Language-Internal Explanation: The Distribution of Russian Impersonals  

Oleh:

Perlmutter, David M. ; Moore, John

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language (ada di JSTOR) vol. 78 no. 4 (2002), page 619-650.
Fulltext: Vol. 78, No. 4, pp. 619-650.pdf (688.27KB)

Isi artikel

This article exemplifies LANGUAGE-INTERNAL EXPLANATION. It seeks to document and to explain the inability of Russian impersonal clauses to be infinitival. We argue that this gap is the conse- quence of two independent facts of Russian grammar: a case restriction on a silent expletive pronoun and the requirement that subjects of infinitival clauses be dative. These clash in infinitival contexts, which explains the gap. The explanation is language-internal in that it relies on no putatively universal principles. At the same time, each type of device posited is needed indepen- dently in the grammars of other languages. Our result bears on the issue of what language- particular properties expletives may have, on the issue of whether silent expletives exist, and on the more general theoretical issue of whether clauses are required to have subjects universally.*

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