Christo Moskovsky

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Christo Moskovsky[edit]

Christo Moskovsky (Христо Московски) (born 10 April 1958) is a Bulgarian-Australian linguist, academic, and author. In the early 1990s following the collapse of socialism in Europe, Moskovsky emigrated with his wife and two children to Newcastle, Australia, where he continues to reside. In 1997 he completed a doctoral degree in linguistics at the University of Newcastle, subsequently gaining a tenured lectureship. He remained at the University of Newcastle until his retirement at the end of 2021. He has since published two books: a semi-autobiographical novel capturing his experiences emigrating from communist Bulgaria; and, a socio-political analysis of contemporary Australia.

Early life[edit]

Moskovsky was born 10 April 1958 in Sofia, Bulgaria, to Goran Moskovsky, a medical doctor, and Zdravka Moskovska, a German language teacher. He has one sibling, Marta Moskovska. Moskovsky’s childhood took place in the 1960s, a period of economic hardship in Bulgaria despite the cessation of post-war rationing. In addition to financial adversity, his family also experienced political difficulties. In the early 1950s, one of his aunts (sister to his father, Goran) was arrested for working as a translator at the US embassy in Sofia and was deported to the infamous Belene concentration camp where she was detained for three years. Subsequently, Moskovsky’s entire family was marked as “untrustworthy” by the regime, and they faced ongoing hostility for many years.

Education[edit]

Moskovsky completed his early education at a local public school in Sofia, Bulgaria. Again in Sofia, he attended the selective German language High School which offered an immersion type of curriculum, with about half of the subjects taught in German, often by German speakers native to another former member state of the Soviet Bloc – East Germany, otherwise known at the time as the German Democratic Republic. Following a then mandatory two-year subscription service in the Bulgarian army in the notorious Krumovgrad Division (which bordered Greece and Turkey), Moskovsky undertook a program in English and American Studies at Sofia University. This five-year degree covered a range of areas, including English and American literature, general linguistics, translation and interpreting, and teacher training. Linguistics rapidly became Moskovsky’s favoured area of study, and for his final year research thesis he conducted a comparative analysis of Bulgarian and English reflexive pronouns. This study stimulated his interest in anaphora^[1] and pronominal binding^[2], which later became the focus of his doctoral dissertation. After graduating in 1985, he completed a research-based Masters degree in linguistics (again at Sofia University), with a thesis exploring verb valency. Finally, in 1992, Moskovsky began a doctoral program in linguistics at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Doctoral thesis[edit]

Moskovsky conducted a pioneering study of pronominal binding in Bulgarian within the framework of the then influential Government and Binding Theory^[3][4]. Because Bulgarian has a richer pronominal system than English, including a full set of pronominal clitics, as well as reflexive possessive pronouns, the Bulgarian language contains a wealth of interesting new data yielding both empirical and theoretical insights which the English data alone do not have the capacity to provide. Based on the analyses of data from Bulgarian, as well as a number of other mostly Slavic languages, Moskovsky came to the conclusion that anaphora is at the intersection of syntax^[5] and pragmatics^[6], in which structural and discourse factors play complementary roles in determining the distribution and interpretation of referentially deficient elements like pronouns. The dissertation (later published as a monograph^[7]) draws attention to some interesting differences in the distribution of reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns in 1^st and 3^rd person sentences. Here are a few English examples:

John thinks highly of him/himself. (co-referential reading of ‘John’ and ‘him’ is not acceptable)

I think highly of me.

Sarah was not amused by Lucy’s joke about her/herself. (co-referential reading of ‘Lucy’ and ‘her’ is not acceptable).

Sarah was not amused by my joke about me.

