Abstract
In the article, I describe cases of special behavior of Russian phrases with quantifiers like neskol’ko ‘some’, mnogo ‘many, much’ and small numerals like dva ‘two’. I show that they can occur in the subject position in contexts that usually do not contain a canonical DP/NP subject (constructions with the verb xvatat’ ‘be enough’, negation contexts with the verb byt’ ‘be’ and its habitual / iterative correlate byvat’), and for neskol’ko-like quantifiers, the direct object position with intransi- tive predicates like na-...-sja circumfixed verbs is also available. The reason of non- canonical subject behavior is the possibility to be subjects without controlling plural verbal agreement, while the non-canonical direct object behavior is possible because neskol’ko-like quantifiers lack the category of case.
Highlights
The verb xvatat’ ‘be sufficient’ has attracted linguists’ attention mainly for its inability to be used with a nominative subject and its polysemy related to quantification
The special behavior of quantifiers and numerals can be related to restrictions on the volume of constituent, but this claim cannot be extended to NPs like those discussed by Lyutikova (2017)
The main conclusion the data allowed to reach is that quantifier phrase behaves as a special type of phrase in some cases
Summary
Multiple factors of argument marking have shown to be relevant. What is, understudied, is the role of morphological and mixed (morphological and syntactic) parameters. I will describe three of them: the verb xvatat’ ‘be sufficient’; contexts of the genitive of negation; verbs with the circumfix na-...-sja All of these contexts have one feature in common: they prohibit a nominative- or accusative-marked argument (i.e., a subject or direct object, canonically marked with a structural case) or at least are possible without it. The adverbial like forms like neskol’ko are normally used only in nominative and accusative contexts, while in other cases, adjective forms like neskol’kix (some-pl.gen/pl.loc) are used. Forms like neskol’ko and like neskol’kix could be regarded as members of the same paradigm – this would be plausible, given that quantifiers do not have a nominative case-marked adjective form like the hypothetical neskol’kij or neskol’kie. It seems more reliable to regard word forms neskol’ko, skol’ko, stol’ko and mnogo as separate words and classify them as adverbial-like quantifiers
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