Experimental study of the construction o tom, čto as a clausal complement of verbs and nouns in non-standard Russian

Abstract

The spread of the complementation construction o tom, čto in non-standard Russian in recent decades has been attested in previous work. It has been established that the construction has a wide distribution and can replace not only ordinary complement clauses introduced by the complementizer čto (so-called čto-clauses), cf. podtverždat’ o tom, čto + p ‘confirm that p’ instead of podtverždat’, čto + p, but also so-called to, čto-clauses (čto-clauses preceded by a demonstrative), including those embedded in prepositional phrases introduced by a preposi- tion other than o, cf. ostanovit’sja o tom, čto + p ‘settle on the fact that p’ instead of ostanovit’sja na tom, čto + p. The construction can also appear as a clausal complement of nouns, cf. podtverždenie o tom, čto + p ‘confirmation that p’ instead of podtverždenie togo, čto + p. The latter uses have been reported to lead to a milder violation, compared to the uses of the con- struction with verbs. The present study tested the latter hypothesis experimentally by using acceptability judgment data. The experiment tested the effect of the subcategorization of the matrix predicate (in standard Russian), i. e., whether it takes a direct object/čto-clause or a prepositional phrase (embedding a to, čto-clause). The findings suggest that there is a contrast in the status of clausal complements of verbs and nouns, specifically, that the latter are not genuine complements as has been earlier suggested in literature.