Linguistic expressions involving body parts (and other entities) belonging to an "interested person" often have unique grammatical properties, e.g., the dative case in Russian. The notion called Inalienable Possession (IP) is used to account for such properties. Semantic and pragmatic analyses account for some of the properties of IP in Russian.…

Spatial relationships represented by po + dative case in Russian may be analyzed as underlying locations. The directionality sometimes present in po + dative sentences is due to the cooccurrence of the directional (determined) verb of motion and not to an underlying relation goal. (SL)

A discussion of transitive and intransitive verbs in Russian leads to the conclusion that the question of transitivity rests primarily with the meaning of the verb itself and with the resulting amenability to passive transformation. (Author/RM)

Work supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institutes of Mental Health. (RS)

Investigates the influence of the prefix "o-/ob-" on the choice of case for nominal objects of prefixed verbs, using a semantic field analysis. Focuses on four semantic functions: (1) objective; (2) locative; (3) factitive; and (4) comparative. The results are useful both to theoretical linguists and to teachers of Russian. (LMO)

This collection of 14 papers and articles by Roman Jakobson contains works written and published between 1931 and 1970 which deal either with global aspects of language or with specific grammatical issues. The collection emphasizes Jakobson's concern for finding the links between form and meaning in language. The text is entirely in German with…