Subject-object subextraction asymmetry in Russian
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2020/11/0012/000427Keywords:
subject-object asymmetry, wh-movement, word order, argument structure, topicalityAbstract
Subject-object asymmetry in wh-subextraction is a robust phenomenon across many languages, yet the structural opacity of subjects is not cross-linguistically uniform and can even vary within a single language. Polinsky et al. (2013) identified two statistically significant factors governing this variation in Russian dependent clauses: the type of verbal structure (unaccusative, unergative, or transitive) and the linear position of the subject relative to the verb (preverbal versus postverbal). This paper investigates whether the effects of these structural variables are preserved in Russian monopredicative independent clauses. Analyzing experimental data, we demonstrate that distinct subject types do indeed differ in their island properties. However, contra Polinsky et al. (2013), our findings reveal that subjects in the preverbal position are significantly more transparent to subextraction than their postverbal counterparts.
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