebanks.212121All
strategically annotated texts were normalized by bringing down superscript
letters, removing diacritics, substituting non-Unicode characters with their
Unicode counterparts, among other preprocessing steps, all of which can be
found in the preprocessing Python scripts in the project repository
(https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24166254). Yagičev Zlatoust, Manasses
Chronicles, the Sbornici of Vladislav Grammarian, and the Zografski Sbornik
are from the open-source digital editions of the Cyrillomethodiana project
(https://histdict.uni-sofia.bg/). The Bdinski Sbornik is from the Obdurodon
project (http://bdinski.obdurodon.org/. Hilandar Typikon and Karyes Typikon
are from the Monumenta Serbica project
(http://monumentaserbica.branatomic.com/).

####  0.5.1 Identification of the constructions in the corpora

Absolute constructions and conjunct participles are not labelled as such in
the annotated treebanks. To identify and extract potential occurrences, a
combination of morphosyntactic tags and dependency relations were used. As
already mentioned, deeply annotated and standard treebanks from TOROT use the
PROIEL dependency tagset, which includes separate labels for clauses with an
external argument (e.g. xadv and xcomp), whereas the strategically annotated
treebanks included in the dataset were syntactically annotated with
OldSlavNet, which uses the Universal Dependency tagset.
From the TOROT treebanks, conjunct participles were identified by looking for
participle forms in any tense-aspect, excluding resultative ones (i.e.
l-participles), with an xadv relation. The referent of the subject of conjunct
participle was identified via the ‘slash’ notation available for all clauses
with an external argument to indicate coreference relations within one
dependency tree. Most conjunct participles share the subject with their matrix
clause, so the xadv node will also be connected to the matrix subject node, if
the subject is overt, as in Figure 2(a), or to the matrix verb node itself, if
the subject is null, via the relation xsub, to indicate argument sharing, as
Figure 2(b) shows.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2: The slash notation in PROIEL/TOROT. (a) is an example of an overt-
subject conjunct participle; (b) is an example of a null-subject conjunct
participle.

The annotation convention in PROIEL is to always analyze the shared arguments
in control structures as dependents of the matrix clause. However, following
the analysis of control in Greek and Latin participial adjuncts in Haug (2011,
2017), we can consider some conjunct participle configurations to be able to
head a subject, specifically the leftmost frame or independent rheme conjunct
participle linearly preceding the matrix clause. Such conjunct participles can
be analyzed as having a control relation of equality (rather than subsumption;
cf. Dalrymple et al. 2019: 553-556) to the matrix clause, albeit with an
additional linearization constraint on the overt realization of shared
arguments. Namely, if overt, the shared argument is always found in the
leftmost position relative to the matrix clause (‘in the leftmost legitimate
host’; Haug 2017: 152). Throughout the thesis, therefore, only the leftmost
pre-matrix conjunct participles are considered as potentially able to head
their subject and, therefore, to be strictly referred to as overt\- or null-
subject. Those whose xsub slash points to an overt argument (i.e. a node other
than the matrix verb itself) will be considered as overt-subject only if the
overt argument is found adjacent to or between material belonging to
participle clause, which turned out to be the case in the vast majority of
cases.222222In only 10 cases, the shared overt subject is found after the
matrix verb instead. In some instances, the dependence of the shared argument
on the conjunct participle is evidenced by the fact that the shared argument
is intermingled with, material that clearly belongs to the participle clause,
as in (0.5.1), where isъ ‘Jesus’, the shared argument, occures between the
conjunct participle prišedъ ‘having come’ and another argument of the
participle clause, i.e. vъ domъ petrovъ. Figures 3 show the difference between
the conservative dependency analysis of (0.5.1) in PROIEL and its
linearization analysis.

i [prišedъ isъ vъ domъ petrovъ] vidě tъštǫ ego ležęštǫ ognemъ žegomǫ and
come.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg Jesus.nom in house.acc Peter’s.acc see.aor.3.sg mother-
in-law.acc 3.sg.m.gen lie.ptcp.ipfv.f.acc fire.inst
burning.ptcp.ipfv.pas.f.acc ‘When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw
Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever’ (Matthew 8:14)

(a)

(b)

Figure 3: (a) PROIEL analysis of (0.5.1) (b) linearization analysis of
(0.5.1), in which the subject of the conjunct participle, shared with the
matrix clause, is analyzed as a dependent of the participle clause.

In some instances, both analyses may be possible, since the overtly-realized
shared argument is adjacent to both the sentence-initial conjunct participle
and the matrix verb, as in (0.5.1).

i prišedъše oučenici ego vъzboudišę i and come.ptcp.pfv.nom.pl disciple.nom.pl
3.sg.m.gen wake.aor.3.pl 3.sg.m.acc ‘The disciples went and woke him’ (Matthew
8:25)

Throughout the analysis, cases like (0.5.1) will also be considered as overt-
subject conjunct participles, with the caveat in mind that an alternative
analysis may be possible.
Dative absolutes were identified by looking for participle forms in the dative
and in any tense-aspect, again excluding resultative ones, with an adv
relation. The presence of an overt subject was not specified but identified,
if present, by looking for tokens in the dative with a sub relation and
dependent on the participle itself, as in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Dependency tree with a dative absolute and its subject

Note that, without specifying overt subjects as a requirement, this query also
returns forms that meet the criteria but that are not dative absolutes. Given
its relatively small size, the dataset of potential absolutes from deeply
annotated treebanks (Codex Marianus) was fully manually corrected to filter
out any wrongly extracted occurrences. From standard treebanks, most potential
post-matrix null-subject dative participles were cases of nominalized
participles, as in (0.5.1), and were therefore all excluded without a full
manual check.

i naprasnijemъ prěloženija čudo sъtvorilъ zъręštiimъ and suddenness.inst.sg
transformation.gen.sg miracle.acc.sg make.ptcp.result.m.nom.sg
watch.ptcp.ipfv.m.dat.pl ‘And by the suddenness of the transformation he has
performed a miracle for the witnesses’ (Encomion on the 40 Martyrs of
Sebasteia, Codex Suprasliensis 6: 412)

