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AffiliationFederal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education Lomonosov Moscow State University,

Keywordsagreement, variation, formal models, experimental syntax, minimalism, Russian

Annotation
The project is aimed at constructing a formal model of agreement in Russian. The problem of agreement modeling has several aspects. The first aspect is the limits of agreement as a model of syntactic interaction. The model should fully reflect the core instances of agreement as long as the relevant phenomena that show similar restrictions. The second aspect deals with the inner structure of agreement model and its parametrization: which components may be involved in the agreement relation and what characteristics they have, which features agreement relation may be established for, etc. Agreement model should be both flexible enough to allow parametric variation of the agreement mechanism based on a set of formal features, and restrictive enough to effectively limit this variation. We believe that the study of the attested variation in agreement can be a convenient research tool for identifying the parametric properties of agreement. Variable agreement is postulated when there is an ambiguous calculation of agreement features, it occurs in situations of agreement with a non-canonical controller or in the presence of several potential agreement controllers. In addition, the constraints on agreement in various grammatical categories are not uniform. This variability is further affected by additional factors of the external syntax and lexical characteristics of the constituents involved in the agreement relation. The issue of variation puts forward increased demands towards the empirical data on which the model is based: while the modeling of canonical agreement can be done based only on qualitative (binary) differences (“grammatical / ungrammatical”), the modeling of variation that is supposed to be influenced by different factors and their interaction requires quantitative measurements. The scientific significance of the problem solution is determined by the fact that the elaboration of the formal model of agreement and agreement variability in Russian on the basis of quantitative empirical data allows us to reach a new level of understanding of the grammatical system of the language, its organization, functioning and development. The contexts of variable agreement turn out to be particularly interesting from the point of view of the distribution of rules between different modules of grammar. If a formal model of language models cases of variability, the question arises as to which module of grammar the derivation of multiple variants should be relegated to: whether it fully belongs to syntactic feature computation or whether pragmatic and conventionally determined rules take precedence. The project will allow us to approach the solution of a more general problem, i.e. distinguishing the roles of grammar and extragrammatical factors in the structure and interpretation of linguistic expressions. The relevance of solving the problem is due to current increase in interest in modeling of variability. Theoretical grammar, which carries out formal modeling of the generalized grammar of Russian speakers, mainly relies on introspection as the source of empirical data. Thus, it generally does not take into account the possible variation in the competence of speakers and is unable to adequately represent marginal and unstable grammatical phenomena. Cases of agreement variability are usually included in grammatical descriptions in the form of a list. A calculation of main linguistic phenomena fitting the notion of complicated agreement is efficient in natural language processing, but it is insufficient for theoretical purposes, namely, in order to answer the question as to why it is in these constructions that variability emerges and why the choice is accomplished to the benefit of some variant and not another one. Including such peripheral situations in a theoretical model of agreement fulfills the requirement of completeness of the grammar. At the same time, our intention to describe various grammatical phenomena by means of a single Agree operation fits in well with the general principle of minimalism in linguistics, according to which preference is given to those models which require postulating as few component parts of the computational system of grammar as possible. The novelty of this study has three dimensions — theoretical, empirical and methodological ones. In the theoretical dimension, novelty of the proposed study has to do with the project participants’ aim of explicit modeling of variable agreement within formally oriented syntactic framework, in particular, generative syntax, on the material of Russian language. The value of Russian for investigating agreement variability consists in co-existence of subsystems of grammatical features coupled with various values of an orthogonal category, so that it becomes possible to compare the contribution of individual grammatical categories in the choice of one or another variant of agreement. The second, empirical, aspect of the novelty of the proposed study follows from the above. Currently we have only a list of contexts of variable agreement without models of choosing specific variants on the basis of values of individual agreement parameters. The project will compensate for this lack of empirical base. Third, methodological aspect of novelty is determined by the method of data collection and systematization. In contrast to many previous researchers who built models of variable agreement based on qualitative data, in this project the basis for constructing theoretical model of agreement will be quantitative data obtained by corpus and experimental methods allowing to conduct the factor analysis of acceptability or frequency of variations. To sum up, the project will result in a deep empirical and theoretical study of the agreement parameters and creation of a formal model of agreement in Russian based on reliable empirical data and possessing predictive power. In contrast to previous studies in Russian linguistics, we plan not only to list the contexts of variable agreement, but using a preliminary corpus survey, and then drawing upon experimental data establish the distribution of variants. The collected empirical database will be used for parameterizing individual components of the agreement mechanism and evaluation of its presence in the contexts that do not involve direct assimilation of grammatical features. In contrast to our academic competitors, who also address agreement variation, we plan not to limit ourselves to a single agreement problem. Within a common approach to agreement in Russian we strive to identify those collective attributes of agreement parameters that appear in different variability contexts.

