Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories

In this book, David Pesetsky argues that the peculiarities of Russian nominal phrasesprovide significant clues concerning the syntactic side of morphological case. Pesetsky arguesagainst the traditional view that case categories such as nominative or genitive have a specialstatus in the grammar of human languages. Supporting his argument with a detailed analysis of acomplex array of morpho-syntactic phenomena in the Russian noun phrase (with brief excursions toother languages), he proposes instead that the case categories are just part-of-speech featurescopied as morphology from head to dependent as syntactic structure isbuilt.

Pesetsky presents a careful investigation of one of the thorniest topics inRussian grammar, the morpho-syntax of noun phrases with numerals (including those traditionallycalled the paucals). He argues that these bewilderingly complex facts can be explained if casecategories are viewed simply as parts of speech, assigned as morphology. Pesetsky's analysis isnotable for offering a new theoretical perspective on some of the most puzzling areas of Russiangrammar, a highly original account of nominal case that significantly affects our understanding ofan important property of language.

David Pesetsky is Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. He is the author of Zero Syntax: Experiencers and Cascades and Phrasal Movement and Its Kin, both published by the MIT Press. Pesetsky is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was recently elected a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America.