Irrealis Genitive in a Broader Context

This chapter puts Irrealis Genitive in a wider context of object case alternations. It includes a discussion of the cross-linguistic phenomenon of differential object marking (DOM). It reviews some of the recent linguistic literature on the topic and discusses several properties to which DOM is known to be sensitive (e.g. definiteness and animacy). The chapter further introduces the formal analysis of DOM proposed by Aissen (NLLT 21: 435–483, 2003) and raises the question of whether and how this analysis can be extended to account for the distribution of Irrealis Genitive in Russian. The next part of the chapter is devoted to an additional phenomenon that involves genitive objects in Russian. These are genitive complements of intensive reflexive verbs. The discussion of this phenomenon is based on Kagan and Pereltsvaig (Bare NPs and semantic incorporation: objects of intensive reflexives at the syntax-semantics interface. In: Browne W, Cooper A, Fisher A, Kesici E, Predolac N, Zec D (eds) Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (FASL 18): The Cornell Meeting,pp 226–240. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 2011a; Syntax and semantics of bare NPs: objects of intensive reflexive verbs in Russian. In: Bonami O, Hofherr PC (eds) Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 8 (Proceedings of CSSP 8), pp 221–238. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss8/kagan-pereltsvaig-eiss8.pdf, 2011b). I consider both the similarities between genitive objects of intensive reflexives and Irrealis Genitive nominals and those properties that distinguish between these two types of complements. The discussion is further extended to genitive objects of verbs that contain the prefix pere- under its sub-meaning of excess.