Keyword: «object-subject impersonal sentences»

This paper presents a comparative analysis of two types of impersonal sentences in modern Russian ‒ the object-subject and the instrumental-