The asymmetry of accent schemes in binominative sentences: An experimental case study of Russian

The article addresses the information structure of specificational binominative clauses in comparison with predicational ones with regard to the experimental evidence from Russian. The distinction between specificational and predicational readings is based on the order of a non-referential noun phrase (NP) and a referential NP. Many investigators suggest that specificational sentences have a fixed information structure with the referential NP in focus. Restrictions on focus position are treated as universal, although the unavailability of focus on a non-referential NP has been examined only for English. This article suggests and further tests an alternative explanation for the observed asymmetry. Specificational clauses are usually modelled as an inverted small clause with a left-dislocated non-referential NP. The unavailability of focus on this NP can follow from the obligatoriness of thematization when fronting. Therefore, languages with different communicative structures might lack such restrictions on specificational clauses. I present experimental data on specificational and predicational binominative clauses in Russian, which has another set of constraints on fronting in comparison with Germanic languages, in which specificational clauses have been studied previously. I conducted two auditory acceptability judgment experiments, which included three variables in their design: the type of binominative clause, the accent scheme and the agreement pattern. The two experiments differed in the pause position either before or after the copula. One hundred Russian native speakers participated in the study and provided their judgments on a Likert scale from 1 to 7. The hypothesis that the focus acceptability in specificational clauses depends on language-specific information structure constraints is borne out. Unlike Germanic languages Russian allows the rhematic accent (which I treat as focus) on the non-referential NP if it is licensed by the previous context. Nevertheless, the rhematic accent on a referential NP turns out to be the most acceptable experimental condition. The article concludes that restrictions on focus placement in binominative clauses are indeed language-specific. I explain the distinctive theme-rheme structure of specificational clauses by a particular contribution of the attributive status of a non-referential NP to the meaning. The corresponding feature in the DP structure is considered to be the motivation for the small clause inversion. Importantly, the referential features are found throughout other formal models of Russian and other languages, which favorably distinguishes the suggested analysis from previous models of bimoninative clauses. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References