Case Characteristics of Floating Quantifiers in Modern Russian Infinitival Clauses

Student: Baykov Fedor

Educational Programme: Fundamental and Computational Linguistics (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 10

Year of Graduation: 2020

The paper is devoted to the syntax of floating quantifiers in Russian infinitival clauses. Contrary to claims made in previous works (Comrie 1974, Babby 1998), case transmission is argued not to be obligatory under subject control, including partial subject control (contra Landau 2008). Direct object control idioms such as zhaba dushit 'not want to' are shown to force case independence of FQs in infinitival clauses (dative is obligatory despite accusative on the controller DP). The analysis is implemented in the framework of Dependent Case Theory (Marantz 1991, Baker 2014). Dative is argued to be the umarked case form in infinitival clauses which PRO receives iff the infinitival clause forms a case assignment domain distinct from the matrix clause (i. e., iff it is a CP phase). Otherwise, infinitval clause is a TP and PRO receives the same case value as its controller.

Full text (added May 30, 2020)

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