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Ambiguity of different types contributes significantly to humor creation, as predicted by incongruity theory This holds for homonymy, polysemy, structural and scope ambiguity, as well as any multiplicity of meanings that arises due to pragmatic factors. A consideration of languages with rich inflectional morphology, such as Russian, further reveals that linguistic humor may be based on the semantic indeterminacy of certain grammatical phenomena. The present paper provides evidence in favor of this claim by taking the imperfective aspect, genitive case-assignment and instrumental case-assignment into account. It is demonstrated that the ambiguity / indeterminacy associated with these phenomena gives rise to the creation of humorous effects. We further generalize that the core functions of case and aspect correlate with the less salient readings of ambiguous sentences (often the absurd, non-bona-fide ones). In contrast, the more peripheral and even idiomatic functions give rise to the salient, bona-fide readings. A functional explanation is put forward for this apparent discrepancy: the prototypical, easily accessible functions of case and aspect make it easier for the hearer to process a sentence in its non-salient interpretation.

The present paper investigates the impact of structural ambiguity on humor creation in Russian. A range of jokes is analyzed which are based on the possibility of assigning two distinct structures to the same sentence, which, in turn, results in the emergence of two opposed scripts / scenarios / readings, as is necessary for the creation of a humorous effect. We consider several types of structural ambiguity, as well as the ways in which they interact with additional linguistic phenomena, such as homonymy, polysemy and the complement / adjunct distinction.

This paper investigates three phenomena that involve genitive Case-assignment to the direct object in Russian: Genitive of Negation, Intensional Genitive and Partitive Genitive. I argue, following Neidle (1988), that Genitive of Negation and Intensional Genitive share a considerable number of properties and should be provided a unified account. It is proposed that both phenomena are sensitive to the notion of ‘existential commitment’: the choice of genitive Case is strongly associated with the lack of commitment to the existence of the referent. A distinction between different types of existential commitment is introduced, with each type determining Case-assignment in a certain class of sentences. The picture is then extended to include Partitive Genitive. Numerous properties differentiate this Case from both Intensional Genitive and Genitive of Negation. However, despite these differences, all the three types of genitive Case are unified by a the non-specific, indefinite interpretation. I propose that this complex pattern can be accounted for by means of the notion of ‘individuation’. All the types of genitive nominals under investigation are non-individuated, which accounts for the observed similarity. The difference between Partitive Genitive and the other Cases is proposed to result from the fact that different types and sources of non-individuation are involved.