Potential null-subject dative absolutes preceding the matrix clause were
instead manually checked and wrongly extracted occurrences (around 30% of
potential pre-matrix null-subject dative absolutes) were filtered out. Only if
the lemma was byti ‘be’, all occurrences were included regardless of position
since a manual check indicated that these are mostly temporal expressions of
the kind pozdě byvъšu ‘once it got late’, a very common usage of absolutes
throughout the corpora.
If the syntactic subject of a participle clause was made of several
coordinated constituents (e.g. ‘Jesus and the disciples’), then the one
linearly occurring first (e.g. ‘Jesus’ from ‘Jesus and the disciples’) was
extracted for the purpose of analysing the properties of subjects.
The matrix verb of both conjunct participles and dative absolutes was
considered to be the direct head of the participle itself if the head node was
a verb, as in Figures 2-4. When the direct head of the participle is not a
verb, it is normally due to one of two structures. If the direct head is a
conjunction, generally multiple (typically two) coordinated participles are
dominated by the same matrix verb, in which case PROIEL assigns the same
relation tag as the participles themselves to the conjunction node (i.e. xadv
or adv), as in Figure 5. In this case, the head of the conjunction node
typically corresponds to the matrix verb itself, bearing the relation tag
pred, in which case the pred node is identified as the ‘true head’ of the
participle clause.

Figure 5: Dependency tree containing two coordinated conjunct participles

If the direct head is an empty node, it generally indicates syntactic
independence of some kind, most often overt coordination to the finite clause,
which falls into the set of ‘non-canonical’ participle constructions mentioned
above. This is because, in order to avoid direct coordination of participle
constructions with finite clauses, the annotation convention in PROIEL (for
the sake of retrievability) is to treat such examples as elliptical
constructions. During their annotation, an empty verbal node is therefore
added above the participle clause to stand in for the matrix clause, as Figure
6 shows.

Figure 6: Dependency tree containing a dative absolute coordinated to the main
clause

In such cases, for the purpose of the analysis, the matrix verb is identified
with the empty node itself, which makes ‘non-canonical’ occurrences of
participle constructions (i.e. conjunct participles and dative absolutes that
are overtly coordinated to a following independent clause) more easily
retrievable.
From OldSlavNet-annotated treebanks, dative absolutes were identified by
looking for participles in the dative with an advcl dependency relation,
conjunct participles by looking for participles in the nominative, also with
an advcl dependency relation. Both these simple queries also retrieve several
forms that are neither conjunct participles nor dative absolutes. In
particular, adverbials with an external subject (xadv in PROIEL) and secondary
dependency relations (e.g. xsub in PROIEL) are not currently well-captured by
state-of-the-art Early Slavic dependency parsers. This means that we are
unable to extract the subjects of conjunct participles using fully automated
methods, which naturally limits our analysis. To test whether fully automated
methods can be used to formulate hypotheses or confirm previous results, the
dataset extracted with these queries was not fully post-corrected. However, in
addition to the quantitative analysis of strategically annotated treebanks, a
case study on one particular strategically annotated text is carried out in
Chapter 2, its occurrences checked and closely analysed, thus allowing us not
only to evaluate the usefulness of the automatic annotation but also to
compare the results of a distant-reading analysis to the observations made by
close-reading the occurrences.
Jegda-clauses were first identified by looking for all occurrences of the
lemma jegda and then extracting the verb dominating the subjunction to
represent the jegda-clause itself. Jegda-clauses used as explicit relative
clauses (as in ‘the time when…’), were excluded from the dataset by filtering
out any jegda-clause bearing an atr (attribute) or apos (apposition) relation.
The same method used to identify the ‘true matrix’ clause of a jegda-clause
was used. As a rule of thumb, the node immediately dominating the jegda-clause
verb was taken to be the matrix verb, as in Figure 7, unless it was a
conjunction, in which case the node dominating the conjunction was extracted
instead, as in Figure 8.

Figure 7: Dependency tree containing a jegda-clause. Figure 8: Dependency tree
containing two coordinated jegda-clauses

As a first approximation, overt subjects were identified by looking for a sub
node headed by the jegda-clause verb, unless it was a conjunction, indicating
multiple coordinated subjects, in which case the first conjunct was extracted
as the subject for the purpose of the analysis in Chapter 3. This method,
however, is only possible for jegda-clauses with a different subject than the
one of the matrix clause. This is because, when co-referential, the subject is
analysed as a daughter node of the matrix verb, without indicating secondary
dependency relations such as the xsub one used with conjunct participles. As
we will see in Chapter 3, in such cases, we are only able to establish such
secondary dependency relation for deeply annotated treebanks, by leveraging
the anaphoric link annotation in PROIEL, which also includes null
constituents. Namely, if the overt subject of the matrix clause is
anaphorically linked to the null subject of the jegda-clause, then we can
identify the referent of the subject of the jegda-clause itself.

variety | title | tokens
---|---|---
OCS | Codex Suprasliensis | 99,150
| Codex Marianus | 57,556
| Psalterium Sinaiticum | 30,488
| Euchologium Sinaiticum | 717
| Kiev Missal | 352
CS | Vita Constantini | 8,925
| Vita Methodii | 3,014
|  Life of Petka Tarnovska (Novaković) | 859
| The Dobrejsho Gospel | 366
OES |  Primary Chronicle, Codex Laurentianus | 55,088
|  Suzdal Chronicle, Codex Laurentianus | 23,343
| Uspenskij Sbornik | 24,734
|  Novgorod First Chronicle, Synodal Manuscript | 17,419
| Russkaja pravda | 3,903
|  Primary Chronicle, Codex Hypatianus | 3,512
| The Tale of Igor’s Campaign | 2,778
| Zadonshchina | 2,343
| 1229 Smolensk-Riga-Gotland Treaty | 1,391
| The Kiev Chronicle, Codex Hypatianus | 535
| Statute of Prince Vladimir | 476
| Colophon to Mstislav’s Gospel book | 258
| Colophon to the Ostromir Codex | 193
| Mstislav’s letter | 157
| Varlaam’s donation charter to Xutyn | 140
EMRus | Life of Sergij of Radonezh | 19,966
| The Tale of the Fall of Constantinople | 9,116
| Afanasij Nikitin’s Journey Beyond Three Seas | 6,498
| The Tale of Dracula | 2,446
| Missive from Prince Ivan of Pskov | 337
LMRus | Domostroj | 22,622
|  The Life of Avvakum, Pustozerskij Sbornik | 22,168
| The Taking of Pskov | 2,290
| Materials for the history of the schism | 1,818
| Vesti-Kuranty | 1,114
| Correspondence of Peter the Great | 95
ONov | Birch bark letters | 1,864
Table 1: Main corpus breakdown, with an indication of the language variety and the number of annotated tokens. OCS = Old Church Slavonic, OES = Old East Slavic, EMRus = Early Middle Russian, LMRus = Late Middle Russian, ONov = Old Novgorodian. variety | title | tokens
---|---|---
Middle Bulgarian | Yagičev Zlatoust | 64,225
| Manasses Chronicles | 41,794
|  Sbornici of Vladislav Grammarian | 32,040
| Bdinski Sbornik | 18,764
| Zografski Sbornik | 10,315
Old Serbian | Saint Sava’s Hilandar Typikon | 11,982
| Saint Sava’s Karyes Typikon | 1,008
Table 2: Breakdown of strategically annotated texts

