Speaker: Vsevolod Masliukov (MIT)
Title: Participial Complementation in Russian
Time: Tuesday, October 28th, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: In this talk I will present a syntactic analysis of Russian sentences such as (1), which feature participles marked with the so-called Predicate instrumental case (Bailyn 2001). I will argue that these participial clauses are arguments with a PredP (small clause structure, Bowers 1993 et seq.) built on top, whose subject is raised to the structural case licensing position in the matrix clause. I will also compare the properties of these constructions with participles used as adnominal adjuncts, which always require case matching, (2) and finite complements of the same class of verbs (3).
(1) Ona nikogda ne vide-l-a Ma-u pla?-u?-ej.
she never NEG see-PST-F.SG M.-ACC cry-PTCP.IPFV-F.SG.INSTR
She has never seen Masha crying.
(2) Ona nikogda ne vide-l-a [pla?-u?-uju Ma-u] .
she never NEG see-PST-F.SG cry-PTCP.IPFV-F.SG.ACC M.-ACC
Lit.: She has never seen crying Masha.
(3) Ona nikogda ne vide-l-a, [kak Maa pla?-et].
she never NEG see-PST-F.SG COMP M.NOM cry-NPST.3SG
She has never seen Masha cry. (lit.: how Masha cries)