Resumes de Theses/Dissertation Abstracts: On Subjects and Predicates in Russian

The present dissertation discusses relevant linguistic theories in connection with subject positions and predication relations, and presents some issues that have not, in my view, been addressed in the linguistic literature so far. I offer a new approach to sentential structure in light of the most recent developments within the framework of Chomsky's Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1993, 1995 t 2001a, 2001b). The aim of this dissertation is to integrate the cognitively based lexical semantics approach and the formal analyses with relation to philosophy and logic of language. This study employs case theory and predication theory in a way of relating semantic components to formal syntactic descriptions. Russian data and data from other languages (Ukrainian and Bulgarian, Romance languages, English, and Hebrew) are analyzed to bring out the nature of the categories each language possesses. To answer the question of how semantically empty elements are interpreted by the conceptual system, special attention is paid to null categories in Russian (pro of impersonal sentences, pro of existential sentences). Two subject positions on the verb's argument grid are examined, and the conclusion is drawn concerning the existing parallelism of lexical (micro-) and syntactic (macro-) models. The 'indirect', or 'null', subject position is considered more general and encompassing in both cases (Soschen 2000, 2002 a). Subjectless sentences are not uncommon in Russian. Whether verbs appear in a sentence with or without their subjects varies considerably across languages; yet, subjects are always represented by a set of properties that can be defined from the point of view of their semantic