Syntax and Semantics of Axial Expressions in Russian Natalia Mitrofanova Serge Minor CASTL, University of Tromsø [email protected], [email protected] December 7, 2011 FDSL-9, Göttingen

1. Background: The structure of Axial Expressions Table 1. Axial expressions in Russian Directional adverbs Locative prepositions/adverbs Goal Source ‘above’ s-verh-u na-verh na-verh-u ON-TOP-LOC ON-TOP.ACC FROM-TOP-GEN v-verh-u v-verh IN-TOP-LOC IN-TOP.ACC s-verh-u S-TOP-GEN? ‘under’ s-niz-u v-niz v-niz-u IN-BOTTOM-LOC IN-BOTTOM.ACC FROM-BOTTOM-GEN s-niz-u S-BOTTOM-GEN? ‘in front of’ v-pered v-pered-i s-pered-i IN-FRONT-LOC IN-FRONT.ACC FROM-FRONT-GEN s-pered-i S-FRONT-GEN? ‘behind’ na-zad po-zad-i s-zad-i AT-BACK-LOC ON-BACK.ACC FROM-BACK-GEN s-zad-i S-BACK-GEN? ‘left’ s-lev-a s-lev-a v-lev-o S-LEFT-GEN IN-LEFT-ACC FROM-LEFT-GEN na-lev-o ON-LEFT-ACC ‘right’ s-prav-a s-prav-a v-prav-o S-RIGHT-GEN IN-RIGHT-ACC FROM-RIGHT-GEN na-prav-o ON-RIGHT-ACC

All these expressions can be decomposed into three distinct parts: • •

•

locative preverbs: v ‘in’, na ‘on’, po ‘at’, s ‘from’ for Locative, v ‘in’, na ‘on’ for Goal, and s ‘from’ for Source; stems referring to a certain side of an object: verh 'top', niz 'bottom', pered 'front', zad 'back', lev ‘left’, prav ‘right’. We follow Svenonius (2004, 2006) in assuming that these stems belong to a special category AxialPart, which maps an object to a certain part of that object. Hence, we call the expressions in Table 1 Axial Expressions; case endings: (archaic) Locative or Genitive for Location, Accusative for Goal, (archaic) Genitive for Source. 1 

 

1.1. Structure of Locative Expressions Svenonius (2006) proposed the following structure for locative prepositions: (1)

PlaceP Place

AxPartP AxPart

KP K

DP

Each head in this structure has a specific semantic function (cf. Svenonius 2008): • • •

K is spelled out as case on the complement DP, and maps Ground objects onto regions of space occupied by those objects (cf. Eigenplace in Wunderlich 1991); AxPart maps eigenplaces onto their subparts; Place maps subparts of eigennplaces (i.e. the denotations of AxPartPs) onto regions as defined by vectors projected from those subparts (i.e. Place is actually the combination of a function mapping subparts of eigenplaces to vector spaces, and a further function that picks out regions defined by those vector spaces, cf. Zwarts & Winter 2000, Svenonius 2008).

Consider the following example: (2) Mashina stoyala po-zad-i car stood at-back-loc ‘The car stood behind the house.’ (3)

dom-a house-gen

PlaceP

po- ‘at’

KP -i (loc)

AxPartP

-zad- ‘back’ -a (gen)

DP dom ‘house’

In this case, po- is the Place head, zad is the AxPart, dom is the complement DP, and its Genitive ending is K. The only thing that is not accounted for is the Loc ending on the preposition. Note that the choice of case ending on the preposition depends on the head which precedes AxPart (e.g. in case of Locative prepositions, v- and na- combine with Loc, while s- combines with Gen). Thus, we adopt an expanded structure for locative prepositions in Russian, which includes 2   

a second K head, selected by Place (cf. the discussion in section 6 in Svenonius 2006). We take this higher K to lack any semantics, and thus to be invisible for the interpretive component (i.e. it must be deleted before interpretation takes place). Locative prepositions frequently occur without overt DP complements, in which case the Ground is determined by contexts (cf. Svenonius 2008 for a discussion of Ground omission in English): (4) v-pered-i rosli derevya in-front-loc grew trees (Context: We walked along a road) ‘In front (of us) grew trees.’ For this reason traditional grammars usually list these expressions as both prepositions and adverbs. 1.2.Structure of Directional Expressions Svenonius (2004, 2006, 2008) assumes that directional prepositions involve a Path head above PlaceP (see also Koopman 2000, den Dikken 2010): (5)

