Order of subject and object in scientific Russian when other differentia are lacking

HARPER AND LEHISTE have discussed the order of subjects and predicates in Russian scientific text. Lehiste concludes that "form and function" should be used to distinguish the subject from the predicate of a Russian sentence; although her conclusion may be accepted (subject to assumptions about the value of maintaining customary English order in the output), her dictum must be converted into programmable instructions. To a certain extent, the most economical method of distinguishing subject from predicate is obvious and straightforward. Verbs, shortform adjectives and participles, and other potential "fillers of the predicate slot" are marked in the glossary and can be identified when they occur in text. Inasmuch as some glossary entries are marked (in effect) "possibly predicate," some difficulties are involved in finding the predicate, but we wish to pass over these to a specific problem of detail. The formal characteristics by which a subject can be recognized are, roughly, part of speech, gender, number, person, and case. The subject and predicate of a sentence are, in fact, two of its members of specifiable parts of speech, agreeing in number and either person or gender, while the subject must be of specified case, i .e . , nominative. Unfortunately, for example, two nouns in a sentence may be equally good candidates for the role of subject; this is true because the nominative and accusative cases are not always formally distinct. Thus, if two neuter nouns, each nominative or accusative, respectively precede and follow a third-person, singular, non-past verb (which