Advances in the Syntax of DPs - Structure, agreement, and case

18 Steven Franks

(9) Ja poprosil Tarasa [PRO prijti odnomu/samomu

I.nom asked Taras.acc come.inf alone.dat/self.dat

*odnogo/*samogo].

*alone.acc/*self.acc

‘I asked Taras to come alone/himself.’

Babby (2009: §4.7), on the other hand, argues that there is a “change in progress,” cit-

ing, for example, (10):^3

(10) Ja zakričal [čtoby vy ne ostavili menja

I.nom shouted so_that you not left me.acc

zdes’ pogibat’ odnogo/odnomu].

here perish.inf alone.acc/alone.dat

‘I shouted so that you would not leave me here to perish alone.’

While both are possible, he states that “accusative odnogo is felt to be more natural in

spoken Russian than dative odnomu.” Another clear discrepancy between the classic

judgments reported by Comrie and those from other sources concerns the possibility

of agreement over the complementiser čtoby ‘in order to’. While Comrie provided (6)

versus (7b) above, and Bailyn (2012: 170) cites the near minimal pair in (11), the fact

is that agreement is not completely ruled out over čtoby. Jakov Testelec (p.c.) draws

my attention to examples such as (12), and Babby (2009) offers (13), from Kozinskij

(1983: 36), where either nominative or dative is acceptable:^4

(11) a. Ivan xočet tancevat’ odin/*odnomu.

Ivan.nom wants dance.inf alone.nom/*dat

‘Ivan wants to dance alone.’

3. To my knowledge, he first made this point in print in Babby (1998: 34), offering almost the
   very example tested by Landau (2008), namely (14a) below; Landau adds the adverb zavtra
   ‘tomorrow’ to rule out the possibility that odnogo is floated off of matrix ego.


4. (12) is structurally indistinguishable from (i), which Comrie (1974: 130) cites with the SD:
   (i) Volodja ne byl tak samonadejan, čtoby samomu gnat’sja
   Volodya.nom not was so presumptuous so_that self.dat chase.inf
   za ordenom.
   after medal
   ‘Volodya was not so presumptuous as to chase after the medal himself.’
   Franks (1995: 280–281) discusses similar facts for Polish (and suggests that agreement over
   żeby ‘in order to’ is possible with feminine, neuter, or plural antecedents, but that the SD is
   obligatory when the antecedent is masculine).