###  0.6 Thesis overview

The thesis is structured in two parts, differing in their scope and
methodology.
Part I contains four chapters and looks into the distribution of participial
adjuncts and jegda-clauses in Early Slavic, presenting a quantitative and
descriptive corpus analysis and giving an account of their discourse functions
and temporal semantics.
More specifically, Chapters 1 and 2 focus on absolute constructions and
conjunct participles and use corpus data to understand the extent to which we
can apply previous accounts of the discourse functions of Ancient Greek
conjunct participles to Early Slavic participle constructions, including
dative absolutes. These first two chapters follow the same overall structure,
with Chapter 1 looking at deeply annotated treebanks and Chapter 2 at standard
treebanks. Both chapters show that, much like in Ancient Greek, adjunct
participle clauses in Early Slavic largely function as ‘grammaticalized
discourse relations’ (frames, independent rhemes, and elaborations; Bary and
Haug 2011) and that their relation to the matrix clause can partly be inferred
compositionally through a combination of aspect, position in the sentence,
lexical variation, and information-structural properties. The specific
treatment of absolute constructions as a subordination strategy in competition
with conjunct participles led to the observation that they can be considered
as specialized frame-setters and topic-shifters, unlike conjunct participles,
whose interpretation is heavily dependent on other variables, such as tense-
aspect and position in the sentence, whereby pre-matrix (especially
perfective) participles are more likely to be independent rhemes and post-
matrix (especially imperfective) participles are more likely to be
elaborations.
Chapter 3 focuses on jegda-clauses. The analysis indicates that there is
overall more evident competition with absolutes (which are typically frames)
than with conjunct participles. This confirms the intuition that jegda, like
English when in SDRT, can be considered as a trigger for the rhetorical
relation Background, which is by and large compatible with Bary and Haug’s
(2011) treatment of frames. However, unlike participles, the aspect of jegda-
clauses cannot always be straightforwardly established on the basis of
morphology alone, due to the high frequency of present-tense forms, so that
their temporal relations cannot be fully established compositionally in the
same way as with participles under Bary and Haug’s (2011) framework. Chapter
4, therefore, provides a tentative account of the typical functions of jegda-
clauses and their temporal relation to the matrix clause by drawing from
previous (broadly neo-Kleinian) accounts of the temporal semantics of temporal
adverbials. It also formalizes Early Slavic examples containing both jegda\-
and participle clauses on the basis of the SDRT account of the rhetorical
relation Background and Narration.
Part II contains two chapters and looks at adjunct participle clauses and
finite temporal subordinates from a typological perspective.
Chapter 5 takes a temporary step back from Early Slavic and generates and
analyses a probabilistic semantic map of when-clauses using a massively
parallel Bible corpus, to investigate whether the division of labour between
participle clauses and finite temporal subordinates in Early Slavic and
Ancient Greek corresponds to well-attested cross-linguistic patterns. It
demonstrates that ‘null’ constructions (juxtaposed clauses such as
participles, converbs, or independent clauses) cluster in particular regions
of the semantic map cross-linguistically, clearly indicating that participle
clauses are not equally viable as alternatives to any use of when, but carry
particular meanings that make them less suitable for some of its functions. It
also shows that the distinction found in Ancient Greek between hóte and hótan,
not found in Early Slavic (which only has jegda), corresponds to a widely
attested cross-linguistic pattern, pointing to a general typological
difference between the two languages. Chapter 6 addresses the issue of
understanding the functions of null constructions in the semantic map of when,
started in the previous chapter, not only at the level of their competition
with when-counterparts but also with respect to the competition between
different null constructions, which the semantic map of when could not fully
address. It provides a comparison between, on the one hand, conjunct
participles and absolutes, and, on the other hand, cross-linguistic phenomena
known to have similar functions to them, specifically clause chaining,
bridging, insubordination, and switch reference.
The clear parallels to these phenomena not only provide independent evidence
for the observations made in previous chapters on the division of labour
between participle constructions, but they are also able to motivate several
of the uses of ‘non-canonical’ participles constructions, particularly dative
absolutes, which had otherwise often been written off as ‘aberrations’ by the
earlier scholarship on Early Slavic.

## Chapter 1 Participle constructions in deeply-annotated treebanks

###  1.1 Introduction

In this chapter and the next, I provide a descriptive and quantitative
analysis of conjunct participles and dative absolutes as they appear in the
Early Slavic corpus described in the Introduction.111This chapter and the next
expand on material published in Pedrazzini (2022). I present statistics about
their distribution and analyze the constructions across variables which can
indirectly capture their discourse functions. The main framework for this
analysis is Bary and Haug (2011) and the corpus evidence for their treatment
of conjunct participles in Ancient Greek in Haug (2012). Similarly to the
latter, the main variables I attempt to capture as a possible indication of
the discourse functions of participle constructions are:

  * a.

the relative order of participle and matrix verb;

  * b.

aspect distribution;

  * c.

the properties of the subjects involved;

  * d.

the lexical variation among participles across different sentence
configurations (i.e. pre- and post-matrix participle clauses, different
positions of overt subjects relative to the participle).

As outlined in the Introduction, Bary and Haug’s (2011) framework is mostly
built on conjunct participles. In this chapter, however, I apply the same
criteria to the analysis of both conjunct participles and absolute
constructions, with the goal of gauging whether:

  * 1.

the functions of Early Slavic conjunct participles can be modelled in the same
way as in Ancient Greek, namely within a main tripartite distinction between
frames, independent rhemes and elaborations, by capturing these via indirect
corpus evidence as defined above;

  * 2.

the functions of absolute constructions can also be modelled as those of
conjunct participles, namely as either frames, independent rhemes and
elaborations, or whether their overall behaviour cannot be predicted based on
the same criteria.

