genitive case in "chto novogo?"

[George Fowler]

Katya Krivinkova wrote:

>Problem:
>
>(1) chto u tebja est' zheltogo?
>
>(2) u tebja est' chto-nibud' zheltoe?

There is a partitive sense in (1) which is missing from (2), isn't there?
'What have you got that's yellow' vs. 'something yellow'. Perhaps the logic
of (1) is that chto is considered to be an element of the set of yellow
things, while yellow is simply applied attributively to chto-nibud'. Then
we get the following structures (approximations)

(1) [   chto [   novogo [  e] ] ]
     NP       NP         N

vs.

(2) [   chto-nibud' novoe]
     NP

Under this account, novoe is neuter because it agrees with chto-nibud',
while novogo is neuter because it has nothing to agree with.

George Fowler

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