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Case marking in Russian eventive nominalisations revisited

Ещe раз о падежном маркировании в русских событийных номинализациях

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Abstract

In this paper, we analyse case marking in Russian eventive nominalisations as recently discussed in an article by Pereltsvaig et al. published in this journal in 2018 with regards to two competing theories of case: the Inherent Case Theory and the Dependent Case Theory. We contest the view that Russian eventive nominalisations display ergative alignment and argue that Russian is a nominative-accusative language across the board. We propose an alternative analysis of Russian eventive nominalisations and show that, contrary to the claims made by Pereltsvaig et al. they are in principle incapable of disproving the Dependent Case Theory. The resulting analysis is trivially compatible with the Dependent Case Theory.

Аннотация

В настоящей статье представлен анализ падежного маркирования в русских событийных номинализациях. Это явление уже обсуждалось в 2018 г. на страницах данного журнала в работе Pereltsvaig et al. Авторы рассмотрели падежное маркирование в русских событийных номинализациях с точки зрения двух подходов к теории падежа, а именно теории ингерентного падежа и теории зависимого падежа. Данная статья оспаривает принятый в Pereltsvaig et al. посессивно-эргативный подход к синтаксису русских событийных номинализаций и утверждает, что русский язык последовательно ведeт себя как язык аккузативно-номинативного строя. Мы предлагаем альтернативный анализ русских событийных номинализаций и демонстрируем, что, вопреки Pereltsvaig et al., событийные номинализации в принципе не способны опровергнуть теорию зависимого падежа, а сам анализ тривиальным образом с ней совместим.

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Notes

  1. We have used the following abbreviations: acc—accusative, dat—dative, f—feminine, gen—genitive, inf—infinitive, instr—instrumental, nmlz—nominalisation, nom—nominative, pl—plural, prs—present.

  2. We are aware of attempts in the inherent-case literature (e.g. Woolford 2009) at analysing at least experiencer external arguments as a subclass of agents. We disagree, since doing so makes the definition of inherent case devoid of any content. For the purposes of this paper, we have adopted the traditional definition of inherent case as a case whose assignment is accompanied by a dedicated \(\theta \)-role (e.g. that of the agent).

  3. We would like to clarify that our proposal regarding the structure of Russian eventive nominalisations as projecting a non-active VoiceP does not entail that the Voice head involved in the construction of an eventive nominalisation may never project a specifier. In particular, some ergative languages have been argued to project a full argument structure, including case marking and agreement licensing (see Polinsky et al. 2017 for Archi; Longenbaugh and Polinsky 2018 for Niuean; Rudnev 2019 for Avar). Case Competition will be able to apply to two caseless NPs in an asymmetric c-command relation and the higher NP will be assigned dependent case.

  4. Though see Comrie (1980) for an opposing view treating ljubov’ ‘love’ and nenavist’ ‘hatred’ as a nominalisation. Analysing eventive nominals like ljubov’ ‘love’ as an eventive nominalisation, however, raises the issue of their absolute incompatibility with instrumental marking, which cannot be accounted for in terms of \(\theta \)-roles, since, as we have shown in this paper, experiencers have no problem appearing as instrumental-marked by-phrases.

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Correspondence to Pavel Rudnev.

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We would like to thank Fyodor Baykov, Ivan Kapitonov, Alexander Podobryaev, Natalia Slioussar and the participants of the Formal Linguistics Laboratory seminar at HSE for their comments, criticisms and discussion. Financial support from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF grant #18-78-10128) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Rudnev, P., Volkova, A. Case marking in Russian eventive nominalisations revisited. Russ Linguist 44, 157–175 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-020-09228-9

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