«Несклоняемое актантное это» в русском языке: роль синтаксического типа антецедента и информационной структуры в нестандартном оформлении местоимения

Russian Linguistics. 2026. Т. 50. Статья 17.

Letuchiy A.

The article focuses on the analysis of a special use of the nominative-accusative form of the pronoun ėto ‘it, this’, illustrated by examples like Ėto ty ne prav ‘In this, you are wrong’. In this use, on the one hand, the pronoun corresponds to the argument of the head predicate, and, on the other hand, the case form of the pronoun does not correspond to the syntactic requirements of the head. This type of use is compatible with a rather wide head class, including mental and emotional predicates like nadejat’sja ‘hope’, emotional predicates like radovat’sja ‘be glad’, adjectives like rad ‘glad’, prav ‘right’, and so on. I conclude that the violation of argument structure requirements is yielded possible by two factors: topicality and the fact that the antecedent is sentential . On the one hand, topicalized constituents in Russian often allow for non-standard case marking. On the other hand, sentential antecedents, which are most characteristic of the use under analysis, are unmarked for case themselves.

Keywords: русский язык, argument structure, модель управления, information structure, информационная структура, pronouns, местоимения, сентенциальные актанты, топикализация, complement clauses, topicalization, uninflected elements, indeclinable elements, несклоняемые элементы

Publication based on the results of: Linguistic and cognitive diversity in formal models, computer tools, and educational resources (2025)