PathP Path

PlaceP Place

AxPartP AxPart

KP K

DP

The Path head has two canonical varieties: Goal and Source. Goal specifies that the end point of a trajectory must be located within the space defined by PlaceP, while Source restricts the location of the initial point to that space (see Pantcheva 2011 on a wider typology of Paths). (6) The boat drifted from in front of the palace. PathP from

PlaceP in

AxPartP front

KP of

the palace

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In the following we will argue that Russian directional axial expressions (see Table 1) resist an analysis along the lines of the structure in (5). Overview of the talk In section 2.1 we address restrictions on overt complements which are unexplained by the structure of PathPs presented in (5). In section 2.2 we discuss the semantics of Russian directional axial expressions, arguing that it too is unexplained by the structure in (5). In section 3 we present our approach aimed at overcoming the problems discussed in previous sections. Section 4 contains some conclusive remarks.

2. Syntax and Semantics of Directional Axial Expressions 2.1. Restrictions on Overt Complements Consider the following examples: (7) a. *On poshol v-pered dom-a He walked in-front.acc house-gen Intended: ‘He walked to in front of the house’ b. On poshol v-pered He walked in-front.acc ‘He walked forward.’ Example (7a), which involves a Goal expression taking a DP complement, is ungrammatical. On the other hand (7b) with a directional expression lacking an overt complement, is fine. Similar judgments obtain for axial expressions which take prepositional complements. Consider the syntactic properties of the axial expression s-pered-i ‘(from/on) the front’. When it is used locatively it can take a complement introduced by the preposition ot ‘from’: (8) S-pered-i *(ot) dom-a roslo derevo s-front-gen from house-gen grew tree ‘A tree grew in front of the house.’ On the other hand, when it used directionally as a Source expression it cannot take neither DP nor PP complements: (9) a. *Ya otoshol s-pered-i dom-a I walk.away from-front-gen house-gen Intended: ‘I walked away from in front of the house.’ b. #??Ya otoshol s-pered-i ot dom-a I walk.away from-front-gen from house-gen Intended: ‘I walked away from in front of the house.’

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The axial expression in (9b) can only, marginally, have a locative interpretation such as ‘I walked away (from something) in front of the house’. And in this case the sentence sounds awkward because it is unclear what the speaker walked away from. Generally, Russian directional axial expressions resist taking overt DP or PP complements ,even when their locative counterparts freely combine with overt complements (except for v-nutr ‘(to) inside’ and iz-nutri ‘from inside’, see Appendix). This generalization is problematic for the analysis of these directional expressions as having the structure in (5). If PathPs contain PlacePs as in (5), and we know that corresponding PlacePs in Russian can involve overt DP or PP complements (cf. examples 7 and 8-9), it is unclear why overt DPs and PPs are ruled out in such PathPs in Russian. Some additional syntactic assumptions would be necessary to capture this restriction.

