You can find the details of Dasha's work below:

Mixed gender agreement in (one) Russian relative clause: two pilot studies

Wumbrand (2018) claims that in German, varying gender agreement in relative clauses is associated with two different types of anaphora. The mismatch example (1a) is only felicitous in the context of surface anaphora (The girl is the only girl), while the example without the mismatch (2b) involves deep anaphora with an abstract noun Ø(+ANIM). 

 

(1) a. Das Mädchen ist die Einzige, die Blau trägt. 

the.NEUT.SG girl is the.FEM.SG only that blue wears 

`The girl is the only girl who is wearing blue.'

b. Das Mädchen ist das Einzige, das Blau trägt. 

the.NEUT.SG is the.NEUT.SG only that blue wears

`The girl is the only one who is wearing blue.'

Russian has a similar type of relative clause, but it i) introduces an additional parameter - agreement within the relative clause, ii) doesn't seem to work the same way German structures do. 

 

(2) a. Anya - edinstvenn-aya, kto reshil-a zadachu. 

Anya only-FEM.SG, who solved-FEM.SG problem.ACC

b. Anya - edinstvenn-aya, kto reshil zadachu.

Anya only-FEM.SG who solved.MASC.SG problem.ACC

c. Anya edinstvennyj, kto reshil zadachu. 

Anya only-MASC.SG who solved.MASC.SG problem.ACC

d. *Anya edinstvennyj, kto reshil-a zadachu. 

nya only-MASC.SG who solved-FEM.SG problem.ACC

`Anya is the only one who solved the problem.'

 

In this talk, I will show the preliminary results of two experimental studies. In the first one, I try to reproduce Wurmbrand's results for Russian. In the second experiment, I investigate similar sentences with an overt nominal head without pre-defined semantic gender -- mixed gender nouns like vrač 'doctor', menedžer 'manager', etc. I also discuss possible extensions of the studies as well and the implications the results have for the analysis of Russian relative clauses with kto `who'.