For two of the items – Smirnova (2013: 480, (3) and 498, (35)) – 6 informants preferred the original auxiliary-less version. Looking closer at the contexts of the examples, however, they seem to be ambiguous between inferential, renarrative, and admirative interpretations. Thus, while Smirnova's example (3) describes a situation in which the speaker spontaneously informs her husband of a new surprising fact she just has discovered and thus allows for an admirative interpretation, example (35) draws on evidence from a calendar entry of the person the speaker talks about, which can be interpreted as a second-hand evidential source licensing auxiliary-less renarrative forms.

12The survey involved 11 native speakers born and living in Sofia, 3 male, 8 female, aged between 20 and 80, 10 of them university graduates, 1 high-school graduate. The survey was designed as a forced-choice task, with 5 alternatives to choose from for the target utterance: the verb in its indicative present form, aorist participle with auxiliary, aorist participle without auxiliary, imperfect participle with and imperfect participle without auxiliary. As a reviewer pointed out to me, the fact that the participants could not choose more than one answer could have obscured cases where the version with the auxiliary was possible but less preferred. Still, the survey shows that the preferred forms are the ones containing the auxiliary.

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

These observations show not only that the usage of Bulgarian evidential forms is highly sensitive to context, but also that evidential forms in inferential contexts are not necessarily auxiliary-less and are at least in those cases formally distinguishable from admiratives based on inferential evidence.13

At the same time, it seems that the acceptance of auxiliary-less conclusives may not merely be influenced by context but related to some aspectual properties of the evidential form. Thus it seems that the auxiliary may be omitted when the *l*-participle is based on the aorist form of a perfective verb (or a verb like *săm* 'be' which is underspecified with respect to aspectual distinctions), while the temporal interpretation of the form remains the same in both versions:

(8) *Context:* Ivan, looking at his watch:

To it (e) is stanalo become.aor.ptcp.pfv veče already mnogo very kăsno. late 'It has already become very late.'

For comparison, the insertion of the auxiliary into an admirative sentence changes the temporal interpretation from present to past and renders the sentence infelicitous in the mirative context:

(9) *Inferential mirative context:* Ivan thought that Stojan was not working, but then he notices that the light in Stojan's study is on and exclaims:

Stojan Stojan rabotel! work.ipf.ptcp.ipfv / #Stojan Stojan e is rabotel! work.ipf.ptcp.ipfv 'Stojan is working!/Stojan has been working!'

What seems to distinguish the two versions in (8) is what can be described as the emotional intensity of the utterance which is greater without the auxiliary. This effect is neutralized when the conclusive is used in an exclamation:

(10) Ja well go he.acc viž look.imp ti, you kakvo what (e) is namislil plotted.aor.ptcp.pfv starijat old.def djavol! devil (Levin-Steinmann 2004: 150)

'Look what he has plotted, the old devil!'

13Of course, one could say that the auxiliary-less forms are the "real" evidential forms, whereas the ones retaining the auxiliary are forms of the present perfect with a similar conclusive meaning, as Izvorski (1997) seems to suggest.

### Elena Karagjosova

In contrast, the auxiliary-less evidential form in (5) which is considered problematic by my informants is based on an imperfective aorist participle. This indicates that this aspectual combination may be less acceptable without the auxiliary in non-mirative inferential contexts than an aorist perfective participle.14 Clarifying the morphological status of the conclusive goes, however, beyond the scope of the present study and must be left for future work. For my current purposes, it suffices to conclude that admiratives differ formally from conclusives in terms of both aspectual properties and auxiliary behavior.

### **3.2 Admiratives and declaratives**

As already pointed out, mirative constructions are not tied to exclamatory illocutionary force crosslinguistically. This applies to the Bulgarian admirative as well. As the examples below show, sentences containing admirative forms with auxiliary drop and imperfect past participles with present tense interpretation can be used in declarative sentences with non-exclamative, declarative intonation, where they express commitment to the asserted proposition as well as a clash between the proposition and the speaker's past beliefs.

(11) Ne neg bjah was prava, right kogato when pisah, wrote če that Košlukov Košlukov ne neg raboti. work.prs To it se refl okaza turned.out ošte more po-lošo worse – toj he rabotel. work.ipf.ptcp 'I was not right when I wrote that Košlukov wasn't working. It turned out to be worse – he obviously *is* working.'

In (11), the admirative sentence is semantically embedded under the mirative predicate *okazva se* 'it turns out' which already makes the mirative meaning of the admirative sentence salient: the speaker indicates that, prior to the discovery of facts suggesting the opposite, her belief base contained the proposition "Košlukov is not working".15 Since the admirative sentence asserts that Košlukov

14See also Levin-Steinmann (2004: 33) who discusses an auxiliary-less "reduced perfect" ascertaining the existence of some state and mainly involving the perfective aspect.

15Entire example: *Ne bjah prava, kogato pisah, če programnijat direktor v BNT Emil Košlukov ne raboti, zaštoto godinata veče si teče, a vse ošte njama programna shema. To se okaza ošte pološo – toj rabotel. I kato ne moža da "izraboti" dobroto predavane "Denjat započva s kultura", kompensira s drugi dve predavanija*. 'I was not right when I wrote that the program director of the Bulgarian National Television Emil Košlukov wasn't working, since the year has already begun and yet no program plan exists. It turned out to be worse – he obviously *is* working. And since he did not manage to ruin the good show "The day begins with culture", he did it to two other shows instead.' (http://e-vestnik.bg/27704/)

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

is working, it suggests that the speaker's belief base has been revised as a result of receiving some evidence. The evidence which causes the belief clash may be of any kind: reported, inferred, or directly observed. Note that neither the presence nor the form (past aorist) of the mirative predicate *okaza se* have an impact on the mirative interpretation: it does not change if *okaza se* is dropped. A sequence of tenses effect can be excluded here since neither the interpretation nor the acceptability of the sentence change when the predicate of the admirative sentence is set to present tense (*raboti* 'works'). A past generic reading can also be excluded, since this reading requires the use of the auxiliary.

A close example is (12) where the admirative is used in a belief revision context similar to the one in (11). This example stems from Andrejčin (1938: 68) and is used to illustrate what he calls the "inopinative" use of the forms of the renarrative for the purpose of expressing facts unexpected to the speaker.

(12) Misleh, think.1sg.ipf če that e be.3sg.prs zlato, gold, a but to it ne neg bilo. be.ipf/aor.ptcp 'I thought it was gold, but it isn't.'

Here, the assertion of the admirative sentence that the object in question is not made of gold is contrasted with an earlier opposite belief of the speaker embedded under the epistemic predicate *mislja* 'believe' in the past (imperfect) tense. The evidence that causes the belief change may again be of any sort: direct observation, but also inference or hearsay. Note that the verb *săm* 'be' belongs to the rather small group of verbs which do not have different participle forms for the imperfect and the aorist. However, a similar example can be constructed where it can be shown that only the imperfect form is appropriate in such contexts:

(13) Misleh, think.1sg.ipf če that raboti, work.3sg.prs a but toj he ne neg rabotel work.ipf.ptcp / \*rabotil. aor.ptcp 'I thought he was working, but he isn't.'

Moreover, a past tense interpretation is only achieved by putting not only the embedded verb in the present perfect, but also its second occurrence, which requires the use of the auxiliary; see (14).

(14) Misleh, think.1sg.ipf če that e be.3sg.prs rabotel work.ipf.ptcp / rabotil, aor.ptcp, a but toj he ne neg \*(e) be.3sg.prs rabotel work.ipf.ptcp / rabotil. aor.ptcp

'I thought he was/has been working, but he was not/has not been working.'

### Elena Karagjosova

Here, the sentence suggests that the belief revision has occurred further back in the past and does not have any bearing on the present. In order for a construction to express mirativity, the evidence causing the belief revision must have been acquired recently and have bearing on the present.16

### **3.3 Admiratives and renarratives in exclamations**

As already pointed out in §2, most researchers assume that admirative forms and/or mirative interpretations are only licensed when the forms are used in exclamative sentences. I showed in the previous section that this assumption does not correspond to the linguistic facts. In this section, I argue that it is possible to distinguish between admirative forms having mirative (i.e. clash of beliefs) interpretations, on the one hand, and uses of renarrative forms with renarrative semantics used in exclamations where they indicate surprise or other emotive attitudes, on the other. I pointed earlier at evidence suggesting that mirative constructions differ from exclamations/exclamatives with regard to a number of properties. Thus, exclamatory force is not merely related to surprise in terms of clash of beliefs but covers a wider range of emotive attitudes. Consequently, a renarrative form used in an exclamation or exclamative should be expected to have a greater range of meanings than surprise. Another difference is that while the admirative forms (imperfect evidential forms with auxiliary drop and present tense interpretation) indicate that the speaker is committed to the proposition expressed, exclamative renarratives do not necessarily express such a commitment. Finally, whereas imperfect renarrative forms in exclamative sentences are ambiguous between present and past interpretation, imperfect admirative forms receive only a present interpretation. Consider (15) where the context only allows the imperfect participle.

(15) *Context:* Ivan thought that Stojan was not working. (i) direct evidence: Ivan sees Stojan working. (ii) inference: Ivan notices that the door to Stojan's study is closed. (iii) hearsay: Petăr tells Ivan that Stojan is working. Ivan believes it and exclaims:

Toj he rabotel work.ipf.ptcp / \*rabotil! aor.ptcp #Tova this ne neg e is vjarno. true / #Tova this se refl očakvaše. expected

'He is working! This is not true./This was to be expected.'

16See also Rett & Murray's (2013) recency restriction according to which "mirative interpretations are only available relatively recently after the speaker's learning that ." (Rett & Murray 2013: 464).

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

The temporal interpretation of the form in this context is not past but present. In order to get a past interpretation, it is not only necessary to adjust the context (Petăr tells Ivan that Stojan was/has been working), but also the auxiliary must be used, which changes the admirative into a conclusive (or present perfect) sentence with exclamatory intonation.17

In addition, the admirative sentence cannot be continued by an utterance like "This is not true", which indicates that the speaker is committed to the information expressed, nor by a sentence like "This was to be expected", which indicates that the speaker's beliefs prior to receiving the evidence have been revised to accommodate the new information. Now consider the case of the exclamative use of the renarrative in (16). Here, depending on the tense used in the report, the imperfect participle may refer to a present or past eventuality.18 In addition, the exclamative renarrative may express not only surprise and thus commitment to the content uttered but alternatively disbelief ('This is not true!') or some emotive attitude other than surprise ('This was to be expected').

(16) *Context:* Petăr tells Ivan that Stojan is/was working. Ivan exclaims:

Toj he rabotel! work.ipf.ptcp Kakva what iznenada! surprise / Tova this ne neg e is vjarno! true / Tova this se refl očakvaše! expected

'He is/was working!

Also the aorist participle can be used within an exclamative renarrative, as shown in (17). Here, however, the aorist participle unambiguously shows that the report on which the evidence is based refers to a past eventuality. Apart from this, the observations from the imperfect participle case hold: the attitude expressed may be surprise (and thus commitment), disbelief, or some other emotive attitude:

Toj he e is rabotel work.ipf.ptcp / rabotil! aor.ptcp 'He was/has been working!'

17The example would be modified as follows:

(i) *Context:* Ivan thought that Stojan was not working. (i) direct evidence (not possible). (ii) inference: Ivan notices a pile of newly printed paper on Stojan's desk. (iii) Petăr tells Ivan that Stojan was working. Ivan believes it and exclaims:

18In this case, the tense forms in the report can be *rabóti* (present tense), *rabóteše* (imperfect), or *rabotí* (aorist).

### Elena Karagjosova

(17) *Context:* Petăr tells Ivan that Stojan worked (yesterday). Ivan exclaims: Toj he rabotil! work.aor.ptcp Kakva what iznenada! surprise / Tova this ne neg e is vjarno! true / Tova this se refl očakvaše! expected 'He worked!

The different behavior of the imperfect participle forms in the case of the admirative as compared to the renarrative shows that a simple explanation in terms of a mere ambiguity of forms does not suffice, and an account of the admirative needs to capture these facts. Furthermore, it was shown in (16) and (17) that the speaker may use renarrative forms even though she does not believe the reported information, or when she already believes that the proposition is true. This contradicts earlier accounts like Smirnova (2013) and Koev (2017). Thus, Smirnova argues that her evidential operator Ev has a modal component because Ev is infelicitous in reportative contexts when the speaker knows that the proposition is true or when the speaker knows that is false.19 However, she does not consider renarratives used in exclamatives. Contrary to Smirnova, Koev argues that the evidential commits the speaker to , explaining dubitative cases in terms of pragmatic weakening through perspective shift (see Koev 2017: 20–25). As shown in the above examples, renarrative forms used in exclamations do not require a perspective shift in order to be interpreted as non-committing, nor are they infelicitous in contexts where the speaker already knows that is false. Moreover, it can be shown that also in declaratives, the renarrative is felicitous in contexts where is considered false and where no perspective shift is suggested. Thus, the renarrative can be embedded under the predicate *znaja* 'know' with the sole interpretation that the speaker knows of the existence of the claim made by some reporter, either without taking a stance as to the truth of the claim, or in a context in which the speaker knows that the reported proposition is false, as shown by the felicitous continuations of the renarrative sentence in (18). If the speaker knows that a reported proposition is true, the renarrative is indeed infelicitous and an indicative form must be used.