Expected results
The project will result in a formal model of grammatical agreement in Russian, which takes into account the variety of agreement strategies and the body of parameters of agreement variation. We will obtain results related to the two key priority areas: the parametric modelling of agreement variation and the extension of agreement approach to relevant phenomena such as licensing and selection. The project team will explore agreement with the non-canonical controller and agreement in the context of multiple potential controllers in Russian. In particular, we will formulate resolution rules, which are applied when there is a feature conflict between different noun phrases. We will identify the distribution of agreement variants in the context of non-canonical controllers: constructions with quantitative nouns and constructions with governing quantifiers. We will explore agreement in the presence of multiple potential controllers: in binominative clauses, in constructions with a postpositive relative clause with kotoryj ‘which’ and kto ‘who’, in the presence of coordinated subjects. An in-depth consideration of these topics on the basis of verified empirical data will help parametrize the agreement mechanism in Russian: identify the main characteristics of the controller and the target and in structural terms define the derivation of different agreement strategies. The work on the project shall reveal how grammatical and semantic features of a controller and a target undergoing agreement influence the choice of agreement pattern. We will investigate the discrepancy of grammatical categories in agreement, namely, the differences between person agreement on the one side and number and gender agreement on the other side. We shall consider the effects of the linear arrangement of the controller and target. We plan to explore how syncretism effects are manifested in different constructions and how agreement is involved in parsing the morphological homonymy of subject and direct object. The resulting formal model of agreement in Russian will allow to describe these effects not in the form of separate heuristics, but in the form of specification of the controller and the target through a unified feature system and by means of formulating the conditions under which the process of agreement takes place. The project team will also solve the problem of integrating the agreement module into the formal model of Russian syntax. We will consider a range of phenomena, that do not exhibit morphological agreement, from the point of view that suggests agreement mechanisms to be involved. We will demonstrate that agreement-based models can be empirically adequate for such phenomena. In particular, the agreement model will be used to describe the negative concord licensing, thematic selection and case marking. We will determine the possibility of an agreement approach in the analysis of feature interaction on the basis of the following criteria: a unified system of morphosyntactic effects and a unified system of restrictions on this interaction. We will examine the following restrictions: restrictions on locality, intervention, c-command requirement. The attainability of the desired results is determined by the methodology of the project, which should guarantee reliability and consistency of the data. The research group will develop the model taking into account a set of natural requirements such as a single axiomatic base, compatibility of its modules and developed interface mechanisms. The project’s team has extensive experience and considerable advances in the research into Russian syntax and semantics including joint work on syntax-semantics interface of Russian. In addition, the participants have a substantial research experience including a significant number of publications on the syntax and semantics of Russian. The project’s outcome will consist of a collective monograph and a series of articles, including several publications in WoS and Scopus-indexed journals with a high impact factor. This is a project in basic research; however, it has a clear potential for practical application. As a result of the work on the project, we plan to create the database of agreement variation in Russian. The members of the research team plan to outline the instances of agreement variation based on the data from the previous literature, to highlight the main parameters of variation, to develop a uniform template for description of experimentally studied agreement variation. As the members of the research team accumulate the experimental data, they will add the research results into the database, and this database will be published on the website of the project. The development of such a database will make the results of the project available for other scientists, teachers, and for everyone who is generally interested in the structure of Russian. The collected and published empirical data are of greater practical importance. The database can be used when developing courses and manuals for students of Russian as a state and / or foreign language; when preparing textbooks of Russian for the senior grades of school, textbooks of Russian as a foreign language, teaching manuals and problem books for the Uniform state exam; when preparing the stylistic recommendations for choosing an agreeing variant in grammars and dictionaries of Russian; in higher education, when teaching such disciplines as General syntax, Syntax of Russian, and Linguistic typology. Teachers of the Russian language will be able to use the database on their own in order to formulate more precise style recommendations, which are based on modern data about the real language use. The database of agreement variation will be relevant in the field of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence systems. Information about the distribution of agreement variants can be used when developing the syntax module of the linguistic processor of Russian, in automatic translation algorithms, which will significantly improve the overall coherence of the generated texts. Finally, the database will showcase the methodological approach based on the use of experimental data in Russian linguistics, and will contribute to spreading the idea of using empirically grounded theories in linguistics.

