Projects
Our projects
Parametric model of agreement in the light of experimental data
The project is aimed at constructing a formal model of agreement in Russian, which takes into account the variety of agreement strategies and the body of parameters of agreement variation. We will obtain results related to the two key priority areas: the parametric modelling of agreement variation and the extension of agreement approach to relevant phenomena such as licensing and selection.
The value of Russian for investigating agreement variability consists in co-existence of subsystems of grammatical features coupled with various values of an orthogonal category, so that it becomes possible to compare the contribution of individual grammatical categories in the choice of one or another variant of agreement.
The methodological aspect of novelty is determined by the method of data collection and systematization. In contrast to many previous researchers who built models of variable agreement based on qualitative data, in this project the basis for constructing theoretical model of agreement will be quantitative data obtained by corpus and experimental methods allowing to conduct the factor analysis of acceptability or frequency of variations.
Agreement variation in Russian
This projects incorporates a collection of studies that were conducted during the practical course on experimental syntax, which we teach in spring semester.
The project offers a multifactorial study of agreement variation in Russian and examines the distribution of agreement variants in various contexts. Experimental methods make it possible to define a set of parameters that determine agreement variation and explore the relation between phi-features.
Experimental investigation of agreement variation (A case study of Russian binominal copular clauses)
Russian Islands
The project presents the first step in the full-scale study of the island constraints in Russian. We contribute to understanding the phenomena of island effects, summarizing relevant grammatical parameters of islands in Russian, defining whether the island constraints result from grammatical restrictions or processing overload.
Agreement and case variation in Tatar
The project addresses the issue of intralingual variation in Tatar postpositional phrases. The nominal in Tatar postpositional phrases demonstrates differential case marking: the choice between genitive and unmarked case form is determined by the morphosyntactic class of the nominal. With postpositions derived from nouns with locative or abstract semantics variation in case assignment is accompanied by presence/absence of the ezafe marker on the postposition.
In this project we use both corpus-based and experimental methods to investigate the distribution of grammatical variants and estimate the current status of the variation. We argue that the existing grammatical descriptions do not capture the current state of affairs.
