On “historical unity” of Russian and Ukrainian: A linguistic perspective on language conflict and change

This paper focuses on Putin’s (2021) misguided claim regarding “historical [linguistic] unity” of Russian and Ukrainian. Their being two distinct languages is not in question, as opposed (for example) to Serbian and Croatian. However, it is important to substantiate the objective reality of those differences, taking a strong stand against unjustified claims about linguistic [unity] where there are no grounds for them. Implementing a Python-coded algorithm, like those described in Nerbonne & Kretzschmar 2013, we calculate Levenshtein distance between frequency-based word lists, in a manner sensitive to both organic and contact-induced change, to fully reveal Ukrainian’s complex relationship with both Russian and Polish

The syntax of existential sentences in Serbian

Hartmann J, Milicevic N. The syntax of existential sentences in Serbian. In: Antonenko A, Bailyn JF, Bethin CY, eds. Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic linguistics. The Stony Brook Meeting 2007 . Michigan Slavic materials . Vol 53. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications; 2008: 168-184

The Canonical Order of Russian Objects

According to the principles of economy, scrambled orders require an interpretive license. Removal of such a license should result in canonical orders, that is, orders I hypothesize to be determined by a thematic hierarchy. It is traditionally assumed that the interpretive license for scrambling is provided by information-structural interpretations such as focus and background. However, either direct object–indirect object or indirect object–direct object order is possible in Russian all-focus constructions, complicating the choice of order analyzed as canonical. I argue that Russian scrambling can be licensed by a variety of interpretations, focus/background encoding being but one of them. When the construal of objects is neutralized on the basis of all of the relevant interpretations, the direct object–indirect object order surfaces, strongly suggesting that this is the canonical order of Russian objects

Broadband X-ray spectra of GX 339-4 and the geometry of accreting black holes in the hard state

A major question in the study of black hole binaries involves our understanding of the accretion geometry when the sources are in the "hard" state, with an X-ray energy spectrum dominated by a hard power-law component and radio emission coming from a steady "compact" jet. Although the common hard state picture is that the accretion disk is truncated, perhaps at hundreds of gravitational radii (Rg) from the black hole, recent results for the recurrent transient GX 339–4 by Miller and coworkers show evidence for disk material very close to the black hole's innermost stable circular orbit. That work studied GX 339–4 at a luminosity of ~5% of the Eddington limit (LEdd) and used parameters from a relativistic reflection model and the presence of a thermal component as diagnostics. Here we use similar diagnostics but extend the study to lower luminosities (2.3% and 0.8% LEdd) using Swift and RXTE observations of GX 339–4. We detect a thermal component with an inner disk temperature of ~0.2 keV at 2.3% LEdd. At both luminosities, we detect broad features due to iron Kα that are likely related to reflection of hard X-rays off disk material. If these features are broadened by relativistic effects, they indicate that the material resides within 10Rg, and the measurements are consistent with the disk's inner radius remaining at ~4Rg down to 0.8% LEdd. However, we also discuss an alternative model for the broadening, and we note that the evolution of the thermal component is not entirely consistent with the constant inner radius interpretation