Agreeing and substantivized adjectives in Russian paucal constructions: An experimental study

This paper addresses the issue of case variation in Russian paucal constructions. Previous studies claim that the choice of the case marking on the adjectival constituent depends on the syntactic category of the paucal construction. Using experimental data we show that the distribution of case marking strategies differs for paucal constructions in the quantificational position, where it does not receive structural case, and in the argumental position, where it receives case and agrees with the predicate. Although the experimental data support the hypothesis about the variable status of Russian noun phrase, it also shows the absence of the one-to-one correspondence between case marking and structural context: in particular, in quantificational positions both cases are acceptable.