Sententional Arguments and Event Structure
Anton Zimmerling
June 2024
 

In Russian and other Slavic languages, sententional subjects share a number of properties with zero and oblique subjects. I argue that Russian bare that-clauses cannot have the roles of Agent/Causer, while zero subjects can. The capacity of taking to, čto P-clauses, i.e. that-clauses headed by a correlative pronoun TO serves as diagnostics for a number of verbal classes. Causative and factive verbs only take headed clauses, but not bare that-clauses as surface subjects. Dative predicatives split into two groups. The items from the STYDNO, VSE RAVNO group only take bare čto P-clauses and invariably behave as non-factive predicatess. The items from IZVESTNO, BEZRAZLICHNO group both take bare and headed that-clausesl. That means that their sententional argument can both get the status of a fact, verified proposition P, and subjective evaluation of P, inner vision of P etc. Russian expletive pronouns ETO and TO have different syntax. ETO behaves as the matrix clause subject and alternates with oblique subjects and sententional arguments, while TO cannot be separated from the complement clause and reaches the subject position only in combination with the CP.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/008241
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Computational linguistics and Intellectual Technologies. Issue 13 (20)]. Moscow, 2014. ―P. 710 - 727.
keywords: sentential arguments, oblique subjects, zero subjects, bare that-clauses, headed that-clauses, factivity, russian, syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology
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