Naturalness: Some Slovenian (Morpho)syntactic Examples

Abstract

Within Naturalness Theory as practised in the local work, the following mostly (morpho)syntactic phenomena of Slovenian are considered (the numbering refers to the so-called deductions in the main text):
2. The type Brežice so bile mesto ‘Brežice was a town’, as against to mesto so bile Brežice ‘this town was Brežice’. 3. The verbal aspect in the affirmative and the negative imperative. 4. Informal and less informal addressing of one person. 5. Formal and less formal addressing of one person. 6. The displacement of the adjective modifier to the right of the head. 7. Non-imperative sentences as expressive variants of the imperative. 8. The conditional expressed with an imperative clause. 9. The use of the affirmative imperative supported with suitable particles instead of the negated imperative. 10—11. The accusative in the form of the corresponding genitive if the inanimate noun head of the adjectival is ellipted, e.g., hočem belega ‘I want the white one (scil. the white car)’. 12. The emphasis of intra- and extra-clausal sentence negation. 13. The sentence negation + the finite and infinite verb. 14. The subject complement of middle-voice reflexive verbs in the nominative and in the accusative. 15. The definite form of the adjective in vocatives. 16—7. Full noun phrase subjects with verbs in the non-third verbal person, e.g., študentje garate ‘you students work hard’. 18—9. Pronominal possession, alienable and inalienable. 20. The main arguments of the verb and of the noun. 21—2. Definite and indefinite adjective forms. 23. The definite article ta-. 24. Characterizing and identifying possessive adjectives. 25. Genitivus subiectivus v. genitivus obiectivus. 26. The direct object in infinite clauses of purpose. 27. Inflection of men’s and women’s surnames. 28. Slovenian geographical regions whose names end in -sko and -ska, e.g., Gorenjsko, Gorenjska ‘Upper Carniola’.