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Subordinate subject deletion in Russian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
Most, if not all natural languages possess complex sentences in which one single noun phrase serves as the superficial subject for two or more verbs. The most obvious case is the one involving sentences with co-ordinate verb phrases as in (1):
(1) the man hit the girl and kicked the boy
However, inasmuch as in the case of co-ordinate constructions one single noun phrase can also serve as the object of two or more verbs, such constructions will not be our concern in this paper. That is, any analysis that can characterize a sentence such as (1), can also characterize a sentence such as (2), where the girl is the object of both hit and kicked.
(2) the man hit and kicked the girl
In this paper, we will restrict our attention to constructions involving coreferential subordinate subject deletion in Russian, i.e., infinitival, gerundial and participial clauses.* We will demonstrate that, despite many superficial differences, such constructions can be characterized in terms of essentially the same general grammatical process: the deletion of a redundantly repeated, subordinate subject NP. This analysis will be shown to be more adequate than one which requires the postulation of a set of two or more independent transformations which describe the data in an ad hoc way.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Fall 1970 , pp. 1 - 17
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1970
References
1 See, for example, Noam, Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 162–3 Google Scholar.
2 See, among others, McCawley, James D., “The Role of Semantics in a Grammar,” in Universals in Linguistic Theory, ed. Bach, E. and Harms, R. T. (New York, 1968), pp. 165–9 Google Scholar.
3 Chomsky, Noam, “Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation,” mimeographed (Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club, 1968), p. 5 Google Scholar.
4 See, in this respect, Sanders, Gerald A., Some General Grammatical Processes in English (Indiana University Doctoral Dissertation, 1967), p. 11 Google Scholar.
5 See, in particular, Sanders, Gerald A., “On the Natural Domain of Grammar,” mimeographed (Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club, 1969), pp. 35–59 Google Scholar.
6 Fodor, Jerry A., Psychological Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology (New York, 1968), p. 9 Google Scholar.
7 To the best of our knowledge, the only extensive, published treatment of complement and relative clause constructions in Russian is that by Růžička, Rudolf, Studien zur Theorie der russischen Syntax (Berlin, 1966)Google Scholar.
8 See Ross, John R., Constraints on Variables in Syntax (M.I.T. doctoral dissertation, 1967), p. 89 Google Scholar; and Rosenbaum, Peter S., The Grammar of English Predicate Complement Constructions (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 18–21 Google Scholar.
9 Růžička, Studien…, p. 40.
10 Rosenbaum, The Grammar…, p. 32.
11 Růžička, Studien…, pp. 40-8.
12 See, for example, Smith, Carlota, “A Class of Complex Modifiers in English,” Lg. 37 (1961), pp. 342–65 Google Scholar; Ross, Constraints…, p. 50; Rosenbaum, Peter S., Specification and Utilization of a Transformational Grammar (Yorktown Heights, N.Y., 1967), p. 55 Google Scholar; and Jacobs, Roderick A. and Rosenbaum, Peter S., English Transformational Grammar (Waltham, Mass., 1968), pp. 204–5 Google Scholar.
13 Růžička, Studien…, pp. 40-8.
14 See, in this respect, Dingwall, William Orr, “Secondary Conjunction and Universal Grammar,” Papers in Linguistics, 1 (1969), pp. 228–9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 See Chomsky, Aspects…, pp. 18-27.
16 Ibid., p. 26.
17 See Bach, Emmon, “Some Questions about Questions,” dittoed (Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1970), p. 3 Google Scholar.
18 This rule is a linearly ordered version of a more general transformation postulated by Sanders, Some General Grammatical Processes, pp. 55-58. Notice that we are adopting Rosenbaum’s convention of unbalanced bracketings in the structural descriptions of transformational rules. See Rosenbaum, Specification…, p. 109. It will be noticed that rule (11), as stated, also permits the deletion of coreferential objects in subordinate clauses. As has been shown recently, a restriction to this effect need not be built directly into the rule itself, but can be accounted for in terms of a non-universal Immediate Dominance Condition on identity deletion. See, in this respect, Sanders, Gerald A. and Tai, James H-Y, “Immediate Dominance and Identity Deletion,” dittoed (The University of Texas at Austin, March, 1970)Google Scholar.
19 Ross, Constraints, p. 317.
20 Ross, John R., “A Proposed Rule of Tree-Pruning,” in Modern Studies in English: Readings in Transformational Grammar, ed. Reibel, David A. and Schane, Sanford A. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969), pp. 288–99 Google Scholar.
21 Notice, however, that Ross’ S-pruning convention could of course be retained as a metatheoretical principle if it could be shown that 1) agreement transformations are not feature-changing rules, but kinds of pronominalization rules (the latter not being subject to the upward-boundedness constraint); or 2) even though agreement transformations are feature-changing rules, they are viewed as not being subject to the upward-boundedness constraint. This means, in effect, that the formulation of agreement rules will become more complicated, since the fact that they are upward-bounded will now have to be built directly into the structural descriptions of such rules. I am grateful to Jonathan Kaye for having pointed out this observation to me.
22 See Rosenbaum, Specification…, p. 55.