🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <SCHILLER.92Jul22162611@tira.uchicago.edu> schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller) writes:
>
>I'll just leave with a teaser for David:
>How do you handle the Russian construction:
>
>mnye   (bylo)   pomoch'     yemu
 me-DAT was-NEUT help-infin  him-DAT
 `I had to help him/I was supposed to help him`

>
>(discussed briefly in George Fowler's dissertation)
>
>I am particularly interested in the case assignment, of course.

The questions here are only slightly more difficult than with other
cases of "subject" dative.  The copula here is either used as a modal or
coocurs with a null modal.  The present-tense copula is itself null.
The modal, like some other verbs, selects a dative argument which may
occur as subject (cf. Belletti and Rizzi on the subject). The verb
'help' selects a dative object.  What's the special problem?

There are more interesting cases, like (cf. Gil Rappaport, Russian
Linguistics circa 1986):

nam est' komu pomoch' yemu

-DP