2.2.Semantic Issues Let us assume for the moment that an analysis along the line of structure (5) is ultimately correct, and that for some idiosyncratic syntactic reason the Ground in Russian Path expressions must be covert. We will now show that this analysis makes the wrong predictions concerning the interpretation of these expressions. Specifically, the structure in (5) yields an interpretation which is not sufficiently restrictive. Consider the following sentence: (10) M’ach poletel v-pered ball flew in-front.acc ‘The ball flew forward.’ Picture (A)

Picture (B)

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Picture (A) illustrates the semantics that is predicted for (10) by the standard Path analysis. In this case only the end point of the ball’s trajectory is restricted to the space in front of the implicit Ground. The initial point of the trajectory is unconstrained. Picture (B) illustrates the actual interpretation that (10) can get. In this case the initial point of the ball’s trajectory coincides with the Ground, and the end point is located in the space in front of the Ground. The actual semantics of v-pered turns out to be more restrictive than that provided by the interpretation of structure (5). This conclusion extends to Source axial expressions: (11) M’ach letel s-zad-i ball flew from-back-gen ‘The ball flew from behind’. Picture (C)

Picture (D)

Picture (C) illustrates the semantics that is predicted for (11) by the standard Path analysis. In this case only the starting point of the ball’s trajectory is restricted to the space at the back of the implicit Ground. The final point of the trajectory is unconstrained. Picture (D) illustrates the actual interpretation that (11) can get. In this case the final point of the ball’s trajectory coincides with the Ground, and the initial point is located in the space behind the Ground. This kind of restrictive semantics of directional axial expressions accounts for the fact that Goal expressions most naturally occur with verbs denoting movement away from the Ground, but not towards the Ground (ex. 12, cf. pic. B), while Source expressions, conversely, naturally go with verbs that denote movement towards the Ground, but not away from it (ex. 13, cf. pic. D). 6   

(12) M’ach uletel / ??priletel ball flew.away / flew.here ‘The ball flew forward.’

v-pered in-front.acc

(13) M’ach priletel / ??uletel ball flew.here / flew.away ‘The ball flew from behind’.

s-zad-i from-back-gen

3. A Proposal: PathDir We propose that Russian directional axial expressions do not involve the Path head as in (5), but rather a different head which we call PathDir, related to the Dir category that Svenonius (2008) introduces for English particles such as up and down. PathDir is similar to Path in that it returns a set of paths, but is different in other semantics and syntactic respects. Semantically, PathDir has a richer, and more restrictive interpretation than Path because in both its varieties, Goal and Source, it constrains the location of both the initial and the end points of a trajectory. Compare the interpretation of the Source PathP from in front of the house in (14), which draws on the semantics of Path proposed in Zwarts (2005), with the interpretation of PathDirP s-pered-i ‘from front’ which we propose in (15): (14) PathP: ‘from in front of the house’: {p: p(0) is at Front(the house)} (15) PathDirP: s-pered-i ‘from front’: {p: p(o) is at Front(x) & p(1) is at x} The PathP ‘from in front of the house’ denotes a set of paths, such that their initial points, represented by p(0) in (14), are located in the space denoted by the PlaceP ‘in front of the house’, represented by the expression Front(the house). The PathDirP s-pered-i ‘from front’, on the other hand, denotes a set of paths such that their initial points are located in the region in front of a contextually specified Ground, represented by the free variable x in (15), and, crucially, their final points, p(1), are located at the same Ground object x. Similarly, (16) and (17) illustrate the semantics of Goal Path and PathDir heads: (16) PathP: ‘to in front of the house’: {p: p(1) is at Front(the house)} (17) PathDirP: v-pered ‘to front’: {p: p(1) is at Front(x) & p(0) is at x} Note that the semantics in (15) and (17) correctly predict the interpretation of (10) and (11) to be restricted to the ones illustrated in pictures (B) and (D). Since PathDir heads restrict both the initial and the final point of a trajectory with respect to the same Ground, it must combine with functions from individuals to regions, rather than with regions themselves, i.e. the Ground must still be represented by an unsaturated argument position when PathDir is combined with its complement. We propose that PathDir takes [K [AxPart]] as complement, where K is deleted prior to interpretation, and AxPart is interpreted as a function with an unsaturated argument position for the Ground: 7   

