The syntax of Russian / by John Frederick Bailyn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bailyn, John F.

Series:

Cambridge syntax guides

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russian language--Syntax.

Russian language.

Physical Description:

xviii, 373 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Summary:

The study of Russian is of great importance to syntactic theory, due in particular to its unusual case system, and its complex word order patterns. This book provides an essential guide to Russian syntax and examines the major syntactic structures of the language. It begins with an overview of verbal and nominal constituents, followed by major clause types, including null-copular and impersonal sentences, Wh-questions and their distribution, and relative and subordinate clauses. The syntax behind the rich Russian morphological case system is then described in detail, with focus on both the fairly standard instances of Nominative, Accusative and Dative case and the important language-specific uses of the Genitive and Instrumental cases. The book goes on to analyze the syntax of "free" word order for which Russian is famous. It will be of interest to researchers and students of syntactic theory, of Slavic linguistics; and of language typology. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Basic configurations

1 Verbal phrases 3

1.1 Verbs and their arguments 3

1.2 Building syntactic structure 5

1.3 Selection and subordination 12

1.4 Thematic relations 14

1.5 Verbal configurations and VP/vP constituency 16

1.6 Interim summary 25

1.7 Infinitivals and other non-finite clauses 26

1.8 An overview of Russian verbal aspect 30

1.9 Extended verbal functional structure 31

2 Nominal phrases 34

2.1 The basic structure of NPs 34

2.2 The DP Hypothesis 42

2.3 Nominal arguments 51

2.4 Extraction from NP/DP 62

2.5 Predicate nominals 65

2.6 Adjectival phrases 68

2.7 Summary 71

3 Types of clauses 73

3.1 Main clauses 73

3.2 Subordinate clauses 84

3.3 Wh-structures 91

3.4 Small clauses, infinitives, and gerunds 109

3.5 Impersonals 115

3.6 Summary 118

Part II Case

4 Core cases of Russian case 123

4.1 Nominative case 124

4.2 Accusative objects 129

4.3 VP-internal asymmetries 140

4.4 Dative inside VP and VP-internal case issues 151

4.5 Summary of VP-internal asymmetries 160

4.6 Dative Experiencers 161

4.7 Summary of core case structures 172

5 More cases of Russian case: Predicate Instrumental, Quantificational Genitive and others ... 174

5.1 Case on predicates 175

5.2 Core instances of structural Genitive case 199

5.3 Extending the Q analysis of Genitive 214

5.4 Case on adverbials 218

5.5 Case in nominalizations 227

5.6 Remarks on case assignment 228

5.7 Summary 232

Part III Word order

6 A descriptive overview of Russian word order 237

6.1 "Grammatical" (neutral, basic, unmarked) word order 238

6.2 "Communicative" (marked, non-neutral, derived) word order 257

6.3 Word order in generic sentences 265

6.4 Topic/Focus structure and word order variation 266

6.5 Remarks on Topic/Focus structure 285

6.6 Remarks on Russian scope and surface word order 287

6.7 Summary 289

7 Theoretical issues in Russian word order 292

7.1 Free word order, movement and optionality 292

7.2 Mechanisms 310

7.3 Motivation 316

7.4 Sample derivations 332

7.5 The nature of the FF interface 344

7.6 Summary 345.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 346-367) and index.

ISBN:

9780521885744

0521885744

OCLC:

762680183