The analysis will be structured following the annotation depths available for
each of the Early Slavic subcorpora and divided across the current and the
next chapter. This chapter exploits data from a deeply-annotated treebank, the
Old Church Slavonic Codex Marianus, currently the only text in the corpus
aligned at the token level with the Greek source text and the only treebank
for which information-structural annotation is also available, alongside
several other annotation layers on large portions of the text, including
Aktionsart and rhetorical relations. Comparison with the Greek parallel is
made throughout the section by providing the Greek counterpart and commenting
on differences, where relevant. The next chapter will deal with treebanks
without information-structural or verb-semantic annotation, which were
referred to as standard treebanks in the Introduction and which contain mixed
data from Old Church Slavonic, different varieties of Church Slavonic, and Old
East Slavic. It will also look at strategically-annotated treebanks,
consisting of fully automatically annotated Middle Bulgarian and Old Serbian
texts. This structure also serves, incidentally, as a proof of concept showing
the advantages or disadvantages of building small, but deeply-annotated
treebanks for historical languages with very high diatopic and diachronic
variation (such as Early Slavic), as opposed to larger corpora with shallower
annotation, as well as the extent to which methodology and results may differ
when using historical treebanks with different annotation depths
Section 1.2 of this chapter comments on the relative order of participle
constructions and matrix clause, and the distribution of aspect among
participle constructions in different sentence configurations; Section 1.3
analyses the properties of the subjects in participle constructions; Section
1.4 looks into the lexical variation among participle constructions in
different sentence configurations; Section 1.5 compares Old Church Slavonic to
the Ancient Greek parallel, looking at correspondences and mismatches between
the two version in the choice of construction; finally, Section 1.6 takes a
look at the rhetorical relation annotation available for the Gospel of Luke.

###  1.2 Position in the sentence and aspect distribution

As the frequencies in Table 1.1 show, there is a very strong tendency for
dative absolutes to occur to the left of the main verb, while that is somewhat
less the case for conjunct participles.

| pre-matrix | post-matrix | tot.
---|---|---|---
absolute | 92.9% (171) | 7.1% (13) | 184
conjunct | 66.6% (1044) | 33.4% (523) | 1567
Table 1.1: Relative order of participle and matrix clause in the Codex
Marianus

The neat predominance of pre-matrix dative absolutes already suggests that the
position of dative absolutes in the sentence is connected, in itself, to their
functions and supports the widespread view that the unifying function of
dative absolutes is a ‘backgrounding’ or ‘stage-setting’ one (Worth 1994: 30;
Corin 1995: 259; Collins 2011: 113). As argued by Bary and Haug (2011) and
Haug (2012), framing participles should always be found in the leftmost
position since they set the stage and provide temporal anchoring for the whole
sentence. frames can, in fact, be treated as fronted adjuncts, that is, as
information-structurally marked material in topicalized position (Haug 2012:
307). Like frame setters in Chafe (1976: 51) and Krifka (2007: 45-48), the
concept of Frame in Bary and Haug (2011) is tightly connected to that of
aboutness (or sentence) topic. As Fabricius-Hansen and Haug (2012b) explain,
frame setters and aboutness topics are similar in that ‘they both refer to
entities […] that are already established in, or easily inferable from, the
preceding discourse’. frames typically refer to a preceding event, as in (b.),
where the event providing the topic time for the whole sentence is Jesus
casting out a demon. In other instances, they refer to bridging events linking
to other events by means of ‘motion from one scene to another or perception of
some previous action’ (Haug 2012: 299), as in (b.), where the temporal anchor
for the whole sentence is set by Jesus and the disciples moving – with the
presupposition that they have set off from a previous setting.

  * a.

i izgъnanu běsu progla němy and cast.out.ptcp.pfv.pass.m.dat.sg demon.m.dat.sg
speak.aor.3.sg mute.m.nom.sg

  * b.

kai ekblēthentos tou daimoniou elalēsen ho kōphos and
cast.out.ptcp.pfv.pass.m.gen.sg the.m.gen.sg demon.m.gen.sg speak.aor.3.sg
the.m.nom.sg mute.m.nom.sg ‘And when the demon was cast out, the mute spoke’
(Matthew 9.33, 38591, 15005)

  * a.

i sъchodęštemъ imъ sъ gory zapovědě imъ isъ glę and come.down.ptcp.ipfv.dat.pl
he.dat.pl from mountain.gen.sg command.aor.3.sg he.dat.pl Jesus.nom
say.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg

  * b.

kai katabainontōn autōn ek tou orous eneteilato autois ho Iēsous legōn and
come.down.ptcp.ipfv.gen.pl he.gen.pl from the.n.gen.sg mountain.n.gen.sg
instruct.aor.3.sg he.dat.pl the Jesus.nom say.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg ‘And as they
came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying’ (Matthew 17:9)

Similar observations can, however, be made for several sentence-initial
conjunct participles, as the one in (b.), which refers to an event in the
earlier discourse (the Miraculous Catch of Fish in Luke 5.1-7), or the one in
(b.), which anchors the topic time for the instruction contained in the matrix
by referring to the time frame within which its interpretation holds (‘when
praying’).

  * a.

viděvъ že simonъ petrъ. pripade kъ kolěnoma isvama glę see.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg
ptc Simon.nom Peter.nom fall.down.prs.3.sg to knee.dat.du Jesus.adj.dat.du
say.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg

  * b.

idōn de Simōn Petros prosepesen tois gonasin Iēsou legōn see.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg
ptc Simon.nom Peter.nom fall.prs.3.sg the.dat.pl knee.dat.pl Jesus.gen
say.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg ‘When Simon Peter saw (that), he fell down at Jesus’
knees’ (Luke 5:8)

  * a.

molęšte že sę ne licho glte. ěkože i języčъnici pray.ptcp.ipfv.nom.pl ptc refl
neg vainly speak.imp.2.pl as also heathen.nom.pl

  * b.

proseuchomenoi de mē battalogēsēte hōsper hoi ethnikoi pray.ptcp.ipfv.nom.pl
ptc neg speak.vainly.sbjv.aor.2.pl as the heathen.nom.pl ‘And when you pray,
do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do’ (Matthew 6:7)

Although frames should generally be looked for to the left of the matrix verb,
not all sentence-initial participles necessarily serve that function. Among
dative absolutes, a prototypical frame function seems likely because those in
pre-matrix position far outnumber those following the matrix. Among conjunct
participles, a clear pattern instead emerges when we cross their position in
the sentence with the frequency of imperfective and perfective forms depending
on the position of the participle relative to the matrix.