19Smirnova assumes more specifically that in inferential and direct evidential contexts the speaker must be committed to the truth of , where the commitment is weaker than in nonmodals.

6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

(18) Znaja, know.1sg.prs če that Petăr Petăr pušel. smoke.ipf.ptcp No but ne neg znam know dali if naistina really puši. smoke.3sg.prs / No but toj he văobšte at all ne neg puši. smoke.3sg.prs 'I know that it is claimed that Petăr smokes/smoked. But I don't know if he really does./But he doesn't smoke at all.'

Similarly, if the renarrative is embedded under the negation of the predicate *znaja* 'know' in its past tense form, the only possible interpretation is that the speaker didn't know about the existence of such a claim made by some reporter. At the same time, the sentence is felicitous when the speaker is ignorant with respect to the truth of or when she knows that is false.

(19) Ne neg znaeh, know.1sg.aor če that Petăr Petăr pušel. smoke.ipf.ptcp Az I lično personally njamam do.not.have predstava idea dali if puši smoke.3sg.prs / e is pušil smoke.aor.ptcp ili or ne. neg / Az I lično personally znam, know če that ne neg puši smoke.3sg.prs / ne neg e is pušil. smoke.aor.ptcp 'I didn't know that Petăr supposedly smokes/smoked. I personally have no idea if he does/did or not./I personally know that he doesn't/didn't smoke.'

Renarratives behave the same way in exclamatory sentences: they are felicitous both in contexts in which the speaker believes the reported information and is surprised, as in (20) which can be continued by an utterance like "Can you imagine, this lazy guy!", and in contexts like (21) where the speaker is rather outraged by a claim she knows doesn't correspond to the truth and where the sentence with the renarrative can be continued by an utterance like "What a lie!".

(20) *Context:* A learns from B that Ivan worked the previous day which happens to be a Sunday. A is surprised over this fact (+belief clash, +commitment) and later tells C:

Ivan Ivan rabotil work.aor.ptcp včera! yesterday 'Ivan worked yesterday!'

### Elena Karagjosova

(21) *Context:* A learns from B that Ivan worked the previous day. A does not believe it because she knows the truth but finds the commitment of the reporter B surprising (−belief clash, −commitment) and later tells C:

Ivan Ivan rabotil work.aor.ptcp včera! yesterday 'Ivan worked yesterday!'

These uses of the Bulgarian renarrative evdential form suggest that it merely indicates that the speaker has hearsay evidence for , without committing the speaker to its truth.20

Table 2 summarizes the findings in this section.21

Table 2: Properties of the admirative by comparison

### **4 The admirative operator**

In this section, I account for the properties of the Bulgarian admirative discussed in the preceding section in terms of the modal evidential operator admir() which captures the following facts:

20Additional evidence that needs to be examined is that there is a slight difference in intonation pattern, as also observed in Bustamante (2013: 152–153) for the Spanish mirative as compared to Spanish exclamations: L or H-L in admiratives, H in exclamations.

21Since auxiliary-less conclusives are difficult to distinguish from inference-based admiratives, I leave the question open whether the former may express reference to the present.

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

To this end, I adopt Bustamante's (2013) analysis of a Spanish mirative construction that involves past imperfect morphology as in (22).22 Here, the past imperfect does not have its usual temporal meaning expressing reference to a past eventuality but refers to a present eventuality and expresses that clashes with the speaker's previous beliefs. In addition, this use of the past imperfect indicates that the speaker is commited to and is felicitous in both direct and inferential evidential contexts.

Examples like this are taken to suggest that the mirative use of the past imperfective involves "a shifting of time reference for the eventuality described in the proposition, leaving the past as 'fake'", while the (imperfective) aspect retains its usual interpretation (Bustamante 2013: 6). Bustamante interprets such cases of 'fake' past interpretations of past tense morphology and imperfective aspectual morphology as an example of mirative extension of the imperfect (and pluperfect) tense in Spanish.

In contrast to approaches to fake past morphology such asIatridou (2000), Bustamante does not assign a special semantics to this past tense but assumes a regular meaning in terms of Kratzer (1998: 10).23 The crucial assumption concerns the locus of interpretation of the past tense morpheme which seems displaced, since it does not contribute its temporal meaning to the proposition: instead of it being interpreted in TP (the domain of the assertion), the feature [past] is interpreted in CP, which is the domain of the mirative operator.

22The glosses are as in the original example.

23JpastK , is only defined if provides an interval that precedes 0 . If defined, then JpastK , = . This definition corresponds to the neo-Reichenbachean past defined in terms of a relation between reference time and speech time (RT < ST); see, e.g., Klein (1994).

### Elena Karagjosova

The second crucial assumption is that the main contribution of the mirative operator is to relate the assertion to the speaker's beliefs prior to the discovery of facts leading to the assertion where the newly discovered facts are such that they clash with the past beliefs. The speaker's past beliefs are introduced by the mirative operator mop, the first argument of which is a modal base representing the locus at which the displaced [past] feature is interpreted (Bustamante 2013: 12): The modal base has a time argument that is saturated by the displaced [past] feature, which results in a representation of the speaker's past beliefs holding in an interval that precedes the utterance time, where the utterance time usually coincides with the "discovery time", i.e. the time at which the evidence is received (Bustamante 2013: 12–13).

The syntactic assumptions capturing the displacement of the tense morpheme include a feature-checking relationship between interpretable features of functional projections that need to be checked against the corresponding uninterpretable features of lexical projections (via Agree, following Chomsky 2000, 2001; see details in Bustamante 2013: Ch. 3). In miratives, the tense feature is displaced such that T (or V) bears the morphologically realized but uninterpretable u[past] feature, whereas C bears the interpretable i[past] feature.24 In addition, Bustamante (2013: 50–51) assumes the structure in Figure 1, where "VP denotes a property of events and combines with Aspect to yield a property of times (AspectP)", and Tense combines with AspectP and yields a proposition (TP).

Figure 1: Tense and aspect in the TP (Bustamante 2013: 51)

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

The modal mirative operator mop is defined below, where represents the set of the speaker's beliefs and represents the assertion:

$$\begin{aligned} \text{(23)} \quad \mathsf{M}\_{\text{OP}} = \lambda P \lambda Q \lambda t\_1 \lambda \mathsf{w}\_1 [[P(\mathsf{w}\_1)(t\_1) \subseteq \lambda \mathsf{w} \neg Q(\mathsf{w})(t\_1)] \land Q(\mathsf{w}\_1)(t\_1)] \end{aligned} \text{(25)}\\\begin{aligned} \text{(26)} \quad \mathsf{(}\mathsf{R}\text{'s} \text{ (}\mathsf{R}\text{'s}\text{)}\text{(}\mathsf{R}\text{'s}\text{)} \text{(26)}\\\text{(26)} \quad \mathsf{(}\mathsf{R}\text{'s}\text{)} \text{(26)} \end{aligned} \text{(26)} \end{aligned}$$

The appropriate modal base is provided by the accessibility relation defined below, where takes as its first argument the time and is thus restricted by a time of evaluation:25

(24) = ′ [′ is compatible with speaker's beliefs in at ]

The derivation of the mirative meaning under the assumption of the displaced tense feature i[past] and the mirative operator mop applied to the assertion (TP) is shown in Figures 2 and 3 below.26

Figure 2: The mirative operator and the interpretation of the displaced tense morpheme (Bustamante 2013: 55)

25The idea to impose a temporal restriction on the accessibility relation is adopted from Ippolito's (2002) approach to counterfactuals and accounts for the fact that beliefs change over time.

26Bustamante (2013: 61–62) suggests an alternative version of mop where the meaning of i[past] is incorporated into the operator and mop combines directly with the accessibility relation :

$$\text{(i)}\quad \mathsf{M}\_{\text{OP}} = \lambda R \lambda Q \lambda t\_1 \lambda \ast \mathsf{w}\_1[\lambda t\_1 [R(t\_2) t\_2 \wedge t\_2 < t\_1] (\mathsf{w}\_1)(t\_1)] \subseteq \lambda \mathsf{w} \neg Q(\mathsf{w})(t\_1) \wedge Q(\mathsf{w}\_1)(t\_1)[\mathsf{L}]$$

### Elena Karagjosova

In Figure 2, is applied to the displaced past feature i[past], yielding the first argument of mop, the set of the speaker's past beliefs , i.e. the beliefs holding at an interval up to the speech time. Then, the m-operator is applied to the assertion (TP), which gets a present reading: the tense feature u[past] in T is uninterpretable (see Figure 3), i.e. no interpretation of the feature takes place at this point, and the denotation of AspP percolates to TP. There, mop is applied to the assertion, the time argument of which is bound by 1 in (23) and gets the value of the speech time.27 Hence, the content of the mirative sentence, the proposition , gets interpreted "in the present and with respect to the actual world", i.e. the speaker believes the proposition to be true at speech time (Bustamante 2013: 58). At the same time, the past modal base entails ¬. 28 This renders the clash between the assertion and what follows from the speaker's past beliefs that "triggers the sense of surprise associated with miratives" (Bustamante 2013: 54).

Figure 3: The TP and the derivational steps (Bustamante 2013: 56)

Concerning the precedence relation between the past beliefs and the speech/ discovery time, Bustamante (2013: 58) notes that it is better accounted for in terms of immediate precedence by means of the abut-relationship ⊃⊂ indicating a common boundary between these times.29

Crucially, Bustamante (2013: 112–114) uses this immediate precedence relation also to explain why only past tenses such as the past imperfect (and the present

27Which for (22) has the form [Juan smokes in at ].

28Note that in the course of the composition, the time variable of the modal base is bound to the value of the past time 2 in the semantic representation of i[past], such that the speaker's beliefs at the past moment 2 entail the belief ¬ holding at some 1 which is not the actual speech time, such that no inconsistency of beliefs at the actual speech time arises. See Bustamante (2013: 56–57) for the details of the derivation.

29The abut-operator is adopted from Kamp & Reyle (1993: 573) where it is used to represent the temporal relation between the result state and the event in the perfect and where "the state starts at the very moment the event ends."

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

perfect) but not the past perfective in Spanish can have mirative extensions: "We need a [past] tense feature that makes reference to an interval whose right boundary is the discovery time." She argues that only the [past] tense associated with imperfective (and some perfect) forms is able to do so, due to the properties of events it is associated with, such as durative, continuous, and indefinite, in contrast to the perfective which is associated with properties like terminative, punctual, and definite (see also Cipria & Roberts 2000: 300). With the perfective, the event is seen as a subset of the reference time and thus completed or punctional, hence the perfective does not provide the right interval for the modal base to hold.30

Bustamante (2013: 115) implements this "aspectual requirement on the past tense" in the Spanish mirative in terms of the set of syntactic features such that C asks for a i[past, unbounded] feature, where the [unbounded] feature is the contribution of the imperfective aspect, following Pancheva (2003) who defines [unbounded] as setting up the event time as a superset of the reference time (RT ⊆ ET). In contrast, [bounded], the feature of the perfective, is defined as setting up the event time as a subset of the reference time (ET ⊆ RT). Given this constraint on the aspectual morphology of the participle, Bustamante (2013: 51) assumes that aspect contributes its usual interpretation to the assertion.31

Finally, Bustamante (2013: 14) points out that the Spanish mirative is not a direct expression of surprise in that the mirative operator does not encode surprise by itself. Instead, surprise is pragmatically derived from the clash between

30As an additional argument Bustamante (2013: 112–113) points out the observation made in Iatridou (2000) that the "fake" past in counterfactuals is accompanied by imperfective aspect and that putting perfective aspect in counterfactuals makes the past become real. From this Bustamante concludes that "there is an incompatibility between "fake" past tense or, in our terms, displaced real tense and perfective aspect." The aspectual properties of the two tenses and the requirement of the modal base on the right interval for the past beliefs are shown below (where t\* is the utterance time); see Bustamante (2013: 114):

31 Bustamante (2013: 51–52) claims that the aspectual contribution of the imperfect is the imperfective aspect. Following Kratzer (1998), she assumes the latter to locate the reference time within the event time (RT ⊆ ET); see (i):

(i) JimperfectiveK = ...∃[ ⊆ () ∧ ()( ) = 1].

### Elena Karagjosova

the recently discovered facts and what the past beliefs imply. This distinguishes the Spanish mirative from exclamations and exclamatives which can express a wider range of speaker emotions. Being compatible with the expression of surprise, though, the mirative can be embedded under an exclamatory illocutionary operator (exc; defined in Gutiérrez-Rexach 1996), assuming the structure in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Embedding CP under an exclamatory operator (Bustamante 2013: 162)

As compared to the Spanish mirative, the Bulgarian admirative has not only modal, temporal, and aspectual, but also evidential properties that need to be accounted for. I therefore suggest that in addition to a modal base of past beliefs, the Bulgarian admirative explicitly introduces an evidential component in terms of (i) the evidence acquisition time (EAT) that precedes (in inferential and reportative contexts) or coincides with (in direct evidence contexts) the speech time (EAT ≤ ST) and (ii) the requirement that the speaker's belief base at discovery time entails the asserted proposition, i.e. the speaker has some evidence for the assertion prior to or at the time the assertion is made.32 Although Spanish miratives do not have evidential morphology, the evidential meaning component of the Bulgarian admirative fits naturally with the mirative semantics defined for the Spanish construction: the belief clash the admirative expresses is caused by some evidence and the existence of such evidence is suggested by the admirative itself, not merely by context.33 It also fits with Bustamante's (2013: 57) observation that while the discovery time usually coincides with ST, there are cases where the discovery time precedes ST, like reporting news by means of miratives as well as miratives embedded under predicates like *to turn out*. This accounts also for the Bulgarian data discussed in §3. Although the admirative operator employs the usual temporal precedence relation, the relation between EAT and ST is best captured in terms of an immediate precedence (the abut-relation ⊃⊂),

32Idea (i) is adopted from Smirnova's (2011b) definition of the evidential modal operator ev.

