BASEES 2007, 31 March, - 2 April Anton Zimmerling (Moscow open pedagogical university) & Tatyana Yanko (Institute of linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences) meinmat@yahoo.com ; tanya_yanko@list.ru LOCATIVE INVERSION AND VERB MOVEMENT IN RUSSIAN 1 This paper discusses formal and functional characteristics of the so called Locative Inversion (LI) in Russian. This phenomenon is typical of free word order languages, which don’t have the Verb-Second constraint but nevertheless frequently make use of linear orders where verbal forms take second position. In Russian, ‘V2-like orders’ are triggered by movement of locative adverbial into sentence-initial position (labeled SpecCP or TopicP in different formalisms). The neutral word order in Russian is Subject — Verb — Loc, cf. Кɪɚɫɢɜɚɹ ɞɟɜɭɲɤɚ (S) ɫɬɨɢɬ (V) ɭ ɨɤɧɚ (L) lit. “An attractive girl (S) stands (V) by the window (Loc)”, but if the sentence begins with a locative adverbial, the prescribed order will be Loc — Verb — Subject: ɍ ɨɤɧɚ (L) ɫɬɨɢɬ (V) ɤɪɚɫɢɜɚɹ ɞɟɜɭɲɤɚ (S), lit. “By the window (L) stands/is standing (V) an attractive girl (S)”. With intransitive verbs, word order Loc-Subject-Verb is bad — *ɍ ɨɤɧɚ ɤɪɚɫɢɜɚɹ ɞɟɜɭɲɤɚ ɫɬɨɢɬ/ɤɭɪɢɬ, lit. “By the window an attractive girl is standing/smoking”, so that LI in this case is obligatory. LI has been discussed in a number of papers by Pesetsky, Babyonyshev etc, but the comprehensive description of this phenomenon in Russian is missing. We will argue that with transitive predicates, LI is optional — ɍ ɨɤɧɚ ɤɪɚɫɢɜɚɹ ɞɟɜɭɲɤɚ (S) ɤɭɪɢɬ (V) ɫɢɝɚɪɟɬɵ (O)/ ɍ ɨɤɧɚ (L) ɤɭɪɢɬ (V) ɫɢɝɚɪɟɬɵ (O) ɤɪɚɫɢɜɚɹ ɞɟɜɭɲɤɚ (V) and the last NP in sentences with LI always bears the focal accent, irrespective of the fact, whether it is subject NP (cf. ɞɟɜɭɲɤɚ-Nom), or object NP (cf. ɫɢɝɚɪɟɬɵ-Acc). Thus, LI in Russian (and probably, in typologically similar languages) instantiates not Verb Movement to second position, but Right Focus Movement of NPs. We are aware that such an analysis is incompatible with any version of Chomsky’s framework, which withholds Fiengo’s postulate that only upward, i.e. right-to-left movement patterns should be possible. We argue that all accounts of LI, which don’t apply to the notion of downward, i.e. left-to-right movements, fail to provide a comprehensive description of LI, both on the semantic level and on the syntactic level. 1 Research is a part of the project “The typology of free word order languages” funded by the Russian Foundation for Humanities (grant RGNF 06-04-00203a), whose support is gratefully acknowledged.