Against Covert A-Movement in Russian Unaccusatives

1 Introduction

It is widely accepted that there are displacement operations that show no visible phonological reflex. We use the term covert movement to refer to such operations. Covert movement has been at the forefront of the principles-and-parameters research agenda since Huang 1982 and May 1985, which used it to account for Chinese wh-in-situ and English quantified noun phrases, respectively. In the domain of Ā-movement, there are covert analogues of most overt movement phenomena, including covert wh-movement (Huang 1982, Richards 2001) and covert scrambling (e.g., Mahajan 1990). Within the domain of A-movement, however, the picture is rather different. Overt A-movement phenomena such as subject-to-subject raising, passive, and unaccusative advancement are robustly attested crosslinguistically; however, clear cases of covert A-movement are rare. One instance proposed in the literature is Babyonyshev et al.'s (2001) covert A-movement analysis of Russian unaccusatives. In this squib, we revisit that material and argue against the covert A-movement analysis on empirical grounds. We conclude that Russian unaccusatives do not instantiate covert A-movement.

2 The Argument for Covert A-Movement in Russian (Babyonyshev et al. 2001)

The A-movement that Babyonyshev et al. (2001) investigate is the movement of the internal argument of an unaccusative predicate to subject position. In English, the theme of an unaccusative predicate begins as an internal argument and moves overtly to the subject position, (1) (Perlmutter 1978, Pesetsky 1982, Burzio 1986, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995). In some languages, such as Italian, this movement is optional (e.g., Perlmutter 1983, Burzio 1986).

1. 1. [_TP snow [_VP melted snow]]

Russian has several unaccusativity diagnostics (Chvany 1975, Pesetsky 1982), among them the genitive of negation (GN). GN is a phenomenon in which an underlying direct object may appear in the genitive case when licensed by negation. To illustrate, genitive is impossible on the direct object in (2a) because there is no negation but, in the negative (2b), the accusative and the genitive alternate.¹

1. 2.

   1. a. Ja  uvidel ptic-u/*ptic-y.
      1SG saw   bird-ACC/*bird-GEN
      'I saw a/the bird.' (GN impossible)

   2. b. Ja  ne uvidel ptic-u/ptic-y.
      1SG not saw   bird-ACC/bird-GEN
      'I did not see a/any/the bird.' (GN possible)

GN is impossible on subjects of transitive verbs, (3), and some intransitive verbs, (4), even in the presence of negation.

1. 3.

   1. a. Ni-kak-ie        malíčik-i   ne polu?ili podarki.
      NEG-kind-NOM.PL boy-NOM.PL not received gifts

   2. b. *Ni-kak-ix        malíčik-ov ne polučilo podarki.
      NEG-kind-GEN.PL boy-GEN.PL not received gifts
      'No boys received gifts.'

2. 4.

   1. a. Ni-kak-ie        devočk-i   ne tancevali.
      NEG-kind-NOM.PL girl-NOM.PL not danced

   2. b. *Ni-kak-ix        devoček    ne tancevalo.
      NEG-kind-GEN.PL girl-GEN.PL not danced
      'No girls/None of the girls were dancing.'

In contrast, GN is possible with subjects of intransitive verbs that are canonically analyzed as unaccusatives. In this case, GN alternates with the nominative. We illustrate this alternation with the subject of a simple unaccusative verb, (5); the alternation is also possible on subjects of passive verbs and raising verbs.²

1. 5.

   1. a. Ni-kak-ie        grib-y           zdesí ne
      NEG-kind-NOM.PL mushroom-NOM.PL here not
      rast-ut.
      grow-PRES.3PL

   2. b. Zdesí ne rastí-ot        ni-kak-ix
      here  not grow-PRES.SG NEG-kind-GEN.PL
      grib-ov.
      mushroom-GEN.PL
      'No mushrooms/None of the mushrooms grow here.'

Generalizing over these data and others, Babyonyshev et al. propose the following conditions on GN licensing:

1. 6.

   1. a. "[GN] is restricted to underlying direct objects."

(Babyonyshev et al., (7))

1. b. GN is licensed by negation under m-command.

2. c. GN is licensed across infinitival clause boundaries.

3. d. GN on a DP must be licensed at the DP's highest position in an A-chain.

4. e. GN licensing is checked at LF.

Babyonyshev et al. assign the following derivation to the GN example in (5b...