Нулев подлог и нулево допълнение в руските подчинени изречения – елипса, нулево местоимение или PRO?
Zero Subject and Zero Object in Russian Embedded Clauses – an Ellipsis, a Zero Pronoun or a PRO?

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on contexts where the subject or the object is left unexpressed. The question is how to qualify these argument zeros: whether they resemble ellipsis, a zero pronoun or PRO of nonfinite forms. I check their behavior against several criteria: types of clauses they are compatible with; possibility of distant use; (non)obligatoriness of the zero expression; requirement of grammatical identity of two realizations, and so on. I conclude that, though the two types of zero arguments are not independent from each other, they show different properties. In fact, the zero object and the zero subject remain ellipsis in different respects: pro shares with ellipsis the identity requirement and the rarity of distant uses, while zero objects have in common with ellipsis the possibility for the argument to be expressed and the restrictiveness in the choice of the clause type. Importantly, some contexts of zero subject and object use do not fall under one of the major free types: for instance, here belongs syntactic doubling, which is most similar to PRO, but used in a finite construction.

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