Russian case morphology and the syntactic categories David Pesetsky (MIT)1 • Terminology: I will use the abbreviations NGEN, DNOM, VACC, PDAT, etc. to remind us of the traditional names for the cases whose actual nature is simply N, D, V, and 1. Introduction (types of) P. The case-name suffixes to these designations are thus present merely for our convenience. • Case morphology: Russian nouns, adjectives, numerals and demonstratives bear case Genitive: The most unusual aspect of the proposal will be the treatment of genitive as suffixes. The shape of a given case suffix is determined by two factors: N -- with which I will begin the discussion in the next section. 1. its morphological environment (properties of the stem to which the suffix attaches; e.g. declension class, gender, animacy, number) ; and • Syntax: The treatment of case as in (1) will depend on two ideas that are novel in the context of a syntax based on external and internal Merge, but are also revivals of well- 2. its syntactic environment. known older proposals, as well as a third important concept: The traditional cross-classification of case suffixes by declension-class and by case- name (nominative, genitive, etc.) reflects these two factors. 1. Morphology assignment: When [or a projection of ] merges with and assigns an affix, the affix is copied α α β α • Specialness of the standard case names: Traditionally, the cases are called by onto β and realized on the (accessible) lexical items dominated by β. special names (nominative, genitive, etc.) not used outside the description of case- systems. The specialness of case terminology reflects what looks like a complex This proposal revives the notion of case assignment (Vergnaud (2006); Rouveret & relation between syntactic environment and choice of case suffix. Vergnaud (1980); Chomsky (1980; 1981)). Other properties of older notions of case assignment, however, continue to follow from the theory of agreement (Chomsky • Eliminating the special case-names: How we perceive the relation between case and (2000; 2001); Pesetsky and Torrego (2007); and others). The integration of these two syntactic environment depends not only on our view of the syntax-morphology notions is work in progress. relation, but also on our view of how the syntax itself works. In this paper, I offer two proposals about syntax offer an interesting simplification of the theory of 2. Undermerge: morphological case. Internal Merge may create new complements, not just new specifiers. I will use the name undermerge for complement-forming Merge, and overmerge for specifier- In particular, these proposals allow one to abandon some of the traditional case forming Merge. The proposal generalizes to phrase-to-head movement an analysis terminology, and instead distinguish several of the case suffixes as instances of more familiar in the domain of head-to-head movement (Travis (1984), Baker (1988); familiar syntactic categories: Pollock (1989), Chomsky (1991)). It also revives the proposal of Raising to Object (Rosenbaum (1967), Postal (1974)). (1) Genitive = N Accusative = V Nominative = D Obliques = P The relevance of points 1 and 2 to morphological case in Russian: Undermerge of a new complement to a head that already has one bleeds morphology assignment A genitive-marked word is thus a stem to which a suffix of category N has been to the previous complement. attached; a nominative-marked word is a stem with a suffix of category D; and an accusative bears a suffix of category V (with some caveats discussed below). 3. Phases: Also important will be the notion of syntactic phase as a Spell-out Domain. A dative, instrumental, prepositional or locative-marked word bears a suffix of category P. Only the distinctions among these last cases will fail to correspond to The relevance of points 1 and 3 to morphological case in Russian: Morphology syntactic category distinctions, but may reflect the kinds of lexical differences that assignment cannot affect the lexical items of a domain D after D is spelled out or independently distinguish subcategories of overt prepositions. linearized. • Undermerge and the spelling out of phases thus serve as two brakes on an otherwise 1 This paper arose in the context of ongoing joint work on undermerge and related issues with Esther general process of Morphology Assignment. The value of these brakes to us is that Torrego (UMass/Boston), though responsibility for the Russian sections should be laid fully at the door of they freeze for our inspection earlier stages of the derivation, allowing us to verify our the present speaker. Thanks to Masha Polinsky, Esther Torrego and Morris Halle for discussion, and to John Bailyn and Andrew Nevins for useful remarks by e-mail. theory of that derivation. -2- Counterparts to these compounds in French and Russian 2. The hidden genitive in all Russian nouns (6) French and Russian counterparts of Germanic compounds