Annotation of the results obtained in 2022
The team was working on solving two fundamental problems: creating a parametric model of agreement and integrating agreement mechanisms into theoretic accounts of other syntactic interactions. With regard to the agreement variability parametrization we achieved the following results. First, using the corpus and experimental methods we investigated agreement in context of multiple controllers based on three constructions in Russian. We show that in relative constructions with a personal pronominal head, the conflict of person features between the head and the relative pronoun leads to a decrease in acceptability compared to syncretic agreement or no feature conflict. On the contrary, in binominal clauses syncretic agreement and matching features of potential controllers have the same level of acceptability as agreement with one of the controllers. In constructions with a coordinate subject three agreement patterns are licit: resolved agreement, agreement with the first conjunct (partial agreement) and (in the case of non-past tense) default agreement in 3rd person plural. While these three strategies are all acceptable, they are not in free variation, showing different levels of acceptability depending on word order, conjunct order, and tense form of the verb. Thus, despite all three constructions we studied involve multiple potential controllers, they differ as to feature realization. Secondly, we examined the resolution rules in case of agreement with non-canonical controllers. In constructions with governing quantifiers there are three possible agreement patterns: agreement with the quantifier (subset), agreement with the restrictor (superset), and default agreement. We show that these patterns are found in both Russian and Tatar, but the conditions for their realization are different. Along the same lines, we identified morphological and syntactic factors that determine variance in agreement with a non-canonical controller in noun phrases with coordinated modifiers. These factors include regularity of the number morphology of the noun and interaction of the attributive and predicative agreement patterns. Thirdly, we studied the external conditions for agreement computation. We conducted computational and experimental studies of morphological homonymy of subject and direct object. We examined the ability of neural language models to learn the pattern of predicative agreement in the contexts involving case forms’ homonymy and increasing complexity of the syntactic structure. Using corpus data we investigated parameters native speakers rely on when parsing predicate agreement in transitive structures with varying degrees of homonymy. The results of the study show that for Russian native speakers the case parameter is the most significant one and the parameters of word order and semantics compensate each other, whereas neural network algorithms focus primarily on word order. With regard to the integration of the agreement model into the formal model of Russian syntax we achieved the following results. The study of locality constraints on negative concord revealed that they are close to movement constraints on wh-extraction and relativization; other non-local syntactic interactions such as NPI licensing, anaphor binding and quantifier raising are significantly different. This result corroborates the analysis reducing negative concord to the (covert) movement of a negative pronoun targeting the sentential negation projection. Significant results have been achieved in the domain of modelling syntactic selection as a feature-based interaction. Studying selection of non-finite clauses in Russian, we identified a previously unnoticed type of clausal argument, namely, a small clause with a participle as a predicate and a subject which raises to the structural case position in the matrix clause. These small clauses are selected by the predicates of perception, evaluation, and causation. We developed a hypothesis according to which the constraints on raising structures are feature-based: raising implies that the non-finite predicate should be characterized by the tense feature, which makes it possible in Russian to raise subjects from small clauses, but not from infinitival clauses. On the basis of a distributive analysis of presuppositional predicates, we confirmed the correlation between presuppositionality (as a lexical property of the matrix predicate) and the nominal status of its argument (the presence of the pronominal light head “to”), which was earlier proposed in the literature. Presuppositionality of a predicate determines the acceptability of a nominal projection for verbs with an accusative object and makes it obligatory in nominalizations. We suggested that the violation of this correlation is licensed by a separate pragmatic factor, which implies a correlation between the new information and the absence of a nominal projection and, conversely, the given information and the presence of a nominal projection. Thus, we proposed a model for a clausal argument selection which is based on the default principle of feature-driven syntactic selection isomorphic to the semantic type of the argument, but which also integrates morphosyntactic and informational factors, as well as potentially other non-lexical factors (such as speech register). Finally, we started working on the database of agreement variability in Russian. We compiled a list of criteria to classify the cases of non-standard agreement in Russian. These criteria include the context of variability, the structural type of agreement, the case of the controller, the grammatical categories that show agreement variation. Next, based on three Russian constructions (coordinated subjects, constructions with quantity nouns and constructions with governing quantifiers) we compiled a list of possible predictors of variation resolution. At last, but not at least, we analyzed major theoretical approaches to agreement and identified parameters distinguishing between various formal models. This will make it possible for us to choose the most adequate model for agreement variability parametrization.

