Olga Kagan: Semantics of genitive objects in Russian

Abstract

This monograph by Olga Kagan (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) is simultaneously an excellent introduction to the thorny topic of Russian non-canonical genitive and a promising attempt to formally capture the interpretation of genitive-marked objects of intensional verbs and under negation (developing the proposal of Neidle 1988). The author proposes to unify them by showing that direct objects so marked lack existential commitment - their existence is neither entailed nor presupposed. On the basis of this generalization Kagan forges an informal connection between irrealis genitive and subjunctive mood, showing that the former is licensed in a subset of the environments where the latter is allowed. This hypothesis represents a clear innovation in the semantic approaches to non-canonical genitive case in Russian, and the arguments Kagan offers for it further advance our understanding of this complex phenomenon. Most importantly, the insights presented in this monograph give rise to a number of interesting questions for future research in syntax as well as in semantics.

Besides the clear exposition, among the many merits of the book is how seriously it takes the issue of intra-speaker variation, not only relying on a larger pool of native speakers than usual and reporting finer details of the judgments, but also providing discussions into the possible causes of this variation.