genitive case in "chto novogo?"

[ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN]

>
> It just occurred to me that the reason that "chto" doesn't allow modifiers
> is that it  is an NP like personal pronouns (which also don't take modifier
> categories (although they might occur with empty allomorphic markers)).
> "Chto-nibud'", etc. are Ns.  "Chto takoe" is an example of this:  "takoe"
> has no meaning or grammatical functions, as indicated by the factd that
> "Chto eto takoe?" means exactly the same thing as "Chto eto?"  This strikes
> me as morphological differences and if they are consistent across
> languages, I don't see how they could be explained as lexical fortuities.
>
> I don't understand the point of the Polish examples, Bob.  They look like
> the same kind of syntactic way around the problem that George explained in
> connection with the Russian data.  They represent two NPs, don't they?
>
> --Bob Beard
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
        I was too quick on the keyboard.  I must agree with Bob that
_chto takoe_ doesn't really prove anything.  The point of the Polish
examples was to show lack of contrast in behavior between the
interrogative _co_ (= _chto_) and the indefinite _cos'_ (= _chto-
nibud'_, _chto-to_), but the examples don't necessarily undermine
his generalization.
                                Bob Rothstein