Publications

1. Belova D. Closest Conjunct Agreement, Personal Hierarchy, Coordinate Subject Proceedings of 13th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics, с. 21-24 (year - 2022) https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2022/13

2. Belova D., Davidyuk T. Предикативное согласование с сочиненным подлежащим в русском языке Типология морфосинтаксических параметров, том 5, вып. 1, с. 13-34. (year - 2022)

3. Grashchenkov P. О синтаксической селекции (группы) прилагательного Acta Linguistica Petropolitana, том 18, ч. 3 (year - 2022)

4. Knyazev M. Фактивность и информационный статус как условия употребления номинализованных клауз Типология морфосинтаксических параметров, том 5, вып. 1, с. 35-55 (year - 2022)

5. Knyazev M., Rudaleva E. Экспериментальное исследование влияния регистра на оформление сентенциального актанта в русском языке Вестник МГУ. Сер. 9. Филология, - (year - 2023)

6. Lyutikova E. Есть ли синтаксический подъем в русском языке? Часть 1: Инфинитивные клаузы Вестник Московского университета. Серия 9. Филология, № 5, с. 27-45 (year - 2022)

7. Lyutikova E. Есть ли синтаксический подъем в русском языке? Часть 2: Малые клаузы Вестник Московского университета. Серия 9. Филология, - (year - 2022)

8. Lyutikova E. Agreeing inflected quantifiers, intensifiers and anaphors as derived personal pronouns: Evidence from Tatar Word Structure, том 15, №3, с. 380–401 (year - 2022) https://doi.org/10.3366/word.2022.0215

9. Studenikina K. Структура именных групп с сочиненными модификаторами в русском языке: экспериментальное исследование Типология морфосинтаксических параметров, том 5, вып. 1., с. 107-139 (year - 2022)

10. Studenikina K. Does the number morphology determine the agreement strategy? Proceedings of 13th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics, с. 137-140 (year - 2022) https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2022/13

11. Lyutikova E. [Рец. на: / Review of:] A. Alexiadou, H. Borer (eds.). Nominalization: 50 years on from Chomsky’s Remarks. (Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics, 76.) Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020. 480 p. ISBN 9780198865582. Вопросы языкознания, № 6, с. 152-160 (year - 2022) https://doi.org/10.31857/0373-658X.2022.6.152-160

