Insights into the interaction between the layers of language (especially syntax and text registers). Comparative aspects will also be regarded.

Has Čechov produced a grammatically correct sentence at all when he writes the following? Подъезжая к сией станцыи и глядя на природу в окно, у меня слетела шляпа.

All these questions are related to the issue of variance within the norms of Russian, and how the variants are distributed over the text registers of Russian. In this seminar we will explore variance on the syntactic level with the help of the Russian National Corpus; where appropriate we will also the address historical reasons for variance in Contemporary Russian. If desired, a comparative analysis of Russian and other Slavonic languages or German may also be included into the seminar contents. 

Given corresponding funding provided, a joint session with Prof. Dr. Imke Mendoza (Salzburg) and her students, who work on the same topic, will take place in this seminar.

Introduction by the instructor; discussion of a representative choice of literature on the topic; analysis of texts representing different registers and (functional) styles; analysis of corpus data.

Presentation in the seminar and thesis.

Jachnow, Helmut/Dönninghaus, Sabine (Hg.): Handbuch der sprachwissenschaftlichen Russistik und ihrer Grenzdisziplinen. Wiesbaden 1999; Mulisch, Herbert/Gabka, Kurt (Hg.): Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart. Band 2. Morphologie. Leipzig 1975; Gabka, Kurt (Hg.): Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart. Band 3. Syntax. Leipzig 1989; Koester-Thoma, Sonja/Zemskaja, Elena A. (Hg.): Russische Umgangssprache. Phonetik, Morphologie, Syntax, Wortbildung, Wortstellung, Lexik, Nomination, Sprachspiel. Berlin 1995.

A more comprehensive list of references will be provided at semester start.