33Note that similar to the Spanish operator mop, the Bulgarian admirative operator is covert, since its morphology is not unambiguous enough to trigger a mirative interpretation independently of context.

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

which accounts for Rett & Murray's (2013) recency requirement mentioned in §3.2.

Similar to the Spanish mirative, the mirative interpretation of the Bulgarian admirative involves reference to a present eventuality, speaker commitment to the truth of , and can be seen as the result of a displaced interpretation of the temporal feature of the past imperfect participle within the domain of the admirative operator admir. The operator introduces a modal base of past beliefs that implies a proposition contradicting the asserted proposition, and binds the temporal variable of the assertion in TP to ST. The clash of old and new beliefs is caused by evidence for the asserted proposition. The operator is defined in (25), where is the modal base specified by the accessibility relation defined in (24) above, ′ is the EAT introduced by the admirative, and represents the assertion.

(25) admir = 11∃′ [(′ ≤ 1 ) ∧ [ (1 )(1 ) ⊆ ¬( )(1 )] ∧ (1 )(1 )] ∧ [′ [′ is compatible with speaker's beliefs in 1 at ′ ] ⊆ (1 )(′ )]

When applied to the assertion, the operator admir yields the following interpretation of the admirative construction: admirative sentences are assertions based on evidence of some sort (reportative, inferential, direct) contrasted against the speaker beliefs that hold up to the speech time which may coincide with the discovery time or succeed it. The speaker's past beliefs entail a conclusion that clashes with the assertion, which triggers belief revision, while the actual current beliefs at ′ entail the assertion. I further assume that, similar to the Spanish mirative, the Bulgarian admirative does not encode surprise itself, but the sense of surprise associated with it is rather a result of the clash between what the past beliefs imply and the recently acquired new belief. Its compatibility with the expression of surprise makes the exclamatory environment especially suitable for the admirative, which is accounted for by assuming a structure like the one presented in Figure 4 for the Spanish mirative.

In terms of the aspectual makeup of the participle and the reason why it is restricted to unbounded eventualities, similar assumptions can be made for the Bulgarian admirative as for the Spanish mirative. However, additional assumptions are needed for the distinction between morphological aspect related to the opposition imperfect : aorist and situation or viewpoint aspect related to the distinction between imperfective and perfective lexical forms in Bulgarian. With Rivero & Slavkov (2014) I distinguish between morphologically imperfect past participles like, e.g., *pišel* and morphologically perfective (aorist) past participles like *pisal*. In addition, I adopt their assumption that "the morphological contrast between imperfect tense and aorist tense inflections (imperfect *-še* vs.

### Elena Karagjosova

aorist *-a*) systematically encodes imperfective vs. perfective viewpoints in the semantics" (Rivero & Slavkov 2014: 235). This applies to both indicative imperfects and aorists and their participles, where I assume the same semantics for the imperfective and perfective as in Bustamante (see fn. 31). Consequently, Bulgarian imperfect imperfective participles have the two features [past] and [unbounded], which is the required combination to feed the temporal argument of the modal base, as shown above. The ban on aorist and perfective forms in admirative sentences is explained by the introduction of the feature [bounded] by the aorist and perfective participles which always entails a past eventuality and disallows the displacement of the [past] feature.

A further reason why the Bulgarian admirative construction is restricted to morpholgically imperfect and lexically imperfective participles seems to be related to the fact that a participle combining perfective aspect with imperfect tense like *napišel* in (26) is restricted to specific, repetitive contexts.

(26) Vseki every păt time kogato when napišel write.ipf.pfv.ptcp edno one izrečenie, sentence Petăr Petăr otival go.ipf.ipfv.ptcp da ptcl puši. smoke.3sg.prs 'Each time Petăr wrote a sentence he went to smoke, it is said.'

The use of perfective aorist participles seems in general less restricted; however, this combination can only be used in conclusives and renarratives (like the present perfect), as the aorist is banned in admiratives; see (27) and (28).

(27) *Context:* I see a picture of my good old friend Maria on a book in a window of a book shop and conclude that Maria has published a book. I say to myself:

Maria Maria \*(e) is napisala write.aor.pfv.ptcp kniga! book 'Maria has written a book!'

(28) *Context:* Ivan tells me that Maria has written a book. I find this exciting and later tell Petăr:

Ti you ču hear.aor.2sg li? q Maria Maria napisala write.aor.pfv.ptcp kniga! book 'Did you hear? Maria has written a book, they say!'

As a matter of fact, admiratives allow for the combination of secondary imperfective verbs and imperfect participle, as shown in (29).

6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

(29) *Context:* Ivan tells me that Maria has written a bestseller. Later, I meet Maria who denies that she has ever written a book. I suddenly realize that Ivan may have acquired a bad habit of making things up and exclaim

Znači mean.3sg.prs toj he si refl izmisljal! make.up.ipf.pfv.ptcp 'So he is making up things!'

Here, the temporal interpretation is that of a present (habitual) eventuality, which however carries over to the past event of Ivan telling the speaker a lie. This shows that the interplay of morphological and viewpoint aspect in the case of the Bulgarian admirative may be more complex than what has been assumed above. However, spelling out this contribution in detail is an issue that must be left to future work.

### **5 Summary and discussion**

In this paper, I provided an analysis of the Bulgarian admirative in terms of a modal operator that captures the evidential, temporal, and aspectual properties of the construction. In this section, I discuss some consequences and residual issues related to the analysis presented above.

First of all, assuming that the admirative indicates a clash of beliefs accounts for the sense of epistemic uncertainty observed in, e.g., Smirnova (2013: 510) who argues that "the evidential in direct contexts expresses commitment that is weaker than knowledge".34

Second, in order to fully account for the place of the admirative in the evidential system, operators for the renarrative and the conclusive need to be defined that adequately capture their properties discussed in the previous sections:

	- **–** It can be formed by both imperfect and aorist participles of both imperfective and perfective verbs, where imperfect participles in renarrative forms get either past or present interpretation depending on context.
	- **–** It does not commit the speaker (but possibly the reporter) to the proposition.

34See a similar claim in Friedman (1981: 25) saying that Bulgarian evidential forms in direct contexts express "some state of ignorance or disbelief".

### Elena Karagjosova

	- **–** They exhibit both types of past participles and aspectual forms.
	- **–** They relate the assertion to the speaker's beliefs (thus involving a modal base).
	- **–** They indicate that the evidence is acquired before the speech time (EAT < ST).
	- **–** They are embeddable under an illocutionary exclamative operator.

In addition, appropriateness conditions need to be specified that govern the application of one or the other evidential operator.

Third, allowing the temporal relation between discovery time and speech time to be one of either precedence or coincidence accounts for the fact that admiratives can be based not only on direct but also inferential and reportative evidence where the discovery time temporally precedes the speech time (EAT < ST). This is the case in (29) above. A further example illustrating this is Koev's (2017) deferred relalization example cited in (30), where the speaker "has direct evidence for the described event but the realization that she does comes at a later time" (Koev 2017: 4):35

(30) *Context:* One of Nixon's aides vividly recalls walking into the Oval Office and seeing the President erase some tapes. She later learns about the Watergate scandal from the media and makes sense of what she had seen. When asked what happened on that day, she says:

Kogato when vljazo-x, enter-past Niksăn Nixon trie-še erase-past njakakv-i some-pl zapis-i. tape-pl. Toj he zaličava-l remove-ev ulik-i-te.

clue-pl-def

'When I walked in, I saw Nixon erase some tapes. He was covering up the clues, as I learned later.' (Koev 2017: 4)

35Koev's glosses are kept.

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

Koev (2017: 4) argues that this is not an example of mirativity, but a "truly evidential interpretation", since miratives are, according to him, conventionally accompanied by exclamative intonation and the speaker need not be surprised that Nixon was covering up the clues, as she may have heard about the Watergate scandal before uttering the sentence. There are, however, some arguments in favor of treating such cases of late realization in terms of mirativity. As already pointed out, mirativity is not necessarily accompanied by exclamative intonation and involves (sudden) discovery or realization typically related to a clash of beliefs. Besides, the direct evidence the speaker in (30) has is that of Nixon erasing some tapes, rather than of Nixon covering up clues. It is therefore more plausible to assume that at the time of obtaining this direct evidence, the speaker did not have information about the Watergate scandal, since otherwise she would have realized (inferred) that the event of tape-erasing she had witnessed was in fact/at the same time an event of covering up clues, or that the tape-erasing was done with the aim of covering up clues. The use of the zero-auxiliary form can thus be interpreted in terms of deferred realization and clash of old and new beliefs, which is the content of the admirative: the speaker's past beliefs entail the belief 'Nixon was erasing some tapes' acquired through direct observation; upon acquiring information about the scandal, the speaker realizes that Nixon was not just erasing some tapes, but by doing this was actually covering up clues, which runs against what the speaker believed earlier.

The analysis of late realization cases like (30) in terms of mirativity is also supported by typological evidence, see, e.g.,Aikhenvald (2012: 441) who discusses mirative statements that are based on visual evidence or inference and "postfactum interpretation of the action judged by the results". The main argument that Koev uses to rule out a mirative interpretation is related to the fact that the discovery time in the example temporally precedes the speech time, which is incompatible with direct evidential sources. This temporal relation is, however, compatible with the meaning of the admirative defined in (25), as well as with the clash of old and new beliefs based on some evidence that it encodes. Besides, it could be argued that the evidence leading to the mirative interpretation is not the directly observed event of tape-erasing, but the realization of the fact that the tape-erasing was in fact an act of covering up clues.

On the other hand, the eventuality referred to by the utterance is located in the past, not in the present, as was assumed for admirative sentences, which poses a problem for the analysis of (30) in terms of mirativity. One possible solution would be to assume that the past interpretation follows from the precedence relation between the discovery time and the speech time (EAT < ST) and the fact that the contextually salient time that is relevant for the interpretation of the

### Elena Karagjosova

assertion is the time of the originally observed evidence, rather than ST (RT = EAT), which results in RT < ST ( = past). Interestingly, the form of the participle in (30) is the same as in (29): a combination of imperfect participle and secondary imperfective verbal aspect. Figuring out how exactly cases of deferred realization with this morphology fit the analysis presented here must be left to future work.

Finally, a residual question that needs to be addressed in future work concerns the origin of the admirative. Nicolova (2013) argues that the admirative originated from the perfect in its function to ascertain the existence of results from non-observed actions. This fits the crosslinguistic observation in Bybee & Dahl (1989: 73–74) of indirect evidential uses licensed by the perfect due to its property of expressing past actions with present results: The indirect evidential uses can be viewed as extensions of "known by its results" to "action known by inference/reports" (see also Lau & Rooryck (2017) who talk about knowledge of an event by indirect means). However, this path would immediately explain the emergence of the inferential and hearsay uses of the admirative out of the present perfect, but not the direct evidence uses. To shed more light on this issue, diachronic and typological data need to be thoroughly examined.

### **Abbreviations**

### **Acknowledgements**

I would like to thank the participants of the *13th European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages* in Göttingen for discussing an earlier version of this work, as well as Torgrim Solstad and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions. A special thanks goes to my informants for their native speaker judgements.

6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

### **References**

### Elena Karagjosova

### 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

### Elena Karagjosova

Nicolova, Ruselina. 2017. *Bulgarian grammar*. Berlin: Frank & Timme.

6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system

Stankov, Valentin. 1969. *Bălgarskite glagolni vremena*. Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo.

## **Chapter 7**

## **From measure predicates to count nouns: Complex measure nouns in Russian**

### Keren Khrizman

Bar-Ilan University

This paper offers a semantic analysis of morphologically complex measure nouns in Russian (e.g., *trexlitrovka* 'three-liter-kasuffix'). Prima facie such nouns look very much like measure predicates such as *three liters* that appear in pseudo-partitives as *three liters of water*. I show that they are not such. In particular I shall argue that: (i) complex measure nouns are not measure predicates, but are genuine count nouns denoting entities with certain measure characteristics; (ii) they are derived via an operation which shifts measure predicates expressing measure properties to nouns denoting disjoint entities that have these properties; (iii) the interpretational domain involves a wide range of entities including containers and portions. I will then show that the analysis has at least two important implications: (a) it supports the reality of measure predicates (*three liters*); (b) it shows that measure-to-count shifts are productive semantic operations.

**Keywords:** measure/count predicates, nominalization, measure-to-count semantic shifts

### **1 Introduction**

Colloquial Russian uses productively morphologically complex measure nouns. These are nouns constructed out of a numeral, a measure word, and a nominal suffix -*ka* (1).

(1) a. trexthree.genlitr-ovliter-gen.plka ka.nom.sg samogon-a moonshine-gen.sg 'a three-liter jar/bottle of moonshine'

Keren Khrizman. 2021. From measure predicates to count nouns: Complex measure nouns in Russian. In Andreas Blümel, Jovana Gajić, Ljudmila Geist, Uwe Junghanns & Hagen Pitsch (eds.), *Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018*, 169–188. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5483104

### Keren Khrizman

b. stohundred.nomgramm-ovgram-gen.plka ka.nom.sg vodk-i vodka-gen.sg 'a 100-gram glass of vodka'

Such nouns apparently look like measure expressions such as *tri litra/trex litrov* 'three liters' used in pseudo-partitives such *tri litra/trex litrov vody* illustrated in (2).