Annotation of the results obtained in 2023
In 2023, the team continued to work on solving two fundamental problems in building a parametric model of agreement in Russian: identification of agreement variability contexts and extension of the agreement approach to other types of feature-based interactions. We examined agreement variability with non-canonical controllers. Firstly, we experimentally investigated agreement in constructions with quantity nouns. The results show that nouns meaning exact quantity differ from nouns meaning indefinite quantity with respect to the structural characteristics of the constructions they form. Acceptability of agreement strategies also depends on the choice of premodifiers, as quantity nouns differ with respect to their compatibility with prequantifiers and demonstrative or possessive premodifiers. Secondly, we studied constructions with governing quantifiers. We have shown that elective and nominative constructions differ in how visible the restrictor is to agreement probes. Thirdly, we analyzed constructions with agreeing quantifiers in Tatar in a comparative aspect. We have shown that person agreement depends on whether the denotation of the quantifier is a strict subset of the restrictor or coincides with it. In order to formalize the resolution rules, we studied non-canonical controllers of another type, namely, coordinated constructions. Firstly, we investigated grammatical and semantic characteristics of coordination. We determined which combinations of morphological features are available for the elided and the spelled-out nouns in constructions with coordinated modifiers: in Russian, number features in numeral phrases must not conflict and case identity is required. The animacy of conjuncts turned out to be a weak factor and the type of conjunction was an insignificant factor, which allows us to conclude that the structure of conjunctive and disjunctive nominal phrases is similar. At the same time, differences were found in agreement strategies with coordinated constructions and comitative constructions. Secondly, we analyzed the external context parameters that contribute to the choice of agreement pattern. Predicate agreement is significantly influenced by the linear order of the subject and the predicate, the distance between them and the syntactic weight of the conjuncts. The influence of the argument structure of the predicate and the presence of a relative clause modifying the coordinated nominals is not significant. The results of the study made it possible to verify whether the analysis of coordination constructions based on ATB-movement is valid. The empirical generalizations, on which the ATB-analysis is based, have not been confirmed. As an alternative, we proposed an analysis that assumes that coordinated constructions are flat and do not involve any hierarchy. Next, we conducted studies of variable agreement in the presence of multiple potential controllers. Based on evidence from binominative sentences, we have shown that the grammatical categories characterizing nominal constituents are organized differently: gender is based on the equipollent opposition, while person is formed by privative oppositions. We also studied relative constructions with a pronominal head and focused on whether the case feature of the head influences the choice of the agreement pattern when there is a conflict of features. We found that there are three groups of Russian speakers that have different grammatical preferences. The study of agreement in the context of multiple potential controllers allowed us to formulate two alternative models of Agree. According to the first model, there is multiple agreement with all the available controllers, and the exponent is chosen in the morphological module. According to the second model, agreement alternatives arise due to the different timing of copying features from the controller to the target with respect to the impoverishment of the person feature on the controller. We have also shown that the effect of syncretism in Russian has a relative rather than qualitative nature, regardless of whether the predicate morphologically expresses the agreement category. The team members were elaborating on integrating the agreement module into the formal model of syntactic licensing. We continued the study of negative concord in Russian. A comparative study of the negative and indefinite pronouns properties was conducted together with a study of how negative pronouns are used with derived prepositions. The study confirmed the grammatical nature of the observed restrictions. In addition, we compared the non-local negative concord in Russian with other long-distance agreement phenomena: person and number agreement in the Turkic languages and nominal class and number agreement in the Nakh-Daghestanian languages. We put forward a hypothesis according to which the local domain for agreement may be larger than the clause: in this case direct agreement between the controller and the target is possible, crossing the boundary of the clause. While studying syntactic selection as a feature-based interaction, we evaluated the island properties of clausal arguments with and without the pronominal light head "to" embedded under presuppositional (factive) predicates, non-presuppositional (non-active) predicates or nouns. We confirmed that the clausal arguments with "to, chto" function as projections of the determiner, which is similar to the analysis of (definite) noun phrases in languages with articles. Thus, we clarified the featural characteristics of the semantic and syntactic selection isomorphism: we proposed that presuppositionality is encoded in syntax as a feature of definiteness in the determiner projection. We also dealt with the matching restriction on parasitic gap licensing and considered matching as a grammatical phenomenon in the scope of the agreement model. The results of the study provide an argument in favor of the elliptical nature of the parasitic gap in Russian. Finally, we systematically organized the phenomena exhibiting agreement variability in Russian and described each case using a uniform template to create the database of agreement variation. We developed a technical specification to further publish the database on the project’s website. Last but not least, we developed a corpus of Russian with the syntactic markup and the corresponding search algorithm.

