IMPERSONAL SUBJECTS IN RUSSIAN

One of the more obvious differences between the syntax of Russian and that of English is that in English, impersonal sentences require the overt presence of an 'expletive' subject pronoun it, whereas in Russian the equivalent sen tences may not have an overt subject. Simple examples illustrating this are: (1) Temno. It is dark. (2) Syro. It is damp. (3) Smerkaetsja. It is getting dark. Some Russian impersonal constructions do not translate literally into English in this way, although internally to Russian syntax there is no cause to sep arate them from the simpler examples above. As I shall use some of these more idiomatic impersonal constructions in the body of this paper, a few more examples are given below: