Irrealis Genitive and Relative Existential Commitment: Part 2

Chapter 6 extends the discussion to negative environments. It argues that the REC restriction affects case selection under negation. Evidence is provided from sentences with different types of verbs and nominal complements. I further discuss genitive case-assignment to proper names, which, although highly restricted, can be sometimes observed under negation. I argue that this phenomenon can be reconciled with the proposed analysis. In particular, it is proposed that these nominals can appear in Irrealis Genitive only in those environments in which the relevant domain of existence undergoes a shift from a possible world as a whole to a given spatiotemporal location. (The notion of such a relativization is largely based on the approach to existential sentences formulated in Borschev and Partee (Formal and lexical semantics and the genitive in negated existential sentences in Russian. In: Boskovic J, Franks S, Snyder W (eds) Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 6. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1998).) Existential commitment in these environments is reinterpreted as commitment to existence in a salient location, while such a commitment does not obligatorily characterize proper names. Finally, I list a number of interpretational parallels that can be observed between genitive objects and subjunctive clauses.