Non-Canonical Genitive: How Many Cases?

This chapter introduces the phenomenon of genitive objects and the genitive / accusative alternation in Russian. Three types of genitive objects are considered: Partitive Genitive, Genitive of Negation and Intensional Genitive. I further argue for a reorganization of this phenomenon. I claim that, as originally proposed by Neidle (Neidle, Carol. 1988. The Role of Case in Russian Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), Genitive of Negation and Intensional Genitive constitute two instantiations of the same phenomenon and should be provided a unified account. The two types of genitive case-assignment are characterized by the same semantic tendencies, are licensed in the presence of a local non-veridical operator and exhibit essentially the same pattern of historical development and cross-linguistic distribution. It is concluded that these types of genitive instantiate the same phenomenon, which will be refered to as Irrealis Genitive and which will constitute the focus of the present study. It is further argued that Partitive Genitive does not constitute another instance of Irrealis Genitive, as it differs substantially from the other types of non-canonical genitive case in terms of its properties.