Russian constructions with numerals and quantifiers: Their non-standard use in the subject and object position

RHEMA. 2020. No. 1. P. 70–89.

Letuchiy A.

In  the  article, I  describe cases of  special behavior of  Russian phrases with quantifiers like neskol’ko ‘some’, mnogo ‘many, much’ and small numerals like dva ‘two’. I  show that they can occur in the  subject position in  contexts that usually do not contain a canonical DP/NP subject (constructions with the verb xvatat’ ‘be enough’, negation contexts with the verb byt’ ‘be’ and its habitual / iterative correlate byvat’), and for neskol’ko-like quantifiers, the direct object position with intransitive predicates like na-…-sja circumfixed verbs is also available. The reason of noncanonical subject behavior is  the  possibility to  be  subjects without controlling plural verbal agreement, while the non-canonical direct object behavior is possible because neskol’ko-like quantifiers lack the category of case.

Keywords: subject, подлежащее, agreement, согласование, числительные, numerals, quantifiers, direct object, прямое дополнение, падежи, case-marking, genitive of negation, квантификаторы, генитив отрицания