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Parametric properties of numeral phrases in Slavic

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Abstract

Numeral phrases in Russian display many unusual morphosyntactic properties, e.g., (i) the numeral sometimes assigns genitive (GEN-Q) to the following noun and sometimes agrees with it and (ii) the numeral phrase sometimes induces subject-verb agreement and sometimes does not. In this paper existing analyses of these properties are parametrized to accommodate related phenomena in other Slavic languages. First, Babby's (1987) proposal that GEN-Q is structural in Russian is shown not to extend to Serbo-Croatian, where it must be analyzed as inherent. Second, Pesetsky's (1982) idea that Russian numeral phrases may be either QPs or NPs also does not extend to Serbo-Croatian, where these are only NPs. This set of assumptions explains a range of seemingly unrelated facts about the behavior of numeral phrases in the two languages. Pesetsky's analysis is recast in terms of more recent hypotheses about phrase structure: (i) NPs are actually embedded in DPs and (ii) subjects are D-Structure VP-specifiers. Proposal (i) allows for a more explanatory analysis of GEN-Q assignment and proposal (ii) accounts for several distinctions between QP and NP subjects within Russian, also motivating the absence of these distinctions in Serbo-Croatian. Finally, it is shown that Polish can be assimilated to the proposed system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, Indiana University, 322 Memorial Hall, 47405, Bloomington, IN

    Steven Franks

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  1. Steven Franks
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This work has been partially supported by a Mellon Summer Faculty Fellowship from the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University and a Mellon Faculty Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Earlier versions were presented at the Colloquium on Recent Advances in Russian Linguistics in Ann Arbor in 1989 and the Formal Linguistics Society of Mid-America 1990 meeting. Some of the examples were gleaned from the popular (former) Yugoslav and Soviet presses, but most have been provided or corroborated by the following native speakers of Russian, Polish and Serbo-Croatian, respectively: Natasha Borovikova, Irina Gashurova, Natasha Kondrashova, Inna Ljaxovitskaja, Vadim Liapunov, Natasha Panteleyeva-Marion, Igor' Savelev, Vladimir Tumanov, Michael Yadroff and Katya Zubritskaya; Piotr Drozdowski, Katarzyna Dziwirek and Jerzy Kolodziej; Mirna Dickey, Marina Kovačević, Ljiljana and Dušan Progovac. I am indebted to these individuals as well as four anonymousNLLT reviewers for helpful suggestions and discussion of the data. As with any linguistically complex problem, these various sources were not always in complete agreement about the examples. I have accordingly tried to identify and explain discrepancies in judgments throughout. All responsibility for misrepresentation or misinterpretation of the data remains of course my own.

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Franks, S. Parametric properties of numeral phrases in Slavic. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 12, 597–674 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992929

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