| imperfectives | perfectives
---|---|---
pre-matrix | 59.1% (101) | 40.9% (70)
post-matrix | 53.8% (7) | 46.2% (6)
tot. | 58.7% (108) | 41.3% (76)
Table 1.2: Dative absolutes in the Codex Marianus: aspect distribution by position relative to the matrix clause (row percentage) | imperfectives | perfectives
---|---|---
pre-matrix | 13.1% (121) | 86.9% (806)
post-matrix | 80.3% (216) | 19.7% (53)
tot. | 28.2% (337) | 71.8% (859)
Table 1.3: Conjunct participles in the Codex Marianus: aspect distribution by
position relative to the matrix clause (row percentage)

As Table 1.2 shows, among dative absolutes, imperfectives are somewhat more
frequent. Post-matrix absolutes are too few to say anything about possible
associations between aspect and position. However, considering only pre-matrix
occurrences, a binomial test (2-tailed) suggests that there is a significantly
higher probability for imperfectives than perfectives to occur in pre-matrix
position ($p=0.01$). This is, naturally, an incomplete picture based on few
occurrences222The binomial test can most intuitively seen as a test for the
probability of successes. In the case of dative absolutes in this dataset, out
of 171 attempts (i.e. the total number of occurrences), 101 were successful,
70 were not. However, the relatively small number of overall occurrences means
that, in this case, only 5 occurrences would have changed the test result from
significant to non-significant, hence why one should be wary of it for now.
and what really is noticeable is the difference in number between pre- and
post-matrix occurrences.
As Table 1.3 shows, among conjunct participles, the association between aspect
and position is statistically significant, with a strong effect size
($\phi=0.62$, Cramér’s $V$): $\chi^{2}(1)=462.54$, $p<0.01$, with much higher
odds for perfectives to occur in pre-matrix than post-matrix position and for
imperfectives to occur in post-matrix than pre-matrix position (odds ratio:
27.15). This is in line with Haug’s (2012) Ancient Greek data, showing that
participles to the right of the matrix are more likely to be elaborations
while those to the left are more typically independent rhemes. Elaborations
normally result in a ‘complex rheme’, where the event described by the
elaborating participle adds granularity to the lexical meaning of the matrix
verb and often receives a manner or means interpretation, as the example in
(b.). Independent rhemes are instead similar to independent clauses from the
discourse perspective, as in (b.).

  * a.

i vъstrъzaachǫ učenici ego klasy. i ěděachǫ istirajǫšte rǫkama and
pluck.impf.3.pl disciple.nom.pl 3.sg.gen head.of.grain.acc.pl and
eat.impf.3.pl rub.ptcp.ipfv.nom.pl hand.ins.du

  * b.

kai etillon hoi mathētai autou tous stachyas kai ēsthion psōchontes tais
chersin and pluck.impf.3.pl the disciple.nom.pl 3.sg.gen the.acc.pl
head.of.grain.acc.pl and eat.impf.3.pl rub.ptcp.ipfv.nom.pl the.f.dat.pl
hand.f.dat.pl ‘And his disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them,
rubbing them in their hands’ (Luke 6:1)

  * a.

azъ prišedъ iscěljǫ i 1.sg.nom come.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg heal.prs.1.sg 3.sg.m.acc

  * b.

egō elthōn therapeusō auton 1.sg.nom come.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg heal.fut.1.sg
3.sg.m.acc ‘I will come and heal him’ (Matthew 8:7)

As pointed out by Haug (2012: 311), while the perfective is generally the
dominant aspect in narrative contexts, this is particularly true of the simple
narrative style of the New Testament. The preponderance of perfective
independent rhemes is thus as unsurprising as that of perfective main verbs.
Stacked perfective independent rhemes always induce narrative progression
(Bary and Haug 2011: 15-16), as clearly transpires from (b.), for example.
Although much less frequent, even when imperfective, they are equivalent to
main verbs from the information-structural perspective, which is often
reflected in their English translation, as shown in (b.).

  * a.

i abie tekъ edinъ otъ nichъ. i priemъ gǫbǫ. isplьnь ocьta. i vьznezъ na
trьstь. napaěše i and immediately run.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg one.m.nom.sg from
3.pl.gen and take.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg sponge.acc.sg fill.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg
vinegar.gen.sg and put.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg on reed.acc.sg
give.to.drink.impf.3.sg 3.sg.acc

  * b.

kai eutheōs dramōn heis ex autōn kai labōn spongon plēsas te oxous kai
peritheis kalamō epotizen auton and immediately run.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg
one.nom.sg from 3.pl.gen and take.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg sponge.acc.sg
fill.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg with vinegar.gen.sg and put.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg
reed.dat.sg give.to.drink.impf.3.sg 3.sg.acc ‘Immediately one of them ran and
took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it
to him to drink’ (Matthew 27:48)

  * a.

nъ i psi prichodęšte oblizaachǫ gnoi ego but also dog.nom.pl
come.ptcp.ipfv.nom.pl lick.impf.3.pl wound.acc.pl 3.sg.gen

  * b.

alla kai hoi kynes erchomenoi epeleichon ta helkē autou but also the
dog.nom.pl come.ptcp.ipfv.nom.pl lick.impf.3.pl the.acc.pl wound.acc.pl
3.sg.gen ‘Even the dogs would come and lick his sores’ (Luke 16:21)

Given the significant association among conjunct participles between the pre-
matrix position and the perfective aspect, it seems likely that the typical
function of pre-matrix conjunct participles is as independent rhemes. But as
b. already showed, the sentence-initial position can be ambiguous between a
frame and an independent rheme interpretation, as Bary and Haug (2011) already
argued for Ancient Greek conjunct participles. In (b.), the ambiguity of the
sentence-initial conjunct participle between a frame and an independent rheme
function is, to some extent, also reflected in the different English
translations.

  * a.

i postavьše jǫ po srědě. glašę emu. and place.ptcp.pfv.nom.pl 3.sg.f.acc in
midst.dat say.aor.3.pl 3.sg.m.dat

  * b.

kai stēsantes autēn en mesōi legousin autōi and set up.ptcp.pfv.nom.pl
3.sg.f.acc in midst.dat say.prs.3.pl 3.sg.m.dat ‘They made her stand before
the group and said to Jesus’ (New International Version)
‘When they had set her in the midst, they say unto him’ (King James Bible)
‘Placing her in the midst, they said to him’ (English Standard Version)
(John 8:3–4)

As we will see, subject realization and the position of overt subjects
relative to the participle (specifically, the VS configuration) have some part
in their interpretation as frames. Overall, however, sentence-initial position
conjunct participles will inevitably retain a certain degree of ambiguity,
particularly with a null subject.

