Untangling the Russian Predicate Agreement Knot

Russian predicates show a puzzling pattern of number agreement with their subjects. For example, the single-addressee use of the polite second person plural pronoun 'vy' triggers plural number on Short Form predicate adjectives but singular on Long Form predicate adjectives. To solve this and other related puzzles we draw upon several independently motivated assumptions: (i) the INDEX vs. CONCORD agreement distinction (Wechsler and Zlatic 2003, King and Dalrymple 2004); (ii) the analysis of singular target forms as marked both morphologically and semantically, with plurals filling in elsewhere (Wechsler 2004, 2005); and (iii) the nominal ellipsis analysis of Long Form predicate adjectives (Babby 1973; Siegel 1976; Bailyn 1994).