Subordinate clause prolepsis in Russian

Abstract

This paper provides a semantic analysis of Russian sentences in which an element, that is dependent on an element in the subordinate clause, occurs in the main clause. We will call this phenomenon, which is typical for spoken and informal Russian, ‘subordinate clause prolepsis’. The paper offers a qualitative analysis, using data from the literature, the internet, the Russian National Corpus, and an acceptability survey. It is shown that there are two factors which are relevant in the case of subordinate clause prolepsis. Firstly, subordinate clause prolepsis is only possible if the subordinate clause is a content clause. Secondly, subordinate clause prolepsis is triggered by factors of information structure. This paper gives a detailed analysis of the specific factors of information structure that can trigger prolepsis, such as topicalization, focalization, and parallelism.