####  1.2.1 A remark about bystъ-clauses

Before looking at other variables, it is worthwhile to comment briefly on a
small, but coherent group of occurrences of dative absolutes in a construction
introduced by bystъ ‘it came to pass’, the usage of which in Old Church
Slavonic can clearly be linked to a relatively widespread and well-studied
construction attested in several pre-modern Indo-European languages,
consisting, in its basic form, of

$\textsc{it came to pass}\quad[.........]_{\alpha}\quad[.........]_{\beta}.$

where $\alpha$ is filled by an adverbial clause and $\beta$ by the main
predication. Works on discourse marking (e.g. Traugott and Dasher 2002a: 52;
Brinton 1996: 336) have treated ‘happen, come to pass’ in such contexts on a
par with discourse connectives such as in fact, well, then or so, which hardly
contribute to the truth-conditional meaning of a proposition, but rather mark
the speaker’s stance towards the sequential relationship between discourse
units. In particular, the discourse functions of Old English gelamp-clauses
(the counterpart to Slavonic bystъ) and the syntactic status of its
constituents, which have been thoroughly analyzed by Brinton (1996: $\S$5-6),
strongly support the intuition that Old Church Slavonic bystъ, like its Greek
counterpart egeneto (and analogous forms in Gospel translations in other
historical languages, such as Gothic warþ or Latin factum est), has a clear
formulaic function. Brinton (1996: 134)333Note that Brinton (1996) adduces
plenty of support from previous literature. In particular, Traugott’s
extensive work on grammaticalization provides further solidity to Brinton’s
claims. Traugott (e.g. 1982; [with König] 1991; [with Dasher] 2002a; 2003;
[with Hopper] 2003; 2004; 2008) has dealt with a large variety of utterance-
to-discourse-marker grammaticalization processes, which have helped tackle the
status of ‘happen’ in Old English gelamp-constructions in Brinton (1996). For
an in-depth survey of the most influential studies on discourse markers,
including Traugott’s seminal works, see Maschler and Schiffrin (2015). argues
that these are typically made of an episode-initiating, backgrounded clause
which gives the time, place or circumstances for a (linearly) following
discourse-foregrounded clause, which introduces the narrative proper. Brinton
(1996: 142) states that ‘the discourse strategy [in gelamp-clauses] can be
better understood as framing, as well as focusing, where the main clause [‘it
came to pass’] and adverbial provide a frame which directs the reader’s focus
to the events denoted in the complement clause’. Similar considerations are
made by Hogeterp and Denaux (2018: 334-336) on egeneto formulas in New
Testament Greek, where egeneto constructions are considered to be ‘important
linguistic markers of narrative turns’, with the ‘structural function to
introduce a new literary section or pericope’.
It is interesting to note that several of the mismatches between Old Church
Slavonic and the Greek original (i.e. where Old Church Slavonic uses an
absolute construction and Greek does not) occur in bystъ-constructions. This
suggests that the particular meaning of the $\alpha$ slot in this construction
may correspond particularly well to the overall function of dative absolutes
in Old Church Slavonic. (b.)-(b.) are some examples of dative absolutes in
bystъ-constructions.

  * a.

i bystъ idǫštemъ imь. ištistišę sę and happen.aor.3.sg go.ptcp.ipfv.dat.pl
3.pl.dat cleanse.aor.3.pl refl

  * b.

kai egeneto en tōi hupagein autous ekatharisthēsan and happen.aor.3.sg in
the.n.dat.sg go.prs.inf 3.pl.acc cleanse.aor.pass.3.pl ‘And it came to pass
that, as they went, they were cleansed’ (Luke 17:14)

  * a.

bystъ že běsu izgъnanu progla němy happen.aor.3.sg ptc demon.m.dat.sg
cast.out.ptcp.pfv.pass.m.dat.sg speak.aor.3.sg mute.m.nom.sg

  * b.

egeneto de tou daimoniou exelthontos elalēsen ho kōphos happen.aor.3.sg ptc
the.m.gen.sg demon.m.gen.sg cast.out.ptcp.pfv.pass.m.gen.sg speak.aor.3.sg
the.m.nom.sg mute.m.nom.sg ‘It came to pass that, as the demon had been cast
out, the mute man spoke’ (Luke 11:14)

  * a.

bystъ že chodęštemъ imъ i tъ vъnide isъ vъ vesь edinǫ happen.aor.3.sg ptc
walk.ptcp.ipfv.dat.pl he.dat.pl and that.m.nom.sg enter.aor.3.sg Jesus.nom in
village.f.acc.sg certain.f.acc.sg

  * b.

egeneto de en tōi poreuesthai autous kai autos eisēlthen eis kōmēn tina
happen.aor.3.sg ptc in the.n.dat.sg proceed.prs.inf he.acc.pl and he.nom.sg
enter.aor.3.sg into village.f.acc.sg certain.f.acc.sg ‘It came to pass that,
as they were walking, Jesus entered a certain village’ (Luke 10:38)

  * a.

i bystъ idǫštju emu vъ imъ. i tъ prochoždaaše meždju samariejǫ i galilěejǫ and
happen.aor.3.sg go.ptcp.ipfv.m.dat.sg he.dat.sg to Jerusalem.acc and
that.m.nom.sg walk.through.impf.3.sg between Samaria.f.ins.sg and
Galilee.f.ins.sg

  * b.

kai egeneto en tōi poreuesthai eis Hierousalēm kai autos diērcheto dia meson
Samarias kai Galilaias. and happen.aor.3.sg in the.n.dat.sg proceed.prs.inf to
Jerusalem.acc and he.nom.sg walk.through.impf.3.sg through midst.n.acc.sg
Samaria.gen.sg and Galilee.gen.sg ‘And it came to pass, as he went to
Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee’ (Luke
17:11)

