Parametrizing intralinguistic variation: Case assignment in event nominalizations

The paper deals with the issue of intralingual variation in the context of Russian event nominalizations. Experimental data show that external arguments in nominalizations can be assigned both genitive and instrumental case, i.e. exhibit differential case marking. In this paper I investigate the distribution of the two patterns of case assignment among speakers and demonstrate that both configurations can coexist in one individual grammar. My analysis suggests that it is the amount of functional structure of the constituent undergoing nominalization that determines the observed case variation