a. l'arrêt de bus ostanovka avtobusa 'bus stop' Key properties of compound nouns in English stop of bus stop bus-GEN.SG (2) Terminology for endocentric compounds b. station de métro stancija (moskovskogo) metro 'subway station' computer repair station of subway station Moscow-GEN.SG subway ↑ ↑ c. réparation d'ordinateur %remont komp'jutera 'computer repair' dependent member head repair of computer repair computer-GEN.SG d. location de voiture arenda avtomašiny 'car rental' Property A. Dependent member is a bare NP (i.e. not a DP): rental of car rental automobile-GEN.SG (3) Dependent member must not contain D... a. the [bus stop] vs. *the [a bus] stop e. Palais de Culture dvorec kul'tury 'culture palace' b. a [computer repair] vs. *a [the computer] repair palace of culture palace culture-GEN.SG f. Maison de Livre Dom Knigi Buchhaus ...even when the N requires it... house of book house book-GEN.SG c. a [Bronx apartment] vs. *a [the Bronx] apartment g. Maison d'étudiant Dom studenta 'Student House' (but: I grew up in *(the) Bronx) house of student house student-GEN.SG h. rue de Beethoven ulica Betxovena 'Beethoven street' d. a [UN diplomat] vs. *a [the UN] diplomat street of Beethoven street Beethoven-GEN.SG (but: I work for *(the) UN) i. Fondation de France fond Francii 'France Foundation' ...but may be phrasal, allowing a prenominal modifer foundation of France fund France-GEN.SG c. some [foreign car] rental vs. *[some [[the foreign car] rental] musée de cire muzej voska 'wax museum' d. the [South Bronx] Expressway vs. *[the [the South Bronx] Expressway] museum of wax museum wax-GEN.SG [ok I live in the Bronx vs. *I live in Bronx] j. agence de voyages bjuro putešestvij 'travel agency' agency of trips bureau trip-GEN.PL Property B. Morphologically singular dependent member substitutes for expected k. tanec života 'belly dance' plural: dance belly-GEN.SG (4) Morphologically singular dependent member may have plural interpretation... a. computer repair (= repair of computers) b. car rental (= rental of cars) • Conjecture: We are seeing the same construction in all three languages: a compound. (5) ...even allowing singular forms of pluralia tantum as the dependent member: Thus: The English and French compounds teach us about Russian. a. pant leg b. scissor repair c. drug problem • Properties of dependent member in French, English and Russian: • Strategy: I will take property A as defining a type of construction (a "compound") 1. English, French: absence of D on the dependent member whose dependent member is a bare NP. I use property B as an additional way of 2. Russian / French: genitive case2 / de spotting compounds. [3. English, Russian, French: singular form may have plural interpretation] 2 I will not discuss Russian or French exocentric compounds that do not show GENitive, such as gorod-geroj / ville-héros 'hero city' (lit. 'city-hero'). In French the second member lacks an independent article, but this might reflcct N-N coordination, rather than the subordination of an endocentric compound. Also not discussed here are the much-discussed aGENt and intrument compounds like French grille-pain 'toaster' (lit. 'grills-bread'), which Russian lacks, and Russian semi-counterparts like ledokol 'icebreaker' (M.Polinsky, p.c.) or ljudoed 'cannibal'. -3- (7) Syntax of dependent member of a compound ...so we must distinguish the affixation of NGEN -- a collection of features -- from the The dependent member of a compound is a bare NP in all three languages.3 context-dependent phonological realization of these features (Pesetsky (1985), Halle and Marantz (1993)). • ...and genitive morphology is the sign of a bare NP. • Any adjective phrase merged with a noun in the genitive case must itself bear genitive morphology... The nature of Russian genitive morphology • Observation: The Russian noun contains just one slot for pronunciation of an (11) Genitive adjective + noun as dependent member of compound inflectional suffix. remont stiral'n-oj mašin-y repair washing-FEM.GEN.SG machine-GEN.SG • If this observation is a matter of pronunciation, as in (8)... 'washing machine repair' (8) The One-Suffix Rule (Russian Nouns) ....but we delay our discussion of the reasons for this concord for a bit. Only the final overt inflectional suffix on a noun is pronounced Nominative ... then the One-Suffix Rule (8) allows the following characterization of genitive • I propose that nominative morphology results from the affixation of D to N. By the morphology: • One-Suffix Rule (8), the Nominative DNOM suffix suppresses the pronunciation of the NGEN suffix: (9) Genitive morphology is N Each Russian noun enters the syntax with a suffix N, realized as genitive morphology. (12) Suppression of NGEN suffix by DNOM Attaching N to a stem categorizes it as a noun. stem NGEN sg. DNOM sg. stem NGEN pl. DNOM pl. • The fact that nouns are not always morphologically genitive reflects situations in a.