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1. INTRODUCTION This paper examines the status of the modal particle1 bi/by in three Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Macedonian and Russian, with a focus on the Russian data. The evolution of this modal particle in Slavic constitutes in many respects a canonical example of grammaticalization. A lexical item, in this case the verb to be in the aorist tense, was used with the l-participle to form an irrealis mood.2 Over time, in some of the Slavic languages, this auxiliary has lost inflectional properties and become an invariant particle. This shift from lexical item to grammatical form is accompanied also by increased restriction in syntactic position. Such changes are typical of the grammaticalization process. The comparison of Bulgarian, Macedonian and Russian data is valuable for two reasons. First, the Russian and South Slavic data illustrate some of the possible range in both rate and type of change involved in grammaticalization. Second, with this varied data before us we can address two frequently posed questions in work on grammaticalization: 1) What motivates grammaticalization?, and 2) What accounts for differences among languages in rate and type of change? This study suggests that answers to both of these questions are to be found in an appreciation of the structural differences among these three closely related languages. 2. WHAT IS GRAMMATICALIZATION? The term grammaticalization has primarily been understood to refer to a diachronic process, i.e., the process by which lexical or content items assume functions more grammatical in nature (or grammatical forms become even more so). However, much recent scholarship views grammaticalization from a synchronic perspective as well.3 While appreciating the historical nature of grammaticalization-the process-the focus in such works is on the results of this process at a given point in a language's development. Primarily synchronic studies, informed by the understanding that inherent features of the grammaticalization process such as different rates of change and less than complete applicability of a change, help us appreciate that what is evidenced synchronically at any given point may be some ambiguous or recalcitrant data. Such work underscores the essentially noncomplete nature of grammars and offers an explanation for those areas in a language's grammar which are in flux. The diachronic and synchronic approaches suggest different but interrelated models for analyzing data. The diachronic perspective is concerned primarily with how the historical process of change is conceptualized. The model usually employed is the cline of grammaticality, for example: content item > grammatical word > clitic > inflectional affix (Hopper and Traugott 1993: 7) The synchronic approach seeks to establish parameters for assessing the degree to which a given form in the contemporary language is grammaticalized. Measures to assess the degree of grammaticalization include such factors as decategorialization: lack of inflections associated with a particular category; recategorialization: reinterpretation as member of a different grammatical class; and lack of syntactic autonomy. Clearly these two analytical frameworks are linked. The cline of grammaticality posits that changes associated with the process of grammaticalization follow a path of predictable morphological developments. Synchronic measures of grammaticalization such as decategorialization and lack of syntactic autonomy can be shown to correlate with points along this historical continuum. For example, the position of a clitic is subject to greater syntactic restrictions than that of a grammatical word. This paper considers grammaticalization first and foremost from a synchronic perspective. I am not concerned so much with the evolution of the bi/by forms, but rather with their current status. There are two stages to this analysis. First I assess the degree to which the modal form bi/by is grammaticalized in contemporary Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Russian. …

Some years ago Polish reviewers of my study, A Polish Factory, pointed out that I had failed to differentiate between antagonistic and nonantagonistic conflicts. In this paper a short reference will be made to the concept of antagonistic and non-antagonistic conflicts in the light of my observations not only of Polish but also of Yugoslav factories.1 However, central to this paper will be an analysis of the phenomenon of conflict in temporal categories. In reviewing my Polish book, Szczepanski stressed that in Polish factories there are "organizational, personal and even economic conflicts"; according to Sarapata conflicts remain in socialistic factories, with the exception of the class conflict that has presumably disappeared. Morawski, whose review is most relevant to the development of this paper, felt that while antagonism pervades all categories of relations between management and labour in western factories, one should not necessarily propose the opposite, that in socialistic enterprises all categories of social relations should be non-antagonistic. The above quotations indicate that the essential difference is in the basic assumption of my Polish critics. This is an assumption made by Marxist theory in general that there is a certain hierarchy of conflicts of which the economic conflict, that is, the contradictory economic interests between owner-manager on one hand and worker-employee on the other, is the most decisive. Essentially, speaking in game theory terms, Marxists assume that the class conflict is a zero-sum game, that is, that any gain on one side automatically results in a corresponding loss

(1992). Numerals and Agreement in Polish. Canadian Slavonic Papers: Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 429-444.

L'etude de la semantique prepositionnelle des cas locatif et accusatif dans l'expression du temps en polonais permet a l'A. de montrer que l'usage temporel de ces deux cas peut etre interprete comme une extension metaphorique de leur usage spatial. Il tente de determiner si l'opposition localisation vs. mouvement qui caracterise le contraste entre locatif spatial et accusatif spatial est conserve lorsque les cas prepositionnels expriment des relations de temps

/ResumeThis study is an essay in psychomechanical interpretation of the relationship between aspects and tenses in the Russian present tense. The question has been studied many times but it seems to us that never enough distinction is made between what is aspect and what is tense, between what the two have in common and how they are different. The fact is that, when one does not start out with a clear notion of the true nature of the aspect and of verbal tenses, how can one possibly define the relations which develop between those two parameters and which contribute to the expression of the integrality of tense in a language like Russian?In the first section, we trace a parallel between the Latin and Russian systems which allows us to better distinguish the notion of lexical aspect from the one of grammatical aspect.In the second section we attempt to define what makes up lexical determination and we continue by making a distinction between universe time and event time, showing that the demarcatio...