	- b. Trex three.gen litr-ov liter-gen.pl vod-y water-gen.sg nam us dolžno must xvatit'. suffice 'Three liters of water should be enough for us.'

However, the two constructions are very different. While *three liters* in (2) expresses measure properties of entities, the measure nouns in (1) denote actual objects (glasses, jars etc..) that have these properties. As further shown in (3), these nouns have sortal uses and can be modified by adjectives. They cannot be used as adjectival modifiers of other nouns (4).

	- 'faceted/crystal 100-gram glasses'

While the examples in (3–4) show that measure nouns are genuine nouns at type ⟨, ⟩, the data in (5) show that they are count nouns denoting sets of disjoint individuals as they can be pluralized, modified by numerals, and be antecedents of distributive operators such as reciprocals.

7 From measure predicates to count nouns

(5) Pjat' five trex-litrov-ok three-liter-ka.gen.pl / Trex-litrov-ki three-liter-ka.nom.pl stojali stood odna one na on drugoj. other 'Five three-liter jars / Three-liter jars stood on top of each other.'

Importantly, the container nouns illustrated so far are only a subclass of a wider range of complex nouns built of expressions denoting measures in different dimensions and denoting salient objects which have the stated properties (e.g. power: *sto-vat-ka* 'a 100-watt bulb'; time: *pjati-let-ka* 'a five-year project/a fiveyear-old'; distance: *sto-metrov-ka* 'a hundred-meter route/stretch'). Furthermore, these nouns are used very productively. *Stogrammovka* in (1b) for example, may refer to a variety of objects which weigh 100 grams with the nature of the object being determined by context (e.g. 'a 100ml bottle/tube', 'a 100g package/bar', 'an ultra-light coat', 'a 100g ball/roll' etc.) (6).

These data raise a number of questions: (i) *What is the semantic interpretation of these nouns?* (ii) *How are they derived semantically and morphologically?* (iii) *What can we learn about the semantics of measure expressions from these nouns?*

In the rest of the paper I shall explore these nouns in the light of recent work on the semantics of counting and measuring and argue that: (i) complex measure nouns are not measure predicates but are genuine count predicates denoting sets of discrete entities with certain measure properties; (ii) they are derived via a nominalization operation which shifts measure modifiers, expressed by numeral noun phrases or adjectives, to count predicates denoting sets of disjoint entities; (iii) the analysis correctly predicts that the interpretational range of complex nouns involves containers and countable portions in the sense of Khrizman

### Keren Khrizman

et al. (2015). This work has wider theoretical implications. First, it supports the reality of mass measure predicates as argued in Landman (2016). Second, it shows that measure-to-count shifts are linguistically real, productive semantic operations.

The paper will be structured as follows. In the next section I shall discuss the morphological properties of complex measure nouns and argue that they can be derived either from noun phrases headed by a numeral or adjectives. In §3 I provide a basic semantic interpretation of measure nouns. §4 and §5 extend this analysis to container and portion uses respectively. We shall finally discuss the theoretical implications of the proposed analysis in §6.

### **2 Morphological derivation**

Figure 1: Numeral NP-to-measure noun-pattern

Figure 2: Numeral adjective-to-measure noun-pattern

I shall now bring evidence that both patterns occur. In particular, we shall see that there are cases which can be analyzed only as being derived from numeral NPs as in Figure 1 and, conversely, there are measure nouns for which only the "adjective-to-noun" pattern in Figure 2 is possible.

### 7 From measure predicates to count nouns

We start with the pattern in Figure 2. This pattern is very clearly exemplified by *(odno)litrovka* 'a one-liter jar/bottle'. The complement of the genitive NP *odnogo litra* 'of one liter' is singular and does not have the suffix *-ov*. Therefore deriving 'one-liter jar' in the pattern in Figure 1, i.e. from a measure phrase, would produce *(odno)litrka*, which does not exist (Figure 3). The *-ov-* suffix in *(odno)litrovka* must come from the adjective *litrovyj* 'one-liter'. Thus the most plausible derivation for *litrovka* is from the adjectival base, i.e. through the pattern in Figure 2, as shown in Figure 4. 1

Figure 3: Numeral NP-to-measure noun-pattern (ungrammatical)

Figure 4: Numeral adjective-to-measure noun-pattern (ungrammatical)

Evidence for the pattern in Figure 1 comes from the contrast between *stogrammka* in (7a), (7c), and *stogrammovka* in (7b), earlier illustrated in (1b) and (6). While the noun phrase 'hundred grams' has two productive variants, one with the *-ov-* suffix in (8a) and one without it (8b), the adjective 'hundred-gram' has only one productive form which is derived using the adjectival suffix *-ov-* (9). Therefore, *stogrammovka* could be derived either from the adjectival form *stogrammovyj* in (9a) or from the measure phrase *sto grammov* (8a). *Stogrammka*, which lacks *-ov-*, however, is most plausibly derived from the measure phrase *sto gramm* in (8b), since the adjectival form *stogrammnyj* in (9b) is not productive. I did find few occurrences of this form on the Internet, but all my informants who are ready to accept *stogrammka* (even though this form is quite rare, too) reject it. At least for those speakers, *stogrammka* must be derived from a nominal phrase *sto gramm* and not from the adjective *stogrammovyj*, i.e. via the pattern in Figure 1.

1Examples such as *pjatiletka* 'a five-year old/a five-year program' have also been treated as derived from adjectives. Such an analysis assumes that deletion of the adjectival suffix *-n-* takes place, *pjatiletnij* (adj) – *pjatiletka* (noun) (Townsend 1975 as opposed to Vinogradov 1960).

### Keren Khrizman

100-gram-adj-m.sg '100-gram' 100-gram-adj-m.sg '100-gram'

We therefore conclude that complex measure nouns are derived via two possible routes: either from measure phrases like *three liters* or *100 grams*, or from measure adjectives such as *three-liter* or *100-gram*. Some nouns are derived only with one pattern (e.g., *litrovka*, *stogrammka*) and for some nouns both patterns are equally plausible (e.g., *stogrammovka*.) In the following section I provide a semantic analysis which not only is compatible with the morphological facts discussed above but also explains them.

### **3 Semantic interpretation**

In the previous two sections we have shown that: (i) measure nouns are genuine count nouns and (ii) they are derived either from measure noun phrases (e.g., *sto gramm(ov)* '100 grams') or from measure adjectives (*stogrammovyj* '100-gram'). I shall now provide a semantic derivation. We begin by outlining a number of theoretical assumptions on the semantics of count nouns and measure expressions.

### 7 From measure predicates to count nouns

With Rothstein (2011), Landman (2011, 2016), and Sutton & Filip (2016) I assume that the count/mass contrast in the nominal domain amounts to the distinction between disjoint and overlapping denotations. In particular, singular count nouns denote sets of disjoint entities, and plural count nouns denote sets of these disjoint entities closed under sum, whereas mass denotations can be generated by sets of overlapping entities. Measure nouns such as *trexlitrovka*, which have count denotations, will therefore denote sets of disjoint entities.

As for the measure expression, I will base myself on the framework in Landman (2004, 2016), Rothstein (2009, 2011, 2017) (for English), and Partee & Borschev (2012), Khrizman (2016b,a) (for Russian). In this framework measure phrases such as*100 grams* are intersective modifiers which express measure properties, i.e. properties of having a value on a dimensional scale calibrated in certain units (10).

	- b. 100 grams = .meas weight gram () = 100 the property of having the value 100 on a weight scale calibrated in gram units

Rothstein (2017) showed that measure properties as defined in (10) are expressed by constructions of two types. One, as already mentioned above, is via nominal measure heads such as*100 grams* used in pseudo-partitives like *100 grams of flour* (11a). The other is via distributive measure adjectives such as *100-gram* in *a 100 gram apple* (12a). Both expressions denote the property of weighing 100 grams. In (11) this property is assigned to sums of entities denoted by the mass predicate *flour* (11b) and in (12) the same property is assigned to individual apples in the denotation of the count singular *apple* (12b).2

	- a. Jhundred gramsK = .meas weight gram () = 100
	- b. Jhundred grams of flourK = .flour() ∧ meas weight gram () = 100 the set of sums of flour that weigh 100 grams

2 It is known that the classifier and the adjectival use of measure expressions illustrated in (11) and (12), respectively, show differences in distribution and interpretation. Classifier uses like those in (11) induce extensive readings, whereas adjectival forms like those in (12) encode nonextensive measure functions. Further, classifier uses are not distributive, whereas adjectival ones are (Schwarzschild 2005). Rothstein (2017) shows that such differences are not an indication of a different semantics of the two expressions but follow from the differences in their syntactic positions.

### Keren Khrizman

	- a. Jhundred-gramK = .meas weight gram () = 100
	- b. Ja hundred-gram appleK = .apple() ∧ meas weight gram () = 100 the set of apples such that each weighs 100 grams

With this background I now propose a basic semantic derivation of morphologically complex measure nouns as follows in (13). Measure nouns are derived via a nominalization operation, expressed by the *-ka* suffix, which shifts intersective predicate modifiers expressing measure properties to count nouns denoting sets of contextually determined disjoint elements which have these measure properties. *Stogrammovka*, for example, starts off as a measure predicate denoting the property of weighing 100 grams in (14a). -ka shifts it into a singular count predicate denoting the set of disjoint entities such that each weighs 100 grams (14b).

	- a. J-kaK = meas. () ∧ meas(), is a property whose context is contextually determined, is a disjoint set.
	- b. Jmeasure nounK = . () ∧ meas(), is a property whose context is contextually determined, is a disjoint set.
	- b. JstogrammovkaK = meas. () ∧ meas()(.meas weight gram () = 100) = . () ∧ meas weight gram () = 100, is a disjoint set.

the set of contextually determined disjoint entities (like jackets, bars, etc.) that weigh 100 grams

Given that measure properties are expressed by both numeral noun phrases and measure adjectives, -ka can take both genitive NPs such as *sto gramm(ov)* and adjectives such as *stogrammovyj* as input. We thus see now that the proposed analysis predicts and explains the dual pattern of morphological derivation discussed in the previous section.

Further support for the analysis in (13) comes from examples like those in (15). Here, an intersective adjective denoting a property of being grown up/mature is shifted to a count noun denoting individuals who are grown up. This shows that shifts from properties to count nouns denoting objects with the stated properties are attested in a wider range of expressions in Russian. The difference is that, with measure modifiers, this shift is overtly expressed through -ka.

7 From measure predicates to count nouns

	- b. Nekotor-ye some-nom.pl vzrosl-ye grown.up-nom.pl vedut behave sebja themselves kak like deti. children 'Some grown-up people behave as children.'

We have now worked out the basic semantic interpretation of complex measure nouns and have shown how to derive sets of individuals having a particular measure property. In the following section we shall take a closer look at a productive variant of such expressions, container nouns.

### **4 Container uses**

### **4.1 Semantic interpretation**

The contrast in (16a) and (16b) shows that container interpretations of complex nouns are different from other readings. In particular in (16a) *stogrammovka* refers to a bar whose weight is 100 grams, whereas in (16b) the same noun refers to a glass which can hold 100 grams but does not weigh 100 grams by itself.

	- b. na on polke shelf stojali stood xrustal'nye crystal sto-grammov-ki. 100-gram-ka.nom.pl 'There were a few 100-gram glasses on the shelf.'

To capture that contrast I follow Casati & Varzi (1999) and Rothstein (2009, 2017) and treat containers as complex objects which incorporate holes which are themselves objects to which properties can be assigned (17).

	- a. A container is an object associated with a hole
	- b. If container(x) then

∀ ∶ measurevolume, () = measurevolume, (hole()).

### Keren Khrizman

The basic interpretational schema in (13) is then extended to container complex nouns as follows in (18). Container measure nouns denote sets of contextually disjoint objects that are containers whose holes have a certain measure property in terms of volume (19).3

(18) The semantic interpretation of measure nouns denoting containers .container () ∧ measvol unit (hole()) = , container is disjoint. the set of contextually determined entities whose holes measure to n number of volume units

$$\text{(19)} \quad \text{a. } \left[ \text{togrammovka} \right]$$

= .container () ∧ meas vol gram (hole()) = 100, container is disjoint.

the set of contextually determined disjoint containers whose volume is 100 grams

b. JtrexlitrovkaK = .container () ∧ meas vol liter (hole()) = 3, container is disjoint.

the set of contextually determined disjoint containers whose volume is 3 liters

Shifts from a measure interpretation to a container interpretation are not unknown. Khrizman et al. (2015) show that lexical measures like *liter* in certain contexts shift to a container reading (20).

(20) He arrived home and knocked on the door with one liter of milk. His mother said to him: "I asked you for two liters. Where is the second one?" Her son said to her: "It broke, mother." [Matilda Koén-Sarano. 2003. Jewish Trickster. In Matilda Koén-Sarano (ed.), *Folktales of Joha*. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, p. 22; from Khrizman et al. 2015: 200]

Khrizman et al. (2015) argued that in such cases *liter* is reinterpreted as a container whose contents measures 1 liter in volume (21).

