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Predicate agreement with quantifier phrases containing the words polovina or tret’ and an approximative marker

Предикативное согласование с квантитативными сочетаниями, включающими слова половина или треть и показатель приблизительности

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Abstract

This paper focuses on predicate agreement with quantified phrases that include bolee, svyše ‘more’, okolo ‘about’, menee ‘less’ and the nouns polovina ‘a half’, tret’ ‘a third’, and numerals. This study based on data from the National Russian Corpus describes the modern standard of predicate agreement with quantified phrases containing okolo, bolee + poloviny / treti. The data show that a predicate is most likely to occur in the singular with ‘bolee, okolo + numeral’ and in the plural with ‘okolo, bolee + polovina / tret’ ’. The author proposes an answer to the question of why the standards of agreement for quantified phrases with similar structures are different. The factors that influence the form of the predicate are also examined.

Аннотация

В статье рассматривается согласование сказуемого с подлежащим, выраженным квантитативным сочетанием, возглавляемым предлогом или наречием со значением приблизительного количества (более, менее, около, свыше) и включающим кванторное существительное (половина, треть) или числительное. Исследование на базе Национального корпуса русского языка позволяет описать современную узуальную норму и актуальные тенденции в выборе стратегии предикативного согласования. Анализ показывает, что сказуемое более вероятно ставится в единственном числе при согласовании с предложной или наречной группой, включающей числительное, и во множественном числе при согласовании с предложной или наречной группой, включающей существительные половина или треть. В работе объясняются причины различия в согласовании с квантификативными сочетаниями одинаковой структуры. Рассматриваются факторы контекста, влияющие на выбор формы сказуемого.

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Notes

  1. Syntactic structure of sentences with a quantified NP (without approximative markers), which is also important to note, is discussed in detail at Corbett (1979a), Franks (1995), Ljutikova (2015) and some other papers.

  2. The statistics were obtained using the calculator which is available at: http://statpages.org.

  3. The examples (7)–(9) are my own—J. K.

  4. Kuvšinskaja, Ju. M. Predikativnoe soglasovanie s imennymi gruppami, vozglavljajemymi slovami rjad, polovina, čast’, množestvo. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta (in press).

  5. Throughout the rest of this paper we will use the term ‘animate subject’ to indicate that the QP’s referent is animate.

  6. See Tables 5 and 6 for the feminine form.

  7. The statistics were obtained using the calculator available at http://graphpad.com/quickcalcs/contingency2.

  8. We use the terms ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ as they are used in the Russian linguistic tradition, firstly in the works of T. E. Janko, as well as in the works of I. I. Kovtunova and other scholars (Kovtunova 1976, pp. 44–47; Padučeva 1984; Mel’čuk 1995, p. 194; Zolotova, Onipenko, Sidorova 1998, p. 378; Janko 2001, pp. 23–34). Rheme is understood, after Janko, as a constituent component of a statement that is reported about the topic, and theme is thought to be a non-constituent component, the starting point. So ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ are similar to, but do not completely coincide with, the concepts ‘the known’ and ‘the new’, ‘topic’ and ‘focus’, and ‘topic’ and ‘comment’ (see more details in Janko 2001). There is moreover some difference in how the terms ‘topic’ and ‘focus’, and ‘topic’ and ‘comment’ are interpreted by different researchers. In this paper we use terms ‘theme’ and ‘topic’, and ‘rheme’ and ‘focus’ as synonyms, implying that the theme is a starting point and the rheme is a reported component of a statement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities, School of linguistics, National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Yulia M. Kuvshinskaya

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Correspondence to Yulia M. Kuvshinskaya.

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This article is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

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Kuvshinskaya, Y.M. Predicate agreement with quantifier phrases containing the words polovina or tret’ and an approximative marker. Russ Linguist 41, 355–373 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-017-9183-3

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