Mne ne çitaetsja : (RELATIVIZED) MODALITY, DATIVES AND REFLEXIVE SUFFIXES * Elena E. Benedicto University of Massachusetts benedicto@linguist.umass.edu 0. Introduction In this paper I discuss some ideas for the analysis and interpretation of the Russian Dative Impersonal Reflexive Construction (DIRC) in (1), which contrasts with the regular active version in (2). (1) mne ne çitaetsja 1 (2) ja ne çitaju me:Dat not read:3sgPRES.RFL I:Nom not read:1sgPRES “I don’t read / I’m not reading” The main characteristics of DIRC in (1) are the following: 2 1. First,what seems to be the subject appears in the Dative. So, (3), with the Nominative ja instead of the Dative mne, is ungrammatical (but compare with the grammatical (2)). (3) *ja ne çitaetsja I:Nom not read:3sgPRES.RFL 2. Second, the presence of the reflexive suffix -sja, is required: 3 (4) *mne ne çitaet me:Dat not read:3sgPRES * My most sincere thanks to Sergey Avrutin and Natasha Kondrashova, who not only gave me judgements but also had enough patience to answer my questions and discuss these issues with me; to Catherine Chvany, who shared her ideas with me; and to Olga Brown for her time and judgements. Of course, all errors are mine. 1 Since the interpretation of DIRC is controversial and, precisely, the object of discussion in section 1., I will avoid giving any translation for it and, instead, will only provide word-by-word glosses until the matter is settled. 2 This is not to say that these are the only properties of DIRC. There are other properties that have been observed with respect to DIRC (cf. Schoorlemmer 1994), but the ones in (3)-(8) are the ones that I consider crucial to grasp the essence of the configuration. 3 This suffix has two allomorphs: -sja is used after consonant and -s’ after vowel. Like its Romance counterpart SE, this suffix appears in a variety of configurations: reflexive/reciprocals; pronominal verbs; as an intransitivizer; and to form (medio)pasives, among others.