(18) PathDirP PathDir

KP K

AxPartP AxPart

The denotations of a Goal and Source PathDir are then the following: (19) Goal PathDir: λAx.{p: p(1) is at Ax(x) & p(0) is at x} (20) Source PathDir: λAx.{p: p(0) is at Ax(x) & p(1) is at x} where Ax is a variable over the denotations of AxParts, i.e. over functions from individuals to parts of the individual. Note, that the structure of PathDirP in (18) does not involve a Place head, but the semantics of Place is incorporated into the semantics of PathDir . We took this step of eliminating Place from this structure to avoid the necessity of postulating a PlaceDir head distinct from Place, in addition of a distinct PathDir head. The structure in (18) and the interpretations in (19)-(20) explain the unavailability of overt Ground arguments, DPs or PPs, with Russian directional axial expressions. Since PathDir must semantically combine with an unsaturated AxPart, the complement position of AxPart must remain empty.

4. Conclusions We argued that syntactic and semantic properties of Russian directional axial expressions differ from those predicted by existing analyses of Path expressions e.g. for English. We proposed that the structure of these expressions in Russian involves a distinct PathDir head that takes unsaturated AxParts as complements, and possesses a more restrictive semantics than the standard Path head.

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Appendix It appears that at least one axial root in Russian can form PathPs as opposed to PathDirPs: the root nutr’ ‘inside’, which gives rise to the following series of axial expressions: Table 2. ‘inside’

Directional adverbs Locative prepositions/adverbs Goal Source v-nutr’ v-nutr-i iz-nutr-i IN-INSIDE-LOC IN-INSIDE.ACC FROM-INSIDE-GEN iz-nutr-i IZ-INSIDE-GEN?

The Goal and Source expressions in Table 2 both combine with overt DP complements, and yield the semantics predicted by the structure of PathPs in (5): (21) On zabrals’a v-nutr’ tank-a he climbed.in in-inside.acc tank-gen ‘He climbed inside the tank’ (22) Golos donosils’a iz-nutr-i tank-a voice was.heard from-inside-gen tank-gen ‘The voice was heard from inside the tank’ Note, that the semantics of e.g. (21) is compatible with the semantics for PathPs, as in (14), but not with the semantics of PathDirPs, as in (15), because the end point of the trajectory in this case is not at the tank, but outside it. On the one hand, the existence of examples such as (21) and (22) shows that syntactic and semantic properties of Path and PathDir heads go hand in hand, as predicted by our analysis. But on the other hand, such examples demonstrate that Path does exist as a syntactic head in combination with AxPart in Russian, and hence raise the question of how the distribution of these Path and PathDir heads is to be constrained.

References Dikken, M. den. 2010. On the functional structure of locative and directional PPs. In Mapping Spatial PPs: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. 6. OUP. Koopman, H. 2000. Prepositions, postpositions, circumpositions, and particles. In The Syntax of Specifiers and Heads, edited by Hilda Koopman, pp. 204–260. Routledge, London. Pantcheva, M. 2011. Decomposing Path: The Nanosyntax of Directional Expressions.  PhD Dissertation, University of Tromsø. Svenonius, P. 2004. Spatial P in English. Ms. Tromsø University. Svenonius, P. 2006. The emergence of axial parts. Tromsø Working Papers in Linguistics 33(1): 50-71. Svenonius, P. 2008. Adpositions, Particles, and the Arguments they Introduce. A cross-linguistic examination of the relationship between members of the category P and arguments. In Argument Structure, Eric Reuland, Tanmoy Bhattacharya, and Giorgos Spathas (eds.), pp. 71-110. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Wunderlich, D. 1991. How do prepositional phrases fit into compositional syntax and semantics? Linguistics 29: 591–621. Zwarts, J. 2005. Prepositional aspect and the algebra of paths. Linguistics and Philosophy 28: 739–779. Zwarts, J. and Y. Winter. 2000. Vector space semantics: A modeltheoretic analysis of locative prepositions. Journal of Logic, Language, and Information 9: 169–211.

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