Publications

1. Baykov F. Нелокальные синтаксические взаимодействия через границу именной группы: отрицательное согласование и вопросительное передвижение Рема. Rhema, № 2, с. 171-189 (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2023-2-171-189

2. Baykov F. Отрицательные местоимения внутри группы прилагательного: экспериментальное исследование Труды Института русского языка им. В. В. Виноградова, - (year - 2024)

3. Baykov F. Локальность внутриклаузального отрицательного согласования в русском языке: сравнение с другими нелокальными взаимодействиями Русский язык в научном освещении, - (year - 2023)

4. Belova D. Синтаксис и просодия расщепленного скрэмблинга: опыт экспериментального исследования Komp'juternaja Lingvistika i Intellektual'nye Tehnologii, Вып. 22, дополнительный том, с. 1001-1008 (year - 2023)

5. Belova D. Subject island and discontinuous spellout in Russian: An experimental approach Journal of Slavic Linguistics, - (year - 2023)

6. Belova D. Предикативное согласование с местоименными конъюнктами: опыт экспериментального исследования Труды Института русского языка им. В. В. Виноградова, - (year - 2024)

7. Belova D., Davidyuk T. Согласование с сочиненным подлежащим, содержащим личное местоимение: экспериментальное исследование на материале русского языка Рема. Rhema, № 2, с. 53-88 (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2023-2-53-88

8. Davidyuk T. Предикативное согласование с сочиненным подлежащим в русском языке: порядок слов, взаимное расположение конъюнктов и характеристики предиката «Цифра» в социально-гуманитарных исследованиях: метод, поле, реальность : материалы конференции молодых ученых. Иркутск, 14–16 ноября 2022 г., с. 12-20 (year - 2023)

9. Davidyuk T. Лично-числовое согласование и взаимное расположение конъюнктов и предиката: экспериментальное исследование Русский язык в научном освещении, - (year - 2023)

10. Gerasimova A. Значимость порядка именных групп для классификации биноминативных предложений Русский язык в научном освещении, - (year - 2023)

11. Knyazev M. An experimental study of argument extraction from presuppositional clauses in Russian Komp'juternaja Lingvistika i Intellektual'nye Tehnologii, Вып. 22, с. 242-252. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.28995/2075-7182-2023-22-245-253

12. Knyazev M. Noun complement clauses with a demonstrative determiner in Russian Journal of Slavic Linguistics, - (year - 2024)

13. Knyazev M. Против анализа русских пресуппозициональных клауз в косвенно-объектной позиции как скрытых номинализаций: данные выноса Типология морфосинтаксических параметров, - (year - 2024)

14. Lyutikova E. О согласовательной вариативности в русском языке Русский язык в научном освещении, - (year - 2023)

15. Lyutikova E., Gerasimova A. Исследование вариативного согласования в русском языке: проблемы и методы Рема. Rhema, № 2, с. 9-27 (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2023-2-9-27

16. Lyutikova Ekaterina, Gerasimova Anastasia Negative concord and locality in Russian Canadian Journal of Linguistics, № 1, том 68, с. 31-73 (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2022.41

17. Lyutikova, Ekaterina Person agreement with anaphors: Evidence from Tatar Languages, №1, том 8, с. 46 (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010046

18. Pasko L. Против ATB-анализа частичного согласования в русском языке: экспериментальное исследование Рема. Rhema, № 2, с. 89-103 (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2023-2-89-103

19. Studenikina K. Об идентичности морфологических признаков при эллипсисе в русском языке: данные именных групп с сочиненными прилагательными Рема. Rhema, № 2, с. 28-52 (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2023-2-28-52

20. Studenikina K. Иерархия согласования при сочинении русских именных групп: корпусное и экспериментальное исследование Русский язык в научном освещении, - (year - 2023)