BASE-GENERATED OR DERIVED? HERE'S HOW TO TELL STRUCTURES APART IN RUSSIAN.

Abstract

The paper argues that the Scope Freezing Diagnostic (Antonyuk 2015; 2020) is an accurate test of relative argument relations and a reliable diagnostic for base-generated structures in Russian. An important novel finding reported here is that a vP-internal argument permutation, Argument Inversion, is mediated by Animacy, leading to the promotion of the lower [+Animate] argument to a position c-commanding its co-argument. Crucially, such permutations are shown here to result in an order that allows Focus projection, and one that is widely perceived to be discourse-neutral, hence routinely analyzed as underived. The diagnostic is argued to be a more accurate test of argument relations than other syntactic tests proposed in the literature, as well as a valuable diagnostic overall, one that has helped uncover Animacy as a pervasive and previously unrecognized confound on Information Structure and its complex interactions with argument structure in Russian. Theoretical and methodological implications of our findings are discussed.