(21) .container() ∧ milk(contents()) ∧ liter(contents()) = 1, container is disjoint. the set of containers such that the contents is milk and measure 1 liter in volume

3 In Russian, grams are sometimes used for volume; e.g., *sto gramm(ov) vodki* '100 grams of vodka'.

### 7 From measure predicates to count nouns

I do not adopt this for measure nouns, since unlike *liter* they have non-relational uses at type ⟨, ⟩ (22), so the measure properties must apply to containers and not to contents. *Trexlitrovka* in (22a) can easily refer to an empty container, whereas *three liters* cannot (22b).

	- b. \* Three liters broke. Intended: 'A three-liter container/jar broke.'

### **4.2 Classifier uses**

Count nouns denoting containers can be used in pseudo-partitive noun phrases such as *three glasses of water* allowing for two different interpretations. The first is a classifier use in which they are interpreted as relational nouns (23a). The second is a measure use in which they are interpreted as units of measure, analogously to inherent measures such as *liter* (23b) (Rothstein 2009, 2017, Landman 2004, 2016 for English; Partee & Borschev 2012, Khrizman 2016b,a for Russian).4

	- b. There are/is two glases of wine in this jar. measure unit JglassK⟨,⟨,⟩⟩ = .meas glass units () =

Count nouns have the same ambiguity in Russian, too (24) (see Partee & Borschev 2012, Khrizman & Rothstein 2015, Khrizman 2016b,a).

	- b. V in kanistre jerrycan ostalos' left ešče still dva two tri three stakan-a glass-gen.sg vod-y. water-gen.sg 'There are still two or three glasses of water left in the jerrycan.'

4Rothstein (2009, 2017) defines the meaning of containers in English using the 'contain(, )' relation. Partee & Borschev (2012) use 'filled with(, )' relation to interpret the parallel construction in Russian. For discussion see Partee & Borschev (2012) and Rothstein (2017).

### Keren Khrizman

If container complex measure nouns are genuine count nouns then we can ask whether they can be used as in pseudo-partitives, and if it is possible, we would expect them to be ambiguous between a classifier and a measure use, too. And this is the case. The examples in (25) illustrate a container classifier use. The semantic interpretations is then as follows in (26). *Trexlitrovka* shifts from the ⟨, ⟩ sortal interpretation in (19b) to a relational interpretation in (26a). It combines with a complement *honey* and creates a predicate denoting the set of disjoint containers which have 3-liter holes and which are filled with honey (26b).5

	- b. Jtrexlitrovka medaK = .container () ∧ meas vol liter (hole()) = 3 ∧ ∃ [honey( ) ∧ filled with(, )], containerc is disjoint.

the set of contextually determined three-liter containers filled with honey

The measure use is more complex. Measure nouns are not used naturally to express standard units of measure (27). In particular, *trexlitrovka* 'three-liter jar' is not used interchangeably with *tri litra* 'three liters' to measure out three-liter quantities of . This is presumably expected, since a standard measure expression is available.

(27) Zalejte pour jagody berries tre-mja three-ins litr-ami liter-ins.pl / ?trex-litrov-koj three-liter-ka.inst.sg kipjatk-a. boiling.water-gen.sg 'Pour three liters of boiling water over the berries.'

But they *are* used as ad hoc measure units in approximative contexts (see Partee & Borschev 2012, Rothstein 2017); see (28). In (28), the precise volume of the jar is not directly relevant. The speaker uses the noun not because he knows that this volume corresponds to a certain amount of berries. Instead, the speaker uses the noun to express that he estimates that the amount of the berries on the bush is the amount which would fill a stereotypical three-liter jar. (29) illustrates a similar point.

5The analysis in (26) is based on the analyses of Russian pseudo-partitives with container nouns such as *stakan* 'glass' on the classifier use proposed in Partee & Borschev (2012) and Khrizman (2016b,a). For details see the original papers.

### 7 From measure predicates to count nouns

(28) *Context:* 'This raspberry bush is full of berries!' Da, yes zdes' here kak as minimum minimum odna one polnaja full trex-litrov-ka three-liter-ka.nom.sg (jagod). berry.gen.pl 'Oh, yes! There is at least one full three-liter jar of berries.' (29) *Context:* 'They served wonderful pickled mushrooms at Masha's wedding!' Ja I s"ela ate navernoe probably celuju whole trex-litrov-ku three-liter-ka.acc.sg ėtix this.gen.pl grib-ov. mushroom-gen.pl

'I guess I ate a whole three-liter jar of those mushrooms.'

I thus adopt Partee & Borschev's semantics for containers on the ad hoc measure interpretation in which a free variable is used to refer to a container (30). As a result, the interpretation makes reference to a three-liter container, but does not entail its existence.

	- b. Jtrexlitrovkameasure jagodK = .berry pl() ∧ container (1 ) ∧ measliter(hole(1 )) = 3 ∧ would fill 1 once.

the set of quantities of berries which would fill a stereotypical three-liter jar once

To conclude, complex measure nouns denoting containers just like other count nouns denoting containers can be used in complex NPs.6 (Notice that pseudo-

6A reviewer notes that Czech has a similar construction but that complex measure nouns used as measure classifiers require plural count/mass complements, whereas inherent measure words are compatible with singular count complements. This contrast is absent in Russian where singular count nouns are not allowed in either case (see Khrizman 2014, 2016b):

### Keren Khrizman

partitives are distinct from true partitives; see Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001.) As predicted, they have both a container classifier and a measure interpretation.7

In §5 I shall argue that the analysis also correctly predicts that the interpretational range of complex nouns includes portions.

### **5 Portion uses**

We analyzed complex measure nouns as count predicates and assumed that countability requires disjointness, i.e. count denotations are disjoint denotations.

Khrizman et al. (2015) have shown that the range of count predicates includes expressions denoting disjoint quantities of substances, i.e. portions. Portions can be expressed by different constructions. One example is pseudo-partitives with container classifiers illustrated in (31). What is being drunk is beer and not glasses. However, *glass* cannot be interpreted as a unit of measure equal to one glass, since glasses of different size are involved. *Fifteen glasses of beer* then makes reference to fifteen portions of beer. Also there are expressions like in (32) which make reference to contextually determined portions without a container being involved.

(i) On he vypil drank stakan glass.acc.sg molok-a, milk-gen kotoryj which stojal stood na on stole. table (Partee & Borschev 2012: 459)

'He drank the glass of milk that was standing on the table.'

	- 'He took the 100-gram glass of vodka which stood on the table and drank it in one gulp.'

7Partee & Borschev (2012) (following Pustejovsky 1993 on dotted-type objects) use a copredication test to show that container nouns in Russian can be used to refer to containers themselves and to their contents; see (i). A reviewer points out that if complex measure nouns name containers, they are expected to show the same behavior, i.e. appear in constructions in which the two meanings are coordinated. Example (ii) shows that this is indeed the case.

Notice, though, that I do not attempt to provide a dotted-type semantics for these expressions. For further discussion see Partee & Borschev (2012).

### 7 From measure predicates to count nouns

Khrizman et al. (2015) bring cross-linguistic evidence that portion expressions have properties of count predicates and give a formal analysis on which portion predicates denote sets of disjoint quantities of stuff and, therefore, are count.

If complex measure nouns are count predicates and portions are such, too, we predict that measure nouns can denote sets of disjoint portions with certain measure properties. For example, *stogrammovka* could be interpreted as making reference to individual portions which measure 100 grams (33).

(33) Jhundred-gram-kaK = .portion ∧ meas weight/vol gram () = 100 portion is a property whose content is contextually determined. portionc is disjoint.

the set of contextually determined disjoint quantities (portions) which measure 100 grams in volume/weight

The prediction is borne out. *Frontovaja stogrammovka* illustrated in (34) is a very good example. It is used to refer to a 100-gram portion of vodka which used to be distributed daily to soldiers in the 1940s.

	- b. Prinjav… having.taken neskol'ko few "frontovyx front sto-grammov-ok", 100-gram-ka.gen.pl general general rasslabilsja, relaxed podobrel. became.kinder

'Having drunk a few front 100-gram portions of vodka, the general got himself into a more relaxed and kind mood.' [proza.ru]

Crucially, portion uses are productive. A Google search reveals a range of contexts in which *stogrammovka* is used to refer neither to containers nor to concrete objects but to abstract portions (35), (36).

(35) *Context:* 'We recommend to drink 200 grams of wine every day: one 100-gram portion in the afternoon and one 100-gram portion at night before going to bed.' Dva two raza times v in nedelju week večernjuju evening sto-grammov-ku 100-gram-ka.acc.sg zamenite substitute orexovo-medovym-vinnym nut-honey-wine koktejlem. cocktail 'Substitute the evening 100-gram portion with nut-honey-wine cocktail twice a week.' [girls-in.ru]

### Keren Khrizman

(36) *Situation:* calculating the caloric value of cooked dishes Prikinula estimated obščij overall ves weight i and podelila divided na on sto-grammov-ki. 100-gram-ka.acc.pl 'I estimated the overall weight and divided into 100-gram portions.' [community.myfitnesspal.com]

### **6 Summary and implications**

We have explored the semantics of complex measure nouns in Russian. I showed that complex measure nouns are not measure predicates expressing measure properties but genuine count nouns denoting sets of discrete entities. Assuming a disjointness-based semantics for count predicates following Rothstein (2010, 2011), Rothstein (2017), and Landman (2011, 2016), I argued that complex measure nouns are derived via a nominalization operation (expressed by the -ka suffix), which shifts intersective measure modifiers to predicates denoting disjoint entities that have the stated measure properties. We have seen that the proposed account correctly predicts that the range of possible interpretations of such nouns will include containers and free portions.

Aside from its intrinsic interest, this work contributes to our understanding of the semantics of measure in at least two ways: The first implication has to do with the semantics of measure phrases such as *three liters*. We have shown that complex measure nouns are best analyzed as being derived from intersective predicates. This supports the reality of measure predicates. In other words, the analysis brings evidence that measure pseudo-partitives such as *three liters of water* have the semantic composition in (37), with the numeral and the measure word forming a semantic unit which intersectively modifies the complement as argued in Rothstein (2009, 2011, 2017) and Landman (2004, 2016).

(37) (three ∘ liters) ∩ water

We have also shown that -ka in measure nouns shifts non-count expressions to genuine count nouns. Crucially, -ka can be an explicit individuator which attaches to mass nouns and creates count predicates (Khrizman 2017) (38), (39).8

8Here, -ka is used as a diminutive suffix. It has been shown that diminutive suffixes in Russian can function as individuating operators which attach to mass nouns and create count predicates as illustrated in (38) and as measure operators which assign measure properties to entities expressed by mass and count nouns and do not induce grammatical individuation (*dom – domik* 'a house – a small house', *dožd' – doždik* 'rain – light rain') (Khrizman 2017, 2019). Crucially, some suffixes, with -ka being among them, are ambiguous between the two uses (e.g., *šokolad – šokoladka* 'chocolate – a bar of chocolate' vs. *noga – nožka* 'a leg – a small leg') (Khrizman 2019).

### 7 From measure predicates to count nouns

This supports analyses which treat measure expressions like *three liters* explicitly as mass expressions such as Khrizman et al. (2015) and Landman (2016).

	- b. železo iron – želez-ka iron-ka.nom.sg 'iron – a piece of iron'
	- b. pjat' five železok/ iron.ka.gen.pl #želez iron.gen.pl 'five pieces of iron'

The second implication relates to the shifting mechanism in the counting and measuring expressions. It is well known that count nouns can shift to denote units of measure. Such shifts, as already mentioned in §4, occur in container nouns (Doetjes 1997, Landman 2004, Rothstein 2009 and others) as well as in other sortal nouns (40) (Rothstein 2017):

	- b. "…nine tablefuls of guests gathered for a Cantonese-inspired dinner banquet … ."
	- c. I have two classes (worth) of material prepared. (Rothstein 2017: 216f.)

Shifts from count nouns to measures have been well studied. They are productive semantic operations which occur in many languages including Hebrew (Rothstein 2009), Mandarin (Li 2013), Hungarian (Schvarcz 2014), and Russian (Partee & Borschev 2012, Khrizman 2016b,a). In some of these languages there are dedicated morpho-syntactic means to express such shifts, e.g. the *-nyi* suffix in Hungarian (Schvarcz 2014, 2017).

However, the converse shift, i.e. measure-to-count shifts have been neither studied nor described sufficiently. We have shown here that complex measure nouns in Russian instantiate a grammaticalization of such a shift which brings evidence that at least in some languages measure-to-count shifts are also linguistically real, productive operations.

### Keren Khrizman

### **Abbreviations**

### **Acknowledgements**

This paper was very much inspired by the work of my advisor, teacher, and friend Susan Rothstein who died very untimely a few months after the first draft had been completed. This paper would not look the same had I not had the privilege to discuss it with her and get her sharp and, as it always was, professional, feedback. It was my last piece of work I had a chance to share with her. Therefore, I dedicate it to her memory.

Many thanks go to the audience of FDSL 2018 and the participants of The 8th Annual Semantics/Slavic Workshop at Bar Ilan University as well as three anonymous reviewers for comments on the earlier version of the paper. Also, I would like to thank Hana Filip for the productive discussion of some of the content.

The work on this paper was supported by a Rothschild Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers from the Yad Hanadiv Foundation and a grant from The Israel Science Foundation to Susan Rothstein.

