genitive case in "chto novogo?"

[ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN]

> The important point is
> that only certain pronominal classes allow adjunction and I would be
> willing to bet that this is a purely morphological universal fact -- not
> lexical (after looking at a few more grammars).
>
        Just to muddy the waters a bit around Bob Beard's putative
morphological universal, there's also Russian _chto takoe_ and
Polish examples like
                Co nowego?  'What's new?'
                Nic nowego.  'Nothing's new'
                cos' nowego  'something new'

all with adjectives in the genitive.  This appearance of the genitive
is not limited to the above quasi-idiomatic expressions, but functions
rather freely, e.g.,
                Co masz zimnego?  'What do you have that's cold?'

                                        Bob Rothstein