Feature Incompatibility in Russian: The Rise of the Genitive of Negation
Louis-H Desouvrey
April 2024 

This paper shows that the genitive of negation is a special construction which is derived from the negation of the verb, as opposed to the VP. Under V-negation, the verb merges first with the negation morpheme and its root node mutates into ω, becoming incompatible with the accusative morphology of the direct object, which has a φ-specified root node in Russian. These features are mutually exclusive and cannot be adjacent on the root node tier, which prevents the morphological features from pairing up. To circumvent this problem, the argument must take the genitive morphology, which is ω-specified and devoid of any thematic node. Under VP negation, the verb being merged first with the φ-marked direct object, the root node tier of the VP cannot be aligned with the ω-root-node of the negation morpheme. This state of affairs gives rise to the generation of a neutral feature (ø) acting as a buffer between φ and ω, and thus all root nodes can be aligned. It is shown that this analysis is strongly supported by the interaction of the compound anaphor drug druga with its antecedent.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008101 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Draft
keywords:	syntactic features, feature tree, verb mutation, buffer, negation, anaphor, coreference, nonlinear syntax., syntax
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