While (b.a) translates a Greek genitive absolute (b.b), the dative absolutes
in (b.a) and (b.a)-(b.a) correspond to a nominalized accusative with
infinitive introduced by en ‘in, during’. The second conjunction in (b.)-(b.),
apparently introducing the main clause, can in fact be seen as a calque from
the Greek, which, in turn, is likely a calque from Hebrew: the construction
(kai) egeneto (de) ‘(and) it came to pass that’ itself, opening a narrative
section, has been recognized as a syntactic Semitism characteristic of Luke’s
Gospel (Hogeterp and Denaux 2018: $\S$6.1; Janse 2007: 657). Hogeterp and
Denaux (2018: 326) specifically single out the configuration (kai) egeneto de
\+ temporal expression + kai \+ finite verb (i.e. with a second conjunction
seemingly introducing the main clause) as the one standing out the most for
its ‘Hebraistic quality’ among the possible egeneto formulas, where the second
kai would reflect the temporal use of Biblical Hebrew waw444Biblical Hebrew
waw has been described as an ‘all-purpose connector’ (Steiner 2000), which
‘places propositions or clauses one after another, without indicating the
hierarchical relation between them’ and ‘frequently joins logically
subordinate clauses to a main clause’ (Waltke and O’Connor 1990: 649). in
constructions of the type ‘when … then’ (Waltke and O’Connor 1990: 436). This
is claimed by the authors by comparing the occurrences of the same
construction in Septuagint Greek with their counterparts in the Masoretic
Text, as well as with the usage of en toi \+ infinitive followed by kai in
Ancient Greek, which appears to be largely at odds with the one in Koine
Greek555Hogeterp and Denaux (2018: 436) find that ‘in the relatively few cases
where en tōi with infinitive has a temporal significance in the voluminous
literary Greek works of Thucydides, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, and Longus, it
is never syndetically followed by an apodotic kai in their works’..
Whichever syntactic analyses for (b.)-(b.) one decides to endorse, the
function of the dative absolute in bystъ-clauses is thus consistent throughout
– namely, to provide the setting, or frame, for the eventuality expressed by
the following finite clause.

####  1.2.2 Summary

In this section, we observed that the vast majority of dative absolutes occur
before the matrix clause, suggesting that the position of absolutes in the
sentence is, in itself, likely to be associated with their primary function.
This can be identified as a stage-setting or backgrounding one, as previous
studies on Early Slavic dative absolutes had already observed, or, under Bary
and Haug’s (2011) terminology, as frame participles. Conjunct participles,
similarly to their Ancient Greek counterparts (as per the corpus evidence in
Haug 2012), showed a significant association between the position of the
participle relative to the matrix clause and the aspect of the participle.
Pre-matrix conjunct participles are much more likely to be perfective, whereas
post-matrix conjunct participles are much more likely to be imperfective. This
is in line with Bary and Haug’s (2011) analysis, whereby conjunct participles
as independent rhemes are typically pre-matrix and perfective, whereas as
elaborations they are typically imperfective and generally occur after the
matrix verb. We have also seen that, sentence-initially, conjunct participles,
even when perfective, can also function as frames, either clearly so, as in
(b.), or as a possible interpretation in ambiguous cases such as (b.), where
they could also be interpreted as independent rhemes.
Finally, I made a digression on bystъ-clauses (‘it came to pass that…), a
construction occurring rather frequently in the Gospels which has widely
studied counterparts in other pre-modern Indo-European languages. The
construction is made of functionally relatively fixed slots, and we have seen
that dative absolutes often occur in what has been analysed as the episode-
initiating, backgrounded predication which precedes a following foregrounded,
main eventuality. This observation independently supports the analysis of
dative absolutes as prototypical frames, particularly since their usage in
bystъ-constructions occurs independently of the Greek sources.

###  1.3 Subjects

Examples like (b.) and (b.) are discursively very similar. The main difference
appears to be syntactic: the subject of the conjunct participle in (b.) is co-
indexed with that of the matrix clause, whereas the subject of the dative
absolutes in (b.) is not.

  * a.

i vъšedъšju emu vъ domъ. učenici ego vъprašachǫ i edinogo. ěko and
enter.ptcp.pfv.m.dat.sg 3.sg.m.dat in house.acc.sg disciple.nom.pl 3.sg.m.gen
ask.impf.3.pl 3.sg.m.acc one.m.gen.sg that

  * b.

kai eiselthontos autou eis oikon hoi mathētai autou kat’ idian epērōtōn auton
and enter.ptcp.pfv.m.gen.sg 3.sg.m.gen in house.acc.sg the.m.nom.pl
disciple.m.nom.pl 3.sg.m.gen in private.acc ask.impf.3.pl 3.sg.m.acc ‘And when
he had entered the house, his disciples began to ask him privately’ (Mark
9:28)

  * a.

i vъšedъ vъ crkvъ. načętъ izgoniti prodajǫštęję vь nei and
enter.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg in temple.acc.sg start.aor.3.sg drive out.inf
sell.ptcp.ipfv.acc.pl in 3.sg.f.loc

  * b.

Kai eiselthōn eis to hieron ērksato ekballein tous pōlountas and
enter.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg in the.acc.sg temple.acc.sg rule.aor.3.sg drive
out.inf.prs the.m.acc.pl sell.ptcp.ipfv.acc.pl ‘When Jesus entered the temple,
he began to drive out those who were selling there’ (Luke 19:45)

It has often been observed, however, that in both Early Slavic (Collins 2004,
2011) and Ancient Greek (Fuller 2006; Haug 2011) subject co-indexation between
absolutes and matrix clauses is, in fact, attested in the Gospels (1.3), as
well as in Classical Greek (1.3) and Early Slavic texts (1.3), despite
traditional descriptive grammars treating them as ‘exceptions’.

i bystъ idǫštemъ imь. ištistišę sę and happen.aor.3.sg go.ptcp.ipfv.dat.pl
he.dat.pl cleanse.aor.3.pl refl ‘And it came to pass that, as they went, they
were cleansed’ (Luke 17:14)

Kroise anartēmenou seu andros basileos khrēsta erga kai epea poieein aiteo
dosin hēntina bouleai toi genesthai parautika Croesus.m.voc.sg to be
prepared.ptcp.prf.pass.m.gen.sg yourself.2.m.gen.sg man.m.gen.sg king.m.gen.sg
useful.pl.n.acc work.pl.n.acc and word.pl.n.acc make.prs.inf
ask.2.sg.prs.imp.mid giving.sg.f.acc which.sg.f.acc wish.2.sg.prs.mid
you.2.sg.dat happen.pfv.pst.inf.mid directly ‘Croesus, now that you, a king,
are determined to act and to speak with integrity, ask me directly for
whatever favor you like.’ (Herodotus, Histories 1.90.1; translation by Godley
1920.)

