‘Knowing How’ in Slovene: Treading the Other Path*

For the linguistic expression of the concept of knowledge, the Slavic languages use verbs deriving from the Indo-European roots *ĝnō and *u̯ ei̯d. They differ in terms of the availability of both types of verbs in the contemporary standard languages and in terms of their semantic range. As will be shown in this paper, these differences are interesting not only from a language-specific lexico lo gi cal point of view, but also in the context of the intersection of lexicon and gram mar. Covering the domain of ‘knowing how,’ the *ĝnō-based verb in Slo ve ne (znati) has been extending into the domain of possibility and, on this basis, de veloping into a modal verb. While this development is not surprising from a typological point of view, it is remarkable from a Slavic perspective, since this particular grammaticalisation path towards possibility is otherwise un known to Slavic. This peculiar feature of Slovene, which most probably relates to its long-lasting and intensive contact with German, is illustrated in the pre sent paper by comparing Slovene to Russian on the basis of three main questions: 1) the semantic range of vedeti / vedat’ and znati / znat’, 2) the lexicalisation of ‘know how,’ and 3) the relation between knowledge, ability, and possibility. The focus is on contemporary Slovene and Russian, leaving a detailed diachronic investigation and the further embedding into a larger Slavic and areal perspective for future analyses. Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-142082 Published Version Originally published at: Sonnenhauser, Barbara (2017). ‘Knowing How’ in Slovene: Treading the Other Path. Slovene = ������� : International journal of slavic studies, 1:95-117.