The Acquisition of the Russian Or* , ** Anna Verbuk University of Massachusetts at Amherst 1 Introduction Cross-linguistically, languages fall into two categories in terms of what reading a sentence has when a disjunction operator is used with clausemate negation. In languages such as English and German, the disjunction operator has a Boolean inclusive interpretation in negative contexts, which results in the reading in (1) that I will refer to as the “neither” reading in this paper. (1) ¬P  ¬Q In English, or corresponds to Boolean inclusive disjunction, as in (2). (2) ¬(P  Q)  ¬P  ¬Q (3) John didn’t go to the movies or the concert “Neither” reading: John didn’t go to the movies and John didn’t go to the concert. In contrast, in Russian, Hungarian and a number of other languages, the sentence where the disjunction operator is used in a negative context has an “I don’t know which” interpretation, which corresponds to the reading in (4) (Szabolcsi, 2002). (4) ¬P  ¬Q Consequently, the use of the Russian “or,” ili, in negative contexts does not give rise to the “neither” interpretation of the sentence. In the Russian counterpart of (3) in (5), only the “I don’t know which” reading is possible. (5) Ivan ne xodil v kino ili na koncert Ivan not go PAST in movies or on concert ‘Ivan did not go to the movies or did not go to the concert.’ “I don’t know which” reading: Ivan didn’t go to the movies or Ivan didn’t go to