Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

Mi 6.7., 2:30-14: Irina Burukina (ELTE/ELKH, Budapest): On the syntax of the control verbs ‘help’ and ‘hinder’ in Russian: Ditransitives with a silent Theme

I discuss sentences with the verbs pomoč' ‘help’ and pomešat’ ‘hinder’ in Russian and demonstrate that, although they are usually listed among object control predicates, these verbs appear in a wide range of constructions that cannot be accounted for by a straightforward control analysis. I argue that pomoč' and pomešat’ are, in essence, ditransitive, similarly to ‘give’ or ‘send’: they require a Patient (a person or a situation that will be helped/hindered) and a Theme headed by a silent noun HELP/HINDRANCE. The Patient and the Theme are projected by the low applicative head that denotes the relation “to-the-possession”, as per Pylkkänen (2008). A saturated clausal dependent, when present, should be analysed as a Patient. A property-type clausal dependent is merged as a modifier within the Theme NP. The approach is extended to control collocations such as ‘give a chance’ and further offers an opportunity to develop a uniform structural representation for various control verbs with a dative dependent that will reduce the differences between them to particular properties of the Theme.