Abstract
Summary In the present paper, I investigate different types of impersonal sentences in Slavic languages focusing on impersonal sentences with accusative internal arguments (objects). These constructions pose various questions concerning selectional properties of the categories involved in the syntactic derivation of the respective sentences and concerning the licensing of morphological markers, esp. of the accusative of internal arguments and of the dative of quasi-subjects with certain types of reflexive impersonals. I will discuss these issues in the first two sections following the introduction claiming that at least the main (verbal) predicates of impersonals sentences with accusative internal arguments also select a semantically bleached, phonetically null external argument. The arguments for this analysis involve both theoretical and empirical considerations. In section 4, I will briefly turn to the impersonal morphological markers of verbal and nominal predicates. I will propose a default mechanism for the impersonal variant relying on feature hierarchies and markedness rejecting an agreement analysis with the phonetically null external argument.
Published Version
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