Post-Verbal Subject Pronouns in Russian: Control of the Floor and Narrative Point of View

Abstract

This paper examines the distribution in Russian of clauses containing a post-verbal subject pronoun. It shows that in the colloquial language a major function of such clauses is to assert a speaker's control of the floor. It then illustrates some specific environments in which this constituent order occurs in literary texts, arguing that writers of fiction can extend its usage from the marking of changes in the actual narrating voice to the marking of certain types of shift in narrative point of view. The paper concludes that the stylistic interpretations of the post-verbal placement of thematic subjects which have been offered in earlier studies of Russian clause organization should be modified to recognize its pragmatic functions.