From canon to monolith to clusters
A constructionist model of subjecthood in Russian
The status of oblique subjects is a contested topic. Subjecthood is typically
defined relative to syntactic tests in formal approaches and different tests have
been proposed in the literature. However, they have not been applied systematically
to cover a wide range of constructions such as oblique subjects in Russian.
This study presents a clustered model of subjecthood building on ten construction
types and twenty features of subjecthood in Russian based on construction
grammar and Keenan’s (1976) study. The structure of the model indicates
that Russian has two clustered subject constructions: the nominative and the
dative. These types motivate the deviations displayed by the other constructions.
Hence, subjecthood is defined as a fully motivated network structure.
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