Weather/season expressions, existential commitment, and the genitive of negation

Abstract

This paper presents data from Russian exhibiting seemingly variable unaccusative and unergative behavior. Russian motion-verb-weather/season expressions pass several accepted diagnostics for unaccusativity yet fail the genitive of negation—the diagnostic most widely agreed to show unaccusativity in Russian. I argue this failure results from a presupposition of existential commitment, which can be canceled. Crucial to this analysis is the assumption that Neg0 is always a secondary—not obligatory—licenser and arguments communicating existential commitment exist within a small clause structure. This analysis accounts for seemingly exceptional unergative clauses and has implications for what the genitive of negation reveals about a predicate structure.