publications

2022

1. How Do Children Combine Pointing and Language in the Earliest Stages of Development? A Case Study of Russian and Chintang

   Jekaterina Mazara, Elena Lieven , and Sabine Stoll

   In Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2022 , 2022

2021

1. Frequency vs. Salience in First Language Acquisition: The Acquisition of Aspect Marking in Chintang

   Jekaterina Mazara, and Sabine Stoll

   In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2021 , 2021

2019

1. How Do Children Become Flexible in Their Use of Grammatical Categories? The Aspect Hypothesis Revisited

   Jekaterina Mazara, and Sabine Stoll

   In BUCLD 44: Proceedings of the 44th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development , 2019
2. Development of Verb Morphology: From Item-Specificity to Proficient Use

   Jekaterina Mazara, and Sabine Stoll

   In Proceedings of the 41th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2019: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, Montreal, Canada, July 24-27, 2019 , 2019

2017

1. The Acquisition of Polysynthetic Verb Forms in Chintang

   Sabine Stoll , Jekaterina Mazara, and Balthasar Bickel

   In The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis , Nov 2017

   Abs

   Abstract In first language acquisition research so far little is known about the affordances involved in children’s acquisition of morphologies of different complexities. This chapter discusses the acquisition of Chintang verbal morphology. Chintang is a Sino-Tibetan (Kiranti) polysynthetic language spoken in a small village in Eastern Nepal by approximately 6,000 speakers. The most complex part of Chintang morphology is verbal inflection. A large number of affixes, verb compounding, and freedom in prefix ordering results in over 1,800 verb forms of single stem verbs and more than 4,000 forms if a secondary stem is involved. In this chapter we assess the challenges of learning such a complex system, and we describe in detail what this acquisition process looks like. For this we analyze a large longitudinal acquisition corpus of Chintang.

2013

1. Ten in der obecná čeština: Jugendjahre eines zukünftigen Artikels?

   Jekaterina Mazara

   In Swiss Contributions to the 15th International Congress of Slavic Studies in Minsk, August 2013 , Aug 2013
2. Irony in the face(s) of politeness: Strategic use of verbal irony in Czech political TV debates

   Jekaterina Mazara

   In Approaches to Slavic Interaction , Aug 2013

   ISSN: 1875-1792

   Abs

   This paper examines the possible strategies behind the use of verbal irony in Czech political TV-debates (since 1993) and the various factors that influence politicians? behavior in those debates. Since TV debates among politicians usu- ally involve the participants trying to prove their point, they are set up as verbal duels and, therefore, foster either negative use of irony against the opponent or positive use to enhance the speaker?s own positive face. The choice of whether to use irony or not can thus become part of a larger strategy of how the politician and maybe even his whole party want to present themselves in the media. The reaction to ironic remarks, especially those that attack the positive face, can also play an important part, since it can help save the victim?s face or hurt it further.

2012

1. Strategičeskoe upotreblenie ironii v social’nyx i političeskix televizionnyx tok-šou

   Jekaterina Mazara

   Problemy rečevogo obščenija, Aug 2012

   Place: Moscow Publisher: Nauka/FLINTA
2. Ironie - Freund oder Feind?: Zur Auswirkung von Ironie auf das Höflichkeitsmanagement

   Jekaterina Mazara

   In m*OST 2010: Oesterreichische Tagung für SlawistInnen , Aug 2012

2011

1. Missing verbs in colloquial Russian: Ambiguity or Vagueness?

   Jekaterina Mazara

   Beiträge der europäischen Slavistischen Linguistik (POLYSLAV), Aug 2011
2. Every Mama Needs a Baby: Ein neuer Zugang zur Semantik von Muterrollen im Russischen

   Jekaterina Mazara

   In m*OST 2009: Oesterreichische Tagung für SlawistInnen , Aug 2011

   Abs

   This paper presents a new approach to the conceptualization of motherhood in Russian. There are two underlying principles – birth and nurturance – which are of importance in this discussion. Because it is not necessary that both are present for someone to be called мать, it is difficult to find an explication that describes all meanings of мать sufficiently. Therefore a different approach must be taken. I distinguish between the different meanings of мать while uniting them within one concept. It is necessary to go beyond mere explications of meanings and take into consideration the various connotations associated with these meanings. Using the theory presented by Iordanskaja/Mel’čuk (1980) where connotations need to be proven linguistically, this paper draws on the different connotations and separates them from the explication in order to compile a more appropriate semantic description of the concepts of motherhood. In such an approach, мать becomes semantically more transparent, since it will be divided into distinctive meanings.

2010

1. Swiss Cheese for Lazy Speakers: Verb Omissions in Russian and Czech

   Jekaterina Mazara

   Oslo Studies in Language, Dec 2010

   Abs

   In this paper, I examine a specialty of colloquial Russian – the omission of verbs – and compare it to the possibilities of verb omission in Czech, where this phenomenon is rather rare. The omissions in question are to be separated from compulsory ellipses, which will not be taken into account in this paper. They are also not to be regarded as zero lexemes, which are elusive to attempts of reconstruction. The nature of this third kind of omission itself presents a frame for the comparison, since these omissions can be placed along two scales, that of ambiguous/vague vs. unequivocally recoverable and free formation vs. phraseologically bound phrase. The comparison of verb omissions in the two languages along these scales emphasizes the restrictions of omissions in Czech and the high degree of freedom in Russian. Moreover, verb omissions in Russian can lead to changes in the meaning of a sentence, whereas they seem to be merely a stylistic device in Czech.