### **References**

7 From measure predicates to count nouns

### Keren Khrizman

## **Chapter 8**

## **Silent have needs revisiting: (Non-)possessive meanings with transitive intensional 'need' in Russian**

### Mikhail Knyazeva,b

a Institute for Linguistic Studies RAS, Saint Petersburg bNational Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg

I discuss two 'need' + NP constructions in Russian, namely (i) the more basic construction with a nominative theme and (ii) the underdescribed, highly colloquial construction with an accusative theme. Building on work on the semantics of possessive constructions, I show that the two constructions differ as to which semantic relations they can express. Specifically, the nominative construction can not only express the control relation (the most prototypical possessive relation), but also a variety of others, whereas the accusative construction is restricted to the control relation, as manifested in the animacy and concreteness restrictions associated with it. Based on previous work on intensional transitive verbs, I analyze both constructions as involving a concealed clausal complement with a silent have but extend this analysis by assuming that have selects an NP complement via a syntactically represented type-shifting operator, which encodes the respective semantic relations expressed in the construction. I further argue that the accusative construction incorporates the type-shifter for the control relation, thus accounting for its selectional restrictions, and tentatively suggest that this might also explain the accusative marking. Finally, I report the results of three acceptability rating studies testing the animacy and concreteness restrictions in the accusative construction.

**Keywords:** intensional transitive verbs, possession, case alternation, Russian, experimental syntax

Mikhail Knyazev. 2021. Silent have needs revisiting: (Non-)possessive meanings with transitive intensional 'need' in Russian. In Andreas Blümel, Jovana Gajić, Ljudmila Geist, Uwe Junghanns & Hagen Pitsch (eds.), *Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018*, 189–225. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5483106

Mikhail Knyazev

### **1 Introduction**

'I need a book.'

In standard Russian, 'need' with a nominal complement (compare to English *I need a book*) is typically realized by the adjectival predicate *nužn-* 'necessary', which takes a dative subject and a nominative theme controlling the number and gender agreement on the predicate (henceforth, the 'need' + nom construction), as shown in (1a). In colloquial registers, *nužn-* can also occur with accusative (sometimes genitive) themes without any clear truth-conditional difference, as shown in (1b). In this case 'need' is realized by the non-agreeing (adverbial) form *nužno*, identical to the neuter singular form, or by the non-inflecting impersonal predicate *nado* (henceforth, the 'need' + acc construction).1

acc marking on the theme in the 'need' + acc construction alternates with genitive marking for mass and plural nouns, as well as for some abstract nouns like *ljubov'* 'love', *sčast'e* 'happiness', etc., especially under negation, as shown in (2). Henceforth, I will disregard examples with genitive marking and only discuss examples with acc themes.

	- b. Mne me.dat ne neg nužno necessary.adv vod-y water-gen.sg / podark-ov. present-gen.pl 'I do not need water/presents.'

The 'need' + nom construction is stylistically neutral and is by far more frequent than the 'need' + acc construction, which is highly colloquial and is sometimes considered non-standard by native speakers. Nevertheless, the 'need' + acc construction occurs with a non-negligible frequency in the corpus.2 There are further pragmatic differences between the two constructions, having to do with the

1 In what follows, *nužno* and *nado* are glossed as "adverbial" (adv) to highlight their non-verbal character, without any theoretical implications.

2 In a study based on the Russian National Corpus (RNC; http://www.ruscorpora.ru), I found 54 examples of 'need' + acc with *nužno* and 223 examples with *nado* in the texts written after 1950. The results of this study are discussed in Knyazev (2020).

### 8 Silent have needs revisiting

subjective component in the meaning of 'need' + acc. I disregard these differences in this paper (but see Knyazev 2020).

The 'need' + acc construction has been briefly discussed in the literature (see, e.g., Švedova 1980: 325–327, Pesetsky 1982: 213, Mikaelian & Roudet 1999: 28), mostly in connection with other acc-assigning non-verbal predicates in Russian such as *žal'* '(it is a) pity', *vidno* '(it is) visible', *slyšno* '(it is) audible', and some others. To my knowledge, however, it has not received a detailed analysis so far and has never been systematically contrasted with the 'need' + nom construction. Most strikingly, it is not mentioned in Harves (2008) and Harves & Kayne (2012), which specifically address Russian 'need' with a nominal complement, a point to which I return in §4.2.

In Knyazev (2020), I discussed the semantic/distributional differences between the 'need' + nom and the 'need' + acc constructions, suggesting that 'need' + acc has a more restricted distribution. Specifically, I argued that 'need' + acc is restricted to the expression of concrete human possession, namely possession of concrete (manipulable) objects by human beings (which is sometimes metaphorically extended to abstract objects), which I referred to as the concreteness and the animacy restrictions. By contrast, the 'need' + nom construction can express a wide variety of relations, including those that are not typically associated with possession.

In this paper, I review some of these findings but also situate them in a larger theoretical context, namely the literature on intensional transitive verbs, including, in particular, Harves (2008) (and, to a smaller extent, Harves & Kayne 2012), which is specifically dedicated to 'need' + NP in Russian. My goal is to show how these findings lead to a revision of the silent have analysis proposed by Harves (2008) for the 'need' + nom construction and also how this analysis can be extended to the 'need' + acc construction (which Harves does not discuss), in a way that can capture its semantic restrictions.

The account I propose heavily relies on the recent semantic account of the English transitive *need* construction proposed in Zaroukian & Beller (2013) (which is, in turn, strongly influenced by Vikner & Jensen 2002). The particular importance of Zaroukian & Beller (2013) is that it explicitly deals with the semantic variability in transitive *need* (which is rarely discussed in the literature) as well as proposes a compositional account of this variability.

The second goal of this paper is to present the results of three formal acceptability judgment studies aimed at investigating the proposed animacy and concreteness restrictions using methods of experimental syntax (see Sprouse & Hornstein 2013). Somewhat unexpectedly, these studies failed to provide direct support for the hypothesized restrictions. I offer some speculations as to why

### Mikhail Knyazev

these negative results might have been obtained and make some methodological suggestions for future research.

The paper is structured as follows: In §2, I give an overview of the discussion of the 'need' + NP construction in the literature on intensional transitive verbs, starting from the "standard" silent have analysis of 'need' + NP (§2.1), then turning to some problematic examples with apparently non-possessive relations (§2.2) and, finally, presenting Zaroukian & Beller's (2013) semantic account of 'need' + NP (§2.3). In §3, I turn to the 'need' + nom construction in Russian, first briefly presenting Harves's (2008) account (§3.1), then discussing semantic relations expressed in this construction (§3.2), and, finally, presenting my own account of 'need' + nom. In §4, I discuss the 'need' + acc construction in Russian, first focusing on its semantic restrictions (§4.1) and then presenting my account of these restrictions (§4.2). §5 discusses the experimental studies. §6 concludes the paper.

### **2 Previous research on the 'need' + NP construction**

### **2.1 A silent have/get account**

In generative approaches, English *need* with a nominal complement (henceforth transitive 'need' or the 'need' + NP construction), as in *Bill needs a beer*, is usually analyzed, along with *want*, *seek*, *fear*, and a handful of other verbs, as a so-called intensional transitive verb, i.e., as a verb whose nominal complement has some semantic properties associated with clausal complements, jointly referred to as "intensional" (see den Dikken et al. 2018 and Schwarz 2006, among others). For example, transitive *need* shows lack of existential import of its complement, as shown in (3a), just as what we observe with the clausal complement of *need*, as in (3b), but not with non-intensional transitive verbs like *drink*, as in (3c). Transitive *need* also shows lack of falsity of non-referring terms, as in (4a), cf. (4b) and (4c).3

(3) a. Bill needs a beer. ⇏ There is a beer (in the relevant context).

(Schwarz 2006: 259)

3Another intensional property often attributed to *need* is its failure to preserve truth under substitution of co-referring terms (see den Dikken et al. 2018, Harves 2008). However, as pointed out by Forbes (2020), this property does not generally hold for *need* (at least in its non-psychological sense), cf. *Bill needs water* (= H2O).

8 Silent have needs revisiting

	- a. Bill needs a 40% beer.
	- b. Bill needs to drink a 40% beer.
	- c. # Bill is drinking a 40% beer.

The intensional properties of transitive *need* and other intensional transitive verbs are typically accounted for by analyzing their complement as underlyingly clausal (see, e.g., den Dikken et al. 2018, Harves 2008). Specifically, it is argued that transitive *need* (and also transitive *want*) takes a concealed clausal complement headed by a silent possessive verb (have), as shown in the structure (5a) for (3a).4 The presence of silent have in (5a) receives support from the general availability of paraphrases with overt *have* for examples with transitive *need*, see the paraphrase in (5b) for (3a), suggested in Schwarz (2006: 259).

	- b. Bill needs to have a beer.

Three questions arise in connection with the analysis in (5a), in increasing order of specificity: (a) Does the complement of transitive *need* always have a possessive meaning? (b) Is the possessive meaning in the complement of transitive *need* syntactically represented (as a silent head)? (c) Is this silent head (if it exists) necessarily have? All three questions have been addressed in the literature on intensional transitive verbs.

Starting from question (b), there has been a general consensus that the possessive meaning associated with transitive *need* (at least in English) must be encoded as a silent predicative head, thereby rendering examples like (3a–5a) biclausal (see, e.g., den Dikken et al. 2018, Schwarz 2006, Marušič & Žaucer 2006, Harves 2008, Zaroukian & Beller 2013).5,6 This analysis has been supported by a number of biclausality diagnostics, most prominently by adverb ambiguities, as shown in (6). For example, in (6) the before-phrase can modify not only the

4Whether transitive *need* takes a control or a raising complement (or perhaps either one) is an open question in the literature (see, e.g., Schwarz 2006, Harves 2008). The same applies to the question about the syntactic category of its complement. In this paper I remain agnostic about these potentially important questions.

5 See also Pylkkänen (2008) for an interesting discussion of this issue in the context of psycholinguistic experiments of complement coercion.

6Marušič & Žaucer (2006) discuss some unresolved problems of the silent head (verb) analysis. In their view, however, these problems do not threaten the overall validity of this analysis. The reader is referred to their work for further details.

### Mikhail Knyazev

matrix clause, as in (6a), but also the implicit possessive predication, as in (6b). The latter reading is naturally accounted for if there is a suitable attachment site for the before-phrase, e.g., a lower VP/*v*P projection.7

	- a. There was a time before the conference at which Matt needed some change.
	- b. Matt's need is to have some change before the conference.

(Schwarz 2006: 261)

As to question (c), there has been some debate in the literature concerning the nature of the silent possessive head. In the earlier work, it was identified as have (see, e.g., den Dikken et al. 2018 and also Fodor & Lepore 1998 as a precursor). However, Harley (2004) pointed out examples with transitive *need*/*want* that only allow a paraphrase with *get* but not with *have*, as in (7) (see also Harves 2008). This led her to propose a unified structure for (3a) and (7) involving a silent prepositional head (Phave), which, according to her view, underlies both overt *have* and *get* (see, e.g., Harley 2002). However, Marušič & Žaucer (2006) convincingly argue against this analysis on the basis of the fact that temporal adverbials cannot modify PPs, see (6), and some other facts. Instead, they propose that the silent possessive head in question must be either have or get (see also Harves 2008 and Zaroukian & Beller 2013 for an endorsement of this view).

(7) I need (to get/#have) a kiss/a compliment. (Harves 2008: 215)

Harves (2008) further argues that the range of silent possessive verbs in constructions with transitive *need*/*want* cross-linguistically must also include (possessive) be (see also Harves & Kayne 2012). Her argument is based on the existence of transitive want and the 'need' + NP construction in languages like Russian, where there is no basic transitive verb of possession (cf. English *have*) but the respective constructions still have a possessive interpretation, as shown in (8a) and (8b).8

(8) a. Maš-a Masha-nom.sg xočet wants mašin-u. car-acc.sg 'Masha wants (to have) a car.'

7Other diagnostics include, but are not limited to, *too*/*again* ambiguities and the scope of quantifiers and negation. The reader is referred to the work cited above for more details.

8The verb *imet'* 'have' in Russian cannot be considered a "basic" verb of possession as it is mostly used in fixed expressions or with abstract possessees. Otherwise it is restricted to the expression of (permanent) ownership (see footnote 4 in Harves & Kayne 2012 and also Stolz et al. 2008: 440ff.).

8 Silent have needs revisiting

b. Maš-e Masha-dat.sg nužn-a necessary-f.sg mašin-a. car-nom.sg 'Masha needs (to have) a car.'

In contrast to questions (b) and (c), question (a), as to whether transitive 'need' always expresses possession, has received relatively little attention in the literature, which has largely presupposed that the construction has a possessive meaning. In order to answer this question, one would need some clarification of the relevant notion of possession. These issues have been addressed in the work of Schwarz (2006) and Zaroukian & Beller (2013), to which I now turn.

### **2.2 Non-possessive examples with transitive 'need'**

Schwarz (2006) noted that there are examples of transitive *need* such as (9) which do not have a possessive meaning. He argued that (9) and similar examples involve an unspecified contextually supplied relation r (interpreted in this particular case as 'run' or 'participate') rather than a possessive relation like have/get.9 Examples like (9) appear to threaten a uniform silent have/get analysis of transitive 'need'.

