Structural Ambiguities of Russian Dative Infinitival Constructions

Abstract

The question about the syntactic structure of Russian dative infinitival modal constructions remains unsettled. There is an ongoing debate whether such constructions are monoclausal (Kondrashova, 1999; Moore and Perlmutter, 2000; Tsedryk, 2016) or bi-clausal (Fleisher, 2006; Jung, 2009; inter alia). This paper addresses the issue of control and raising properties in Russian dative infinitival constructions with the overt modal element of obligation/necessity nužno "need". It argues that similar to English ambiguous verbs (e.g., begin, threaten), nužno shows properties of an alternating verb. A combination of the selection-based approach (Sandaressan and McFadden, 2009) and the synthesis model (Wurmbrand and Lohninger, 2020) successfully account for this alternation.