Subject Case Marking and Case Agreement of Modifiers

Abstract

In this chapter, I will propose that a strong correlation exists between case and grammatical control in Russian, on the basis of some interesting facts (presented in Comrie, 1974) about the agreement of ‘second predicates’ within postverbal infinitival clauses. In section 1, the curious facts about the agreement of second predicates in Russian will be presented. Sections 2 and 3 will show that functional structure provides a level of representation that integrates the information relevant to the determination of case. Finally, I will argue that the case of modifiers then follows to a large extent from the grammatical representation, and that the interaction of the mechanisms of control and agreement suffices to account for the case marking of modifiers. Within this framework, case agreement is precisely that: the modifier shares the case of its functional antecedent. Agreement is a natural consequence of the consistency of lexical information within functional structure.