(9) John needs (to #have/#get) a marathon. (Schwarz 2006: 272)

Similar problems are presumably posed by other kinds of non-possessive examples with transitive *need*, although, to my knowledge, they have not been discussed in the relevant literature (including Schwarz 2006). First of all, there are examples with "passive" or so-called retroactive deverbal nominals (see, e.g., Safir 1991, Roeper 2000) illustrated in (10a–10c). In these examples, the subject is construed as the internal argument of the deverbal nominal (observe the paraphrases with passive infinitives). Thus, the understood relation associated with these examples can be taken to be the theme/patient relation (in the neo-Davidsonian sense) rather than a possessive relation, as in cases like (3a). Interestingly, examples with passive/retroactive nominals sometimes have paraphrases with an overt *have*/*get*; see (10a). However, this seems to be an accidental property of the specific examples rather than a necessary feature of the construction.

9 Schwarz (2006) further argues that there is no evidence for the syntactic representation of the relation r based on some biclausality diagnostics. He tentatively concludes that the nonpossessive variety of transitive *need* requires a monoclausal analysis, where the relation r arises via pragmatics. Although this is an important issue, I leave the discussion of this aspect of Schwarz's (2006) proposal for future research; see also footnote 17.

### Mikhail Knyazev

	- b. The leadership needs discussion (= to be discussed).
	- c. The disease needs prevention (= to be prevented). (Roeper 2000: 306)

Apart from the problematic examples with passive/retroactive deverbal nominals, there are also examples with "active" deverbal nominals such as (11a) and (11b), where the subject is construed as the external argument of the deverbal nominal. In principle, Schwarz's (2006) example (9) from above could also be analyzed along these lines assuming that the non-derived nominal *marathon* stands proxy for an "active" deverbal nominal like *running*. Again, even though possessive paraphrases are possible in (11a) and (11b), the subject here is more appropriately analyzed as standing in the agent/undergoer relation to the object (i.e., the deverbal nominal) rather than in a possessive relation.

	- b. John needs a nap (= to nap/to have a nap).

I will jointly refer to the non-possessive relations expressed in the examples with passive/retroactive and active deverbal nominals in (10) and (11) as the thematic relation, reflecting the fact that it corresponds to one of the theta-roles involved in the construal of the subject of transitive 'need'.

The other kind of relation expressed in constructions with transitive *need* which is not manifestly possessive is illustrated in examples like (12a–12c). In these examples, the subject argument is typically inanimate or understood in physical terms (i.e., as a body), whereas the object argument is typically a mass noun expressing some material substance or a more abstract resource which is required by the subject argument for proper functioning. Again, while paraphrases with overt *have/get* are often possible, the subject argument stands in the requirement relation rather than in a possessive relation.

	- b. You need calcium (= to get calcium).
	- c. Plants needs light (= to get light).

The non-possessive examples discussed above appear to suggest that a uniform possessive analysis of transitive 'need' cannot be maintained. It turns out, however, that a more careful modelling of the possessive meaning in the transitive 'need' construction may open the way to subsume the non-possessive examples in (9–12) under the uniform silent have/*get* analysis. I now turn to the account of Zaroukian & Beller (2013), who have recently proposed such a model.

8 Silent have needs revisiting

### **2.3 Zaroukian & Beller on semantic variability of silent have**

Zaroukian & Beller (2013) propose a typology of constructions involving silent have which includes not only transitive *want* and *need* (treated as a single class), but also evaluative verbs such as*like* and *enjoy* with concealed complements (e.g., *John likes (to have) a cookie after dinner*) as well as double object constructions with *get* and *give* and, finally, overt *have*.

According to their typology, there are four types of silent have which differ along two independent dimensions: (a) whether silent have is static or telic (i.e., has a time interval argument) and (b) whether it is syntactically verbal (and thus leading to a biclausal structure) or prepositional (leading to a monoclausal structure). I will not dwell on all aspects of Zaroukian & Beller's (2013) proposal. What is important for my purposes is their analysis of sentences with overt *have* and transitive *want*/*need*. Specifically, I will focus on two aspects, namely (a) the semantic variability of silent have and (b) the compositional analysis of this variability.

Starting from question (a), Zaroukian & Beller (2013) essentially extend Vikner & Jensen's (2002) account of the English *'s* genitive to the constructions with silent have listed above. In particular, they argue that overt *have* and transitive *want*/*need* (with minor exceptions) can express a number of diverse semantic relations, namely, the control, part-whole, inherent, typical-use, and agentive relations. These relations, illustrated in (13a–13e), are discussed immediately below.10

The control relation, illustrated in (13a), is perhaps most prototypically associated with possession. It is defined as "the relation which holds between an animate being X and an item Y which X has at his or her disposal, being able to use or handle it" (Vikner & Jensen 2002: 196–197). As can be seen, the control relation is not limited to ownership, which is typically viewed as the most prototypical possessive notion in the functional-typological literature (see, e.g., Heine 1997), but also includes physical and temporary possession.11

10Zaroukian & Beller also mention the (contextually supplied) pragmatic relation (r) but do not discuss it in any detail. In what follows, I will not deal with this relation.

11The control relation is illustrated by the following quote from Vikner & Jensen:

In the case of the girl's car, the girl may control the car because she owns it, or because she has borrowed it, or because she has hired it, or because she is driving it, or because she is sitting in it, and so on. In the case of, say, a stone, one may control a stone by holding it in one's hand, by having it within reach, by owning it, etc. (Vikner & Jensen 2002: 196–197)

### Mikhail Knyazev

The inherent relation, illustrated in (13b), is expressed in constructions with kinship terms and other inherently relational nouns like *teacher*. The three remaining relations (part-whole, typical-use, and agentive) are specified by the socalled qualia structure of the object noun, namely the constitutive (i.e., the relation between an object and its constituents or proper parts), telic (i.e., purpose or function of the object), and agentive quale (i.e., factors involved in the origin or "bringing about" of an object), as discussed in Pustejovsky (1995).

The part-whole relation, illustrated in (13c), is more or less straightforward. Along with the inherent relation, it corresponds to inalienable possession (see Heine 1997). The typical-use relation, illustrated in (13d), specifies how a given object is typically used (for example, cookies are typically used for eating, etc.).12 The agentive relation, illustrated in (13e), holds between a created thing and its creator; this relation is only expressed with overt *have* but not with transitive *need*. 13

Now, let's turn to question (b) concerning the compositional analysis of the examples in (13a–13e). First of all, Zaroukian & Beller (2013) assume that examples with transitive *need* involve a concealed complement clause with silent have. They also assume that silent have and overt *have* have the same denotation.

12Zaroukian & Beller (2013) observe that the typical-use relation is restricted to "consumable" objects in both constructions.

13Zaroukian & Beller (2013) speculate that the agentive relation is incompatible with transitive *want*/*need* constructions because they typically convey a displacement in time between the subject and the object, whereas the creation process requires some span of time, in which the subject controls (an early stage of) the object. I will tentatively assume Zaroukian & Beller's explanation for the incompatibility of the agentive relation with the 'need' + NP construction in the subsequent discussion of the Russian data.

8 Silent have needs revisiting

Specifically, they analyze have/*have* as a (higher-order) relation that takes an individual and another relation (supplied by the complement) and returns a truth value, as schematized in (14).14

(14) JhaveK = ⟨,⟨,⟩⟩ [∃[( )()]] (Zaroukian & Beller 2013: 649)

An important assumption of Zaroukian & Beller's analysis is that the complement of *have*/have must be of type ⟨, ⟩ (relation). This does not create a problem for examples with the inherent relation such as (13b), since the relevant ⟨, ⟩-type expression is supplied by the object noun itself, which is inherently relational. In case of the other kinds of relations, where the object noun is non-relational, the noun must be coerced into a relational denotation.

Zaroukian & Beller (2013) assume, following Vikner & Jensen (2002), that this is achieved by using various type-shifting operators, corresponding to one of the remaining semantic relations in (13). For example, the type-shifter corresponding to the agentive relation is shown in (15a), where the stands for the function that returns the relation supplied by the agentive quale of the relevant noun.15 For the noun *poem* in (13e), it will return the ⟨, ⟩-type expression given in (15b). The part-whole and typical-use relations are analyzed in a similar way.

(15) a. For any (of type ⟨, ⟩), Ag( ) = [ () & ( )()( )] (Vikner & Jensen 2002: 209) b. Ag(JpoemK) = [poem() & compose()( )]

As for the control relation, shown in (16), it does not depend on the qualia structure of a word but directly on the predicate control, whose meaning corresponds to Vikner & Jensen's (2002) definition cited above (see page 197).

(16) Ctr( ) = [ () & control()( )] (Vikner & Jensen 2002: 210)

The compositional process is illustrated (on the basis of the verb phrase *have a car*) in Figure 1, adapted from Zaroukian & Beller (2013). 16

$$\text{(i)} \quad \text{[Have]} = \lambda R\_{\langle \epsilon \langle \epsilon \langle \epsilon \rangle \langle \epsilon \rangle \rangle} \lambda \text{y}\_{\epsilon} \text{j} \text{i} \{ \exists x [R(\mathbf{y})(x)(\mathbf{i})] \} \text{]} \text{} \tag{\text{Zaroukian \& Beller 2013: 648}}$$

14More precisely, the denotation in (14) is for static have, which lacks a time-interval argument. The denotation for telic have, which is equivalent to Marušič & Žaucer's (2006) silent get and its prepositional counterpart, is given in (i). I will largely ignore the difference between static and telic have, since this difference becomes relevant only in Zaroukian & Beller's account of the double object construction and the construction with evaluative verbs, which I do not discuss in this paper.

Mikhail Knyazev

Figure 1: The compositional analysis of *have a car* in Zaroukian & Beller (2013)

The crucial feature of Zaroukian & Beller's (2013) account is that the semantic variability of constructions with silent have is captured by way of using various type-shifting operators, whereas have itself is analyzed as an abstract linking element, which is in principle compatible with any kind of relational meaning. This potentially allows to accommodate the non-possessive examples of transitive 'need' discussed in §2.2 without necessarily discarding a uniform silent have analysis. Although Zaroukian & Beller do not discuss problematic examples like (9) and examples with the thematic and the requirement relations in (10), (11), and (12), their analysis can potentially be extended to these examples. For example, the thematic relation and presumably examples like (9) can be subsumed under the inherent relation. Similarly, examples with the requirement relation, as in (12a–12c), could arguably be viewed as a special case of the part-whole relation (i.e., as relations specified by the constitutive quale). This suggests that a silent have analysis for transitive 'need' can still be maintained in view of the considerable semantic variability of these constructions.17

I will largely follow Zaroukian & Beller's (2013) analysis of silent have in my account of the two 'need' + NP constructions in Russian, to which I now turn.

15Vikner & Jensen's notation has been slightly adapted.

16Zaroukian & Beller assume, without explicit discussion, that the type-shifting operators are represented in the syntactic structure (as silent heads). This assumption will become relevant for my analysis of the Russian data to be discussed below.

17Note also that the absence of evidence for biclausality for "non-possessive" examples, as discussed by Schwarz (2006), see footnote 9, could potentially be explained by assuming that silent have is prepositional in this case. A more detailed investigation of this issue is left for future work.

8 Silent have needs revisiting

### **3 The 'need' + nom construction**

### **3.1 Harves' account of 'need' + nom**

As we saw in the introduction, Russian has two 'need' + NP constructions, illustrated in (17a) and (17b). To my knowledge, the only discussion of 'need' + NP in Russian within the context of intensional transitive verbs is found in Harves (2008), which is only concerned with the 'need' + nom construction.18 Interestingly, the 'need' + acc construction is mentioned neither in Harves (2008) nor Harves & Kayne (2012), which is specifically dedicated to transitive/acc-assigning 'need'-verbs.

Harves (2008) proposes to analyze the 'need' + nom construction along the lines of English transitive *need*. Based on adverb ambiguities, as shown in (18b), she argues that the construction involves a silent possessive verb which she identifies as be (or get), assuming that Russian lacks silent have (see footnote 8).

	- a. 'There was a time before the meeting at which Ivan needed some money.'
	- b. 'Ivan's need was to have some money before the meeting.'

(Harves 2008: 216)

Harves (2008) does not discuss semantic variability in the 'need' + nom construction, all her examples being of the control type (see previous section). This is the topic to which I now turn.

18The construction itself has been noted in the literature, as I mentioned in the introduction.

### Mikhail Knyazev

### **3.2 Semantic variability of 'need' + nom**

We have already seen examples of the 'need' + nom construction with the control relation, such as (17a). As we can see in (19a–19c), the construction is also compatible with the inherent, part-whole, and typical-use relations, just like English transitive *need*, cf. (13b–13d). Similarly to English *need*, 'need' + nom is also incompatible with the agentive relation, as shown in (19d), see (13e).

In addition, the 'need' + nom construction is also compatible with the thematic relation, whether expressed by active nominals, as in (20a), see (11), or by passive/retroactive nominals, as in (20b), see (10), and with the requirement relation, as in (21a) and (21b), see (12).

	- b. Maš-e masha-dat.sg nužn-a necessary-f.sg pomošč' help.nom.sg / gospitalizaci-ja. hospitalization-nom.sg 'Masha needs help/hospitalization.'
	- b. Rasteni-jam plant-dat.pl nužen necessary.m.sg svet. light.nom.sg 'Plants need light.'

Now, let's turn to the analysis of the 'need' + nom construction in Russian.

8 Silent have needs revisiting

### **3.3 Analysis of 'need' + nom**

In view of the semantic similarity between 'need' + nom in Russian and transitive *need* in English, I will extend Zaroukian & Beller's (2013) account of the latter construction to the analysis of 'need' + nom.

