Distributive and collective reading of comitative constructions with animate nouns in Russian

Abstract

Comitative constructions are a well-known phenomenon in Russian, which are often used when there is a need to make the subject of a sentence plural. However, this notion has potential ambiguity in its interpretation: if the members of such constructions are considered as a single unit, consequently, the construction itself is interpreted collectively, or, on the contrary, if they are treated as separate units, therefore, the construction is interpreted distributively. This difference in reading of comitatives makes their perception rather complicated and causes confusion among speakers, which influences the whole understanding of utterances. Thus, it evokes a great interest for research.