PhD ceremony Ms. A. Arylova: Possession in the Russian clause. Towards dynamicity in syntax

PhD ceremony: Ms. A. Arylova, 12.45 uur, Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Dissertation: Possession in the Russian clause. Towards dynamicity in syntax

Promotor(s): prof. C.J.W. Zwart

Faculty: Arts

Aysa Arylova investigated the field of possession in the Russian clausal domain, with the focus on be-possessives. She shows that these constructions constitute a non-homogeneous group with diverse properties and thus turn out to be a challenge for analyses that subscribe to one underlying structure. Arylova proposes that possessive u-PPs in these constructions are introduced by the possessive predicate, Anchor, that may take a variety of complements and is merged at different points in the structure. One of the benefits of such structural differentiation is that there is no need for re-ordering operations in order to derive constituency of the possessor PP or to avoid a Minimal Link Condition violation. The analysis is extended to other constructions with possessive u-PPs, such as external possession and involuntary causer constructions, modal possessive constructions and constructions with world-creating u-PPs. Arylova also discuss the Russian have-possessive and the anticausative possessive and argue that both employ a vP-structure. In the have-possessive the possessor is construed as the external argument, which explains why the construction can be used in imperatives and can be embedded under control predicates. The anticausative possessive is derived by the merging of the Anchor projection to the vP-base. Besides the existing generative insights on possessive constructions, the analysis relies on up-to-date typological data and a careful examination of the notion of possession, in the particular the proximity component.