Following Harves (2008), I assume that the 'need' + nom construction in Russian is biclausal, containing a silent possessive verb be. I further assume that silent be and have are semantically identical and differ only syntactically, as, e.g., in the influential analysis proposed by Freeze (1992), where have is universally the result of incorporation of a locative preposition into be. Given the last assumption, I will assume the same denotation for silent be as proposed by Zaroukian & Beller (2013) for silent have, which we saw in (14) above.19 I also follow their account of the variability of silent have in terms of type-shifting operators.

Figure 2: Simplified structure for 'need' + nom

The simplified structure for 'need' + nom is given in Figure 2. 20 One important assumption about this structure that I am making is that type-shifting operators are explicitly represented in the syntax (if present).21 This assumption, which will be relevant for my account of 'need' + acc to be presented in §4.2, is consistent with recent syntactic theorizing about the syntax-semantics interface. Specifically, it is explicit in approaches which postulate silent determiners

19As for silent get, which, according to Harves (2008), can also be present in the 'need' + nom construction, I assume that it is the telic version of have/be (see footnote 17).

20Again, I abstract away from the control/raising distinction in my analysis of the construction, as in the case of transitive 'need' above, cf. (5a).

21Recall that a type-shifter is optional to capture examples with the inherent relation; see (13b).

### Mikhail Knyazev

in "determiner-less" languages on the basis of semantic arguments (i.e., to avoid type mismatch). Thus, for instance, Ramchand & Svenonius (2008) reject purely semantic type-shifting operators as proposed by, e.g., Chierchia (1998). 22 These approaches assume that type-shifting operators that create type denotation for noun phrases are syntactically represented as silent determiners. Similarly, we may assume that type-shifting operators that create type ⟨, ⟨, ⟩⟩ (relational) denotations for sortal (⟨, ⟩) noun phrases are also syntactically represented.

The last assumption will be crucial for my analysis of the 'need' + acc construction, to which I now turn.

### **4 The 'need' + acc construction**

### **4.1 Semantic restrictions on 'need' + acc**

In contrast to 'need' + nom, the 'need' + acc construction has a more limited semantic variability. As we saw in (17b) above, 'need' + acc can express the control relation; see two naturally-occurring examples from RNC in (22a) and (22b).

However, when it comes to other have-relations, the examples become more dubious. Consider (23a–23c), which are meant to illustrate the inherent, partwhole, and typical-use relations.23 Although as such the examples are not ungrammatical, it is not clear whether they in fact express the relations in question. Specifically, I wish to argue that in these examples the respective relations are confounded with the control relation and, thus, when the latter is controlled for, the examples become infelicitous.

(i) # Maš-e Masha-dat.sg nužno necessary.adv tort. cake.acc.sg 'Masha needs (#to bake) a cake.'

22I wish to thank Pavel Rudnev for the discussion of this issue with me.

23As with 'need' + nom (see 19d), the agentive relation is infelicitous; see (i) and footnote 13.

8 Silent have needs revisiting

Starting from the inherent relation in (23a), it can be observed that the example allows the construal 'needs a supervisor *to be at her disposal*' in a metaphorical sense. When this construal is blocked, as in a situation with an inanimate subject, e.g., where a paper must be assigned a reviewer, the 'need' + acc construction becomes strongly infelicitous, as shown in (24b); cf. 'need' + nom in (24c). This suggests that the inherent relation cannot be expressed in the 'need' + acc construction without simultaneously expressing the control relation.

Similarly, example (23b), meant to illustrate the part-whole relation, can also be metaphorically construed in the control sense, i.e., as 'needs a new nose *to be at his disposal*'. Again, in a situation with an inanimate subject, e.g., if a statue's nose has been broken and needs to be replaced, the 'need' + acc construction is infelicitous, as in (25b); see (25c). This suggests that, just like in the previous case, the part-whole relation in the 'need' + acc construction cannot be expressed independently without the control relation.

(25) a. Statu-ja statue-nom.sg slomalas'. broke 'The statue has broken.'

Mikhail Knyazev

> b. # … Ej her.dat nužno necessary.adv novyj new nos. nose.acc.sg 'need' + acc Intended: 'It (the statue) needs a new nose.' c. …Ej her.dat nužen necessary.m.sg novyj new nos. nose.nom.sg 'need' + nom 'It (the statue) needs a new nose.'

The typical-use relation in (23c) is similarly confounded with the control relation. This can be shown in the following way. Observe that if one needs to smoke a cigarette (or "consume" some other object), one first needs to have it at one's disposal.24 That is, acts of consumption typically presuppose some sort of control on the part of the subject. However, one can still imagine a situation where someone (say, a baby) is forced to take a medication. In this situation, again, the 'need' + acc construction is infelicitous, as shown in (26b); cf. (26c).

The infelicity of the examples in (24b–26b), with inanimate/non-volitional subjects, can be accounted for if the 'need' + acc construction is restricted to the expression of the control relation, as defined in Vikner & Jensen (2002), which requires an animate being (presumably with some degree of voluntary involvement). By contrast, the other have-relations (i.e., the inherent, part-whole, and typical-use) relations do not require animacy/volition on the part of the subject and, thus, the infelicity of the relevant examples would remain unexplained if 'need' + acc were allowed to express these relations.

The restriction of the 'need' + acc construction to the control relation is further supported by the fact that 'need' + acc is totally incompatible with the expression of the thematic relation, as shown in (27a)/(27b), and the requirement re-

24Recall that the typical-use interpretation is restricted to "consumable" objects, according to Zaroukian & Beller (2013); see footnote 12.

8 Silent have needs revisiting

lation, as shown in (28a)/(28b); see the corresponding examples with the 'need' + nom construction in (20a)/(20b) and (21a)/(21b), respectively.25

Intended: 'They (plants) need light.'

The ungrammaticality of (27a)/(27b) and (28a)/(28b) also follows from the selectional restriction on the control relation, as in the cases discussed above. Specifically, the examples with the thematic relation in (27a)/(27b) are incompatible with the restriction on the internal argument of the control relation to (concrete) physical objects (i.e., something that can be used or handled by the subject, perhaps in a metaphorical sense).26 As for the examples with the requirement relation in (28a)/(28b), they are incompatible with animacy/volitionality restriction on the control relation, as we saw earlier.

	- b. \* Im them.dat nužno necessary.adv svet-a. light-gen.sg Intended: 'They (plants) need light.'

26Vikner & Jensen (2002) treat the notion of a 'physical object' in a very broad sense to include not only non-human physical objects such as animals, physical artifacts, and natural objects but also commercialized abstract artifacts like computer programs, etc. I will further assume 'physical objects' to also potentially include humans (in a metaphorical sense) when the latter are construed as means to an end. This will account for examples like (i).

25The change to genitive marking in these examples does not lead to any improvement, as shown in (i.a) and (i.b).

### Mikhail Knyazev

To summarize, I have shown that whereas the 'need' + nom construction is compatible with a variety of have-relations, the 'need' + acc construction appears to be compatible only with the control relation. I now turn to an account of this restriction.

### **4.2 Analysis of 'need' + acc**

In order to capture the fact that the 'need' + acc construction necessitates the presence of the control relation, I assume that the predicate *nužno* in this construction lexicalizes Vikner & Jensen's (2002) control type-shifter (Ctr); see (16). This can be implemented by abstract incorporation (via head movement). In accordance with standard assumptions about head movement, the Ctr head will first incorporate into the immediately c-commanding silent be, creating a complex head [Ctr + be], which will, subsequently, incorporate into need. The resulting complex [Ctr + be + need] head will be spelled-out as *nužno*. This is schematically represented in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Simplified structure for 'need' + acc

An interesting consequence of the analysis in Figure 3 is that it may be able to derive the acc marking in the 'need' + acc construction. The basic idea is this: It

### 8 Silent have needs revisiting

has been independently proposed that have involves (abstract) incorporation of (locative) P into verbal be, to account for the functional similarity of possessive constructions with 'have' and 'be' across languages (see Freeze 1992, Kayne 1993). Although, in the discussion above, I have abstracted away from the syntactic category of Ctr (and the other type-shifters producing relational denotations for NPs), it may be observed that Ctr is similar to a preposition. For example, it is also relational, it takes a noun phrase as its argument, and it is selected by a verbal head. Thus, we may tentatively assume that Ctr is a P head. Now, under the Freeze/Kayne analysis, the incorporation of Ctr/P into be will lead to the creation of have, thus accounting for the observed transitivity/acc marking in the construction.

The analysis presented in Figure 3 appears to contradict Harves & Kayne's (2012) analysis of Russian within the context of their proposed cross-linguistic generalization, according to which transitive 'need' is only found in languages with a transitive 'have'-verb. As I alluded to above (see §2.1), they assume that Russian conforms to this generalization as it lacks both a (basic) transitive 'have' and a transitive 'need'-verb. If the analysis in Figure 3 is correct, it leads to the opposite conclusion, namely that Russian has both (at some level of abstraction). Curiously, this does not falsify Harves & Kayne's cross-linguistic generalization but, on the contrary, confirms it. That is, Russian has transitive/acc-assigning 'need' precisely because it has a particular structure underlying 'have', i.e., [P + be].27 Both structures, however, appear only in rather marginal constructions and thus were probably overlooked by Harves & Kayne (2012).

Before concluding this section, I wish to discuss some independent evidence for the existence of the [Ctr/P + be] structure in Russian, which is underlyingly identical to have. Specifically, Russian has a so-called verbless subjunctive construction with nouns (see Dobrushina 2015). The construction involves a dative subject, the subjunctive particle *by*, and an acc (or gen) argument. An interesting and unexplained property of this construction noted by Dobrushina (2015) is that it disallows a nom-NP; see (29). In Knyazev (2020), I argue that the construction roughly expresses a possessive meaning as indicated by the translation in (29).28

27The analysis in Figure 3 is consistent with the correlation between transitive *need* and *have* proposed by Harves & Kayne (2012) but crucially differs from their causal account of this correlation, according to which transitive *need* is derived from incorporation of nominal (nonverbal) *need* into *have* rather than the other way around (see their footnote 11). A detailed comparison between the two accounts is left for future work.

28Dobrushina (2015) analyzes this construction as a result of ellipsis of an infinitive, but in Knyazev (2020) I show that the ellipsis analysis makes wrong predictions and argue for a possessive analysis.

Mikhail Knyazev

(29) Mne me.dat by sbjv knig-u book-acc.sg / \*knig-a. book-nom.sg 'I wish I had a book.'

Although the matter requires further investigation, there is some evidence that the construction actually has the control interpretation, as suggested by the fact that it is disallowed with deverbal nominals, as shown in (30a) and (30b). Assuming that the construction involves Ctr and silent be and is derived by Ctr-to-be movement, as proposed for the 'need' + acc construction (without, however, a further step as there is no need for [Ctr/P + be] to incorporate into), we could account for the otherwise mysterious acc marking in this construction.

	- b. \* Emu him.dat by sbjv čistk-u cleaning-acc.sg / čistk-a. cleaning-nom.sg Intended: 'I wish I had it (the carpet) cleaned.'

In the rest of this paper, I will discuss three formal acceptability judgment studies which tested the hypothesis that the 'need' + acc construction lexicalizes the control relation, as understood by Vikner & Jensen (2002). Because this relation cannot be directly observed, the experiments tested the selectional restrictions on this relation, namely the animacy restriction on the dative subject and the restriction on the acc theme to (concrete) physical objects, i.e., the concreteness restriction.

### **5 Experimental studies**

### **5.1 Experiment 1a**

### **5.1.1 Design and hypotheses**

The purpose of Experiment 1a was to test the animacy restriction on the dative subject in the 'need' + acc construction with *nužen/nužno*. The experiment had a 2×2 factorial design, crossing construction type (acc | nom) and animacy (animate | inanimate), as shown in (31).

(31) a. Klient-u client-dat.sg nužen necessary.m.sg akkumuljator. battery.nom.sg nom | animate 'The client needs a battery'.

8 Silent have needs revisiting

Given that the 'need' + acc construction is highly colloquial, it was expected that the acc condition will generally be less acceptable than the nom condition. It was also expected that the inanimate condition will be generally less acceptable than the animate condition, as such examples are considerably less frequent. Crucially, it was also expected that the decrease in acceptability in the acc | inanimate condition (as compared to the baseline nom | animate condition) will be above and beyond the combined effects of both inanimate and acc conditions. In other words, a superadditive interaction was expected (see Sprouse et al. 2012 for details).

### **5.1.2 Materials and procedure**

Eight lexically matched sentence sets of four sentences as in (31) were created. All sentences had the dative subject realized as an animate or inanimate common noun with no prenominal or postnominal material (the animate and inanimate nouns within a sentence set were not matched by any criteria). Thirty-two experimental sentences were distributed over four protocols using a Latin square design. They were interspersed (in a pseudorandom order) with eight filler sentences half of which were fully grammatical while the other half were fully ungrammatical (four sentences contained the 'need' + nom construction with agreement violations; four sentences contained *nužen*/*nužno* followed by an infinitival or a subjunctive clause). Participants had to rate how natural each sentence sounded on a 7-point scale. As usual, participants were instructed to consult their own intuition, disregard any prescriptive knowledge, and focus on whether any sentences sounded "foreign" to them. The experiment was conducted in Google Forms and was completed by 123 participants.

### Mikhail Knyazev

### **5.1.3 Results**