Abstract
After presenting some basic syntactic information about Standard Russian this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in Chapter 1. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Standard Russian, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.
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Notes
- 1.
I am using the standard scholarly transliteration system for Cyrillic, as accepted e.g. by the Slavic and East European Journal.
- 2.
In this paper I tried to keep glosses for grammatical morphemes minimal, using them only when the relevant category is under discussion or contributes a non-trivial meaning component. Glosses used here include: Nom – nominative case, Gen – genitive case, Dat – dative case, Acc – accusative case, Instr – instrumental case, Part – partitive case, LargePaucal – large paucal form, SmallPaucal – small paucal form; Sg – singular, Pl – plural; M – masculine, F – feminine, N – neuter; Adj – adjectivizing suffix; Coll – collective numeral, Card – cardinal numeral; Exist – indefinite pronoun series, libo – marker of NPI pronoun series, KOE – marker of specific indefinite pronoun series, NI – marker of negative concord pronoun series, also functions as a negative concord conjunction; PO – preposition po, functions as a marker of distributive numerals; INF – infinitive, FUT – future tense, Subj – subjunctive mood; Pona, Na – prefixes with quantificational meanings, Refl – reflexive verbal suffix.
- 3.
National Corpus of Russian Language, http://www.ruscorpora.ru/
- 4.
Skol′ko is used in cases other than nominative and accusative only when combined with count nouns.
- 5.
This morphological form, traced back to the Old Russian nominative-accusative dual, is gradually fading out as a separate form. Many speakers accept ordinary genitive singular form wherever the paucal form is used, as in tri šára ‘three balls,’ polšára ‘half of a ball,’ poltora šára ‘one and half of a ball.’
- 6.
Notice the gender agreement here in the absence of case agreement: the numerals express the nominative of the whole DP and assign paucal form to the noun, but agree with the noun in gender.
- 7.
The series of quantificational pronouns and pronominal adverbs in Russian and other European languages should not be conflated with series of personal pronouns in many African languages, a phenomenon more akin to case than to quantificational force.
- 8.
Both of these have a special linear status. Postfixes are placed after case, number, and gender inflections (k=ogo-to : who=acc-Existential ‘someone’), and prefixes can be separated from the question word stem by prepositions (koe na k=ogo : Existential on who=acc ‘on someone’). Koe- marks specific indefinites, -libo and -nibud ′ non-specific.
- 9.
See discussion of their noun status in Mel’čuk (1985).
- 10.
This adverb is nowadays more widely used in the meaning ‘once upon a time’ than in the original ‘one time.’
- 11.
Case assignment is a major reason to consider them nouns; they contrast with nounlike large numerals and value judgement cardinals that combine with the paucal form.
- 12.
I am not sure whether podavljajuščee bol′šinstvo ‘the vast majority of,’ meaning roughly the same as počti vse ‘almost all,’ must be treated as a proportional or as a co-intersective quantifier.
- 13.
As discussed, the quantifier in the last example is not interpreted as proportional but as partitive. Instead, it reads as referring to a definite set of ten teachers, and can better translated as Not one of the ten teachers knows the answer to that question.
- 14.
In colloquial Russian, po+Dative in examples like po dvadcati odnomu ‘twenty one each’ tend to be replaced with nominative like in po dvadcat′ odin. This use is restricted to inanimate masculine nouns, probably because the masculine form is underspecified for nominative vs. accusative. Such expressions, however, remain marginal. Cf. an actual example from fiction (Dmitrii Kurtsman, Skazanie O Side):
(43)
Nam
po
dvadcat′
odin
god.
Us.Dat
PO
twenty
one
year
‘We are twenty one year old each.’
- 15.
Est′, glossed ‘is,’ does not distinguish number, person, or gender forms.
- 16.
As est′, the negative present-tense copulas do not distinguish number, person, or gender forms.
- 17.
The structure of ni odin is transparent, a negative particle + ‘one’, similar to the Italian nessuno. However unintuitive this may sound, elements of this structure, along with other negative concord items, have been argued to denote increasing quantifiers (Giannakidou, 2006, Penka, 2011). Ni certainly is a negative element historically, related to the Proto-Indoeuropean negative root *n. But with the development of strict negative concord, semantic negativity apparently bleached out of the meaning of ni.
- 18.
- 19.
This type lift may be motivated if we assume that ili ‘or’ is a positive polarity item (Szabolcsi, 2004). A positive polarity item could not be used in the contexts of determiners like každyj since these determiners create a downward entailing environment in their noun phrase. Note however that similar examples are found in English where or is arguably not a positive polarity item.
- 20.
All the prefixal clitics can be separated from the stem by a preposition.
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Acknowledgements
In writing this paper I felt direct and indirect input from all those who taught me formal semantics and Russian syntax, including but not limited to Daniel Büring, Edward Keenan, Aleksandr Kibrik, Barbara Partee, Vladimir Plungian, Anna Polivanova, Sergey Tatevosov, and Vladimir Uspenskii. Native speakers whom I consulted in relation to data in this paper include Mariya Brykina, Ivan Kapitonov, and Anastasiya Vanyakina. Comments from a reviewer helped me improve this paper in many ways, from formal clarity to delicate substantial claims. I am grateful to all persons mentioned; any remaining errors are my own.
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Paperno, D. (2012). Quantification in Standard Russian. In: Keenan, E., Paperno, D. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 90. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_14
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