SEMANTICS FOR OBRATNO: A RE-ENTRY INTO A DISCONTINUED STATE
This paper explores the meaning and distribution of obratno, one of the Russian repetitive and restitutive morphemes. We identify three essential characteristics of obratno: obligatoriness of the restitutive reading, narrow scope with respect of indefinites, and incompatibility with eventuality descriptions that entail a result state in the sense of [Kratzer 2000]. We argue that like garden-variety repetitive and restitutive morphemes (e.g., Russian opjat’), obratno denotes a partial identity function with a presupposition. Unlike such morphemes, however, the presuppositional content of obratno involves a return to the same state in which an entity had been before. We capture this characteristic relying on [Landman’s 2008] notion of crosstemporal identity of eventualities and the derivative notion of a cross-temporal substate. This makes the repetitive reading of obratno unavailable, forces identity of the holders of a state, deriving the narrow scope effect, and guarantees that obratno is only compatible with target state descriptions.