October 30th Colloquium: Summer Fellowship Presentation

Zach Lorang
Event Date & Time

Zach: Summer Research: Multiple Partitive Constructions in Russian

‘Multiple Partitive’ is the designation applied to a phenomenon that occurs in many of the world’s languages; it is characterized by multiple clauses, each containing an interrogative (wh-) pronoun with an indeterminate reading. Interestingly, per Haspelmath (1997)’s wide-ranging survey of indefinite pronouns, this construction is found in numerous languages whose grammars normally don’t generally allow the indeterminate use of wh- interrogatives. Since there isn’t a great deal of literature on Multiple Partitive, however, my summer research project focused on the properties of MP in Russian specifically, with a view to analyzing the functions of MP within a single language in as much detail as possible, before examining its functions cross-linguistically. My goals were to identify the environments in which these constructions can and cannot occur, to determine what precisely is the function that MP performs in discourse, and to determine whether MP is a phenomenon in its own right or a subtype of another phenomenon. My presentation will explain the research I conducted over the summer to answer these questions, the conclusions I’ve been able to draw so far, and the further research I’m conducting at the moment to test and follow up on these conclusions.

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