vamь zloslavnom suštem ot kudu imate pokazati jako sergie onь pravoslavnь bě i
cha radi postrada you.dat.pl heretic.dat.pl be.ptcp.ipfv.dat.pl from where
will.prs.2.pl show.inf that Sergius.nom that.nom.m.sg orthodox.nom.m.sg
be.impf.2.sg and Christ.gen for suffer.aor.3.sg ‘Since you are heretics, how
will you show that Sergius was an Orthodox and suffered for Christ?’
(Euthymius of Tarnovo, Life of Hilarion of Meglin, Sbornici of Vladislav
Grammarian 171r)

Several partial explanations have been given as to why the authors or
translators would not use an agreeing participle where syntactically possible:
a change in the subject’s referent’s semantic role between adverbial and main
clause (e.g. Collins 2004, 2011), or of the ‘underlying subject’ even if not
of the ‘formal subject’ (Levinsohn 2000); the possibility that an absolute
‘brings out the participial member with more prominence and force’ than a
conjunct participle (Winer 2001 [1882]); the goal of making the participial
clause more prominent (Goodwin 1997 [1930]); or even the scribal late
realization that they could have used an agreeing participle instead (Winer
2001 [1882]). While the syntactic factor plays a role, there are broader
information-structural and discourse factors involved, which neither
morphosyntactic nor semantic-role explanations can single-handedly capture. It
may therefore be useful to look into the properties of the subjects of dative
absolutes and conjunct participles beyond subject co-referentiality.

####  1.3.1 Realization and position

As discussed in the Introduction, the annotation convention in PROIEL is to
always analyze the argument shared by conjunct participles and their matrix as
dependents of the matrix clause. As Haug (2011, 2017) argues, however,
conjunct participles in some configurations can be considered heads of the
shared argument, specifically the leftmost frame or independent rheme conjunct
participle linearly preceding the matrix clause. Only the leftmost pre-matrix
conjunct participles, therefore, were here considered as potentially able to
head their subject and, therefore, to be strictly referred to as overt\- or
null-subject. Dative absolutes, on the other hand, have their own internal
subject, regardless of configuration. A fair comparison between dative
absolutes and conjunct participles, then, may be made between the
constructions in sentence-initial position, which is also where the clearest
functional overlap occurs, since they can both work as frames. Table 1.4 shows
the frequency of overt and potential null subjects in sentence-initial
conjunct participles and dative absolutes.

| overt | null
---|---|---
conjunct (sentence-initial) | 60.5% (455) | 39.5% (297)
absolute (sentence-initial) | 85.4% (123) | 14.6% (21)
Table 1.4: Frequency of overt and null subjects among sentence-initial
conjunct participles and dative absolutes in the Codex Marianus

The vast majority of sentence-initial dative absolutes have an overt subject.
All the 21 dative absolute occurrences classified as ‘null’ in Table 1.4 are,
in fact, expressions of the type pozdě byvъšu ‘when it got late’, byvъšju že
dьni ‘when the day came’ or večerou byvъšju ‘when the evening came’. In
PROIEL/TOROT, these are all analyzed as impersonal temporal constructions
consisting of a copula and a predicative adverb or noun, the latter agreeing
with the participle. Although one could argue for a finer-grained distinction
between personal and impersonal temporal constructions among these
occurrences,666There is arguably a difference between, for example, pozdě
byvъšu ‘when it got late’ and byvъšju že dьni ‘when the day came’. In the
latter, dьni ‘day’ should probably be analysed as the subject of the absolute.
Still, manually disambiguating personal from impersonal constructions would
not change the overall observation that overt subjects are much more frequent
than null subjects among sentence-initial dative absolutes. from the discourse
perspective, these can all still be analyzed as generic frame-setters.
Among sentence-initial conjunct participles, there are as many as 39.5%
potential null subjects. Intuitively, this reflects the fact that conjunct
participles in sentence-initial position (which can be either frames or
independent rhemes) are functionally more diverse than dative absolutes (which
are instead typically frames).
As Haug (2012: 316) observes, ‘sentences that shift the subject are more
likely to have a frame to anchor it to the previous discourse, whereas this is
not as necessary in continuous sequences of events with the same agent’.
Frames are particularly useful to reinstate previously mentioned referents
that had no longer been in focus in the previous discourse, making them very
likely to overtly realize their subject but also, specifically, to have the
subject following the participle itself (Haug 2012: 316-320). Following Haug
(2012), then, overt-subject conjunct participles in the VS configuration
should be more likely to function as frames than independent rhemes. It is not
difficult to find examples where this is clearly the case, as in the VS and SV
conjunct participles in (b.) and (b.), functioning as a frame and an
independent rheme, respectively (as the English translation also suggests).

  * a.

Slyšavъ že junoša slovo otide skrъbę hear.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg ptc joung
man.nom.sg word.acc.sg go away.aor.3.sg mourn.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg

  * b.

akousas de ho neaniskos apēlthen lupoumenos hear.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg ptc
the.m.nom.sg young man.m.nom.sg depart.aor.3.sg offend.ptcp.ipfv.pas.m.nom.sg
But when the young man heard this, he went away sad’ (Matthew 19:22)

  * a.

i se prokaženъ pristǫpь klaněše sę emu glę and ptc leper.m.nom.sg move-
forward.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg worship.impf.3.sg refl him.dat
say.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg

  * b.

kai idou lepros proselthōn prosekunei autōi legōn and ptc leper.m.nom.sg move-
forward.ptcp.pfv.m.nom.sg worship.impf.3.sg him.dat say.ptcp.ipfv.m.nom.sg ‘A
man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said’ (Matthew 8:2)

As Table 1.5 shows, the VS configuration is much more frequent than the SV one
among sentence-initial dative absolutes, once again supporting their
interpretation as typical frames. Among sentence-initial conjunct participles,
the split between the two configurations is instead more even.

| SV | VS
---|---|---
conjunct (sentence-initial) | 45.7% (208) | 54.3% (247)
absolute (sentence-initial) | 21.9% (27) | 78.1% (96)
Table 1.5: Position of overt subjects relative to sentence-initial conjunct
participles and dative absolutes in the Codex Marianus

If the VS configuration is associated with the reinstatement of older
referents (which framing participles help contextualize in the new discourse),