The unacceptability of the non-reflexive pronoun (in the co-referential reading) in the 3^rd person sentences cannot be attributed to structural factors – otherwise the corresponding (and structurally identical) 1^st person sentences would have been equally unacceptable. Such data rather suggest that, because 3^rd person pronouns can have multiple referents, in some 3^rd person sentences the use of a reflexive pronoun is driven by reasons of disambiguation (rather than by structural factors) – in other words, in such instances discourse factors (e.g. “avoid ambiguity”) come into play and influence the distribution and interpretation of an anaphoric element^[8]. In his thesis, Moskovsky argued that such facts have significant theoretical implications. It is worth noting that the vast majority (if not all) of the existing studies of pronominal binding are based on 3^rd person data. But, as evidenced above, in at least some 3^rd person sentences a pronoun’s binding is the product of both structural and discourse factors. Because of that, 3^rd person data may not be well-suited for insights into strictly structural conditions of pronominal binding. This is particularly relevant to the formulation of locality constraints^[9][10] on pronominal binding: in most extant formulations, the use of the non-reflexive pronoun in the 1st person examples above would be in locality violation and would be ruled out as ungrammatical. Moskovsky’s thesis suggested that it would be worthwhile revisiting the issue of locality constraints exclusively on the basis of 1^st and 2^nd person data.

Career[edit]

Moskovsky worked for nearly four decades as an educator. After completing his undergraduate degree he was appointed as an English instructor at one of Sofia’s suburban high schools, where he remained for a year. He subsequently obtained a competitive teaching position at the now extinct postgraduate Institute for Foreign Languages in Sofia, where he gained experience in the field of applied linguistics. Shortly after finishing his doctoral program in 1997, Moskovsky was offered a contract position as an academic literacy lecturer at the University of Newcastle’s Centre for Teaching and Learning. In late 1998, he was elected, among several other candidates across Australia, to the newly created lectureship in the University’s Department of Linguistics. He remained in this position until his retirement in 2021. Across the 25 years spent in this position, Moskovsky developed and successfully ran a coursework Masters and a doctoral program in applied linguistics. Throughout his tenure, Moskovsky personally supervised a great number of domestic and international research students, representing a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. On a number of occasions he was recognized for his teaching excellence^[11]. Moskovsky also spearheaded a prolific research program in applied linguistics investigating cognitive and psychological aspects of second/foreign language acquisition. He has authored and co-authored several monographs and multiple papers published in the highest ranked journals of the field. Across his career, Moskovsky’s publications have acquired over 900 citations^[12] by other researchers.

Other notable work[edit]

Departure (Заминаване), a semi-autobiographical novel, published by Bulgarian Bestseller (Български Бестселър) in 2022. Departure was only published in 2022, although the idea of the book was conceived probably two decades earlier and much of the book was written quite a few years before its publication. Moskovsky’s experience as an active participant in the democratization processes in Bulgaria after the collapse of Soviet socialism in Central and Eastern Europe left such a deep mark in his soul that he felt a compelling need to tell his story. The late 1980s and the early 1990s were a period of truly momentous social, cultural and political changes in Eastern Europe. It marked the end of perhaps the most destructive and inhumane socio-political order in the history of humanity. In terms of their amplitude and their impact on the everyday lives of ordinary people, the processes that ensued and the massive social, cultural and political transformations that they entailed bear strong resemblance to the revolutions of the late middle centuries in England and France. Not unlike what happened then, the late 1980s and early 1990s in Eastern Europe were a time of grand upheaval when existing social, cultural, political and institutional structures were dismantled and were replaced with new ones — with all of the inevitable social disruption and confusion that this caused. Even more importantly, it was a period of great mental and spiritual transformation, a period of considerable shift in individual and national mentality, a period of freeing of people’s minds — a sort of modern-day renaissance.

This is what Departure is about. The story takes place in Bulgaria over a period of around two years: from the autumn of 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, until the end of 1991 when the first non-communist Bulgarian government in half of a century was formed. It is a personal story relating the way in which an ordinary individual, a man in his early 30s, experienced the events of this period. It is a story about the excitement, the joy, the optimism and the aspirations which the start of these transformations generated in many people. It is also a story of dashed hopes and disappointment, of efforts to make sense of a situation in which often nothing made much sense. The book is in part about the choices that social and political circumstances sometimes compel us to make, and the hardship and often substantial personal sacrifice that these choices entail. Ultimately, this is a story about trying to achieve personal happiness during an extraordinarily turbulent, confusing and unsettled time.

Personal life[edit]

In the mid-1980s Moskovsky married Violetta Kaneva (born 8 April 1959) and they had two daughters, Neda (born 24 May 1989) and Ellena (born 31 March 1992). During the political upheaval throughout Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Moskovsky became an active and willing participant in the growing movement for Bulgaria’s independence and democratization. His novel Departure (Заминаване) copiously documents the first two years of that tumultuous period. With the collapse of communist system in Europe, restrictions on movement were abolished and people were then free to seek personal and professional opportunities elsewhere in the world. In 1992, Moskovsky was admitted into a doctoral program in linguistics at Newcastle University. He was the recipient of a research scholarship granted by the Australian Federal Government. His family joined him in 1993, and several years later, Moskovsky and his family were granted permanent residence, then Australian citizenship in 2000. After divorcing with his wife in 1999, Moskovsky married an Australian, Michele Tredinnick, in 2009, however they were divorced in 2012.

Selected publications[edit]

Moskovsky, C. and Picard, M. (Editors) (2018) English as a Foreign Language in Saudi Arabia: New Insights into Teaching and Learning English. Routledge. Hb: 978-1-138-91849-8 | eBook: 978-1-315-68846-6.

Moskovsky, C. (2018) Age and second language acquisition: Is there a critical period? In Language Up Close, Papers in honour of Associate Professor Christo Stamenov, pp. 225-239. Sofia University Press.

Moskovsky, C., Assulaimani, T., Ratcheva, S., & Harkins, J. (2016). Motivational Self System and L2 achievement: A study of Saudi EFL Learners. The Modern Language Journal 100(3), 641-654. doi: 10.1111/modl.12340

Moskovsky, C., Alshahrani, M., Ratcheva, S., & Paolini, S. (2015). Aptitude as a predictor of second language achievement and progress: An investigation in the Saudi Arabian context. Arab World English Journal 6(1), 3-21. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2834408

Moskovsky, C., Jiang, G., Libert, A., & Fagan, S. (2015) Bottom-up or Top-down: EFL vocabulary instruction for Chinese university students. TESOL Quarterly 49(2), 256-77. doi: 10.1002/tesq.170

Moskovsky, C. & Ratcheva, S. (2014). Second language fossilization: a competence or a performance phenomenon? The Open Communication Journal 8, 9-17. doi: 10.2174/1874916X01408010009

Moskovsky, C., Alrabai, F., Paolini, S. & Ratcheva, S. (2013). The effects of teachers’ motivational strategies on students’ motivation: An experimental investigation of second language acquisition. Language Learning 63(1), 34–62. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00717.x

Moskovsky, C. & Libert, A. (2009). Essays on Natural and Artificial Languages. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main. (IBSN 978-3-631-58290-9)

Moskovsky, C. & Alrabai, F. (2009). Intrinsic motivation in Saudi learners of English as a foreign language. The Open Applied Linguistics Journal 2, 1-10. doi: 10.2174/1874913500902010001

Moskovsky, C. (2007) Binding within the Bulgarian nominal phrase. Contrastive Linguistics 32(2), 25-49.

Moskovsky, C. (2004). Non-binding restrictions on co-indexing of pronouns. Contrastive Linguistics 29(2), 28-35.

Moskovsky, C. (2004). Third person effects on binding. Linguistics 42(6), 1023-1036.

Moskovsky, C. (2004). Optional movement of Bulgarian possessive clitics to I: Some implications for Binding Theory. In O. Mišeska Tomic (Ed.) Balkan Syntax and Semantics. Benjamins [Linguistik Aktuel 67], pp. 221-233. Moskovsky, C. (2002). Aspects of Binding in Bulgarian. European University Studies. Series XXI: Linguistics, vol. 242. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main.

Moskovsky, C. (2002). Aspects of binding in Bulgarian. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-5463-X. OCLC 50064956.

Moskovsky, C. (2002). The Critical Period Revisited. In C. Allen (ed.) 2002 Proceedings of the 2001 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2001/moskovsky.pdf

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