2 Responses to “Datapoint for feature 113 and language wals_code_rus”

1. Larisa Leisiö Says:
   January 26th, 2010 at 11:00 pm

   Russian is both better than symmetric:
   On prochital.pfv kakie-to(some.ACC) statji.ACC NEGATION: on ne chital.ipfv nikakih(not.any.GEN) statej.GEN
   He read some articles. NEG: He did not read any articles.
   On pochuvstvoval.pfv bol’.ACC. Negation: On ne chuvstvoval.ipfv / ne pochuvstvoval.pfv boli.GEN
   He felt pain. NEG: He did not feel pain

2. Matti Miestamo Says:
   February 19th, 2010 at 2:50 pm

   Russian is an interesting case indeed. There is a statistical preference for the use of the imperfective under negation, but perfective aspect is generally not incompatible with negation. Thus, there is no asymmetry on the formal morphosyntactic level, and therefore, as is also explained in the WALS chapter, Russian has been classified as symmetric. (The perfective may acquire a more specific reading under negation, and we can surely talk about asymmetry in the semantics and pragmatics of these forms under negation.) Note further that NP-level asymmetry phenomena like the changes in case marking in the examples given in the comment are not taken into account in the WALS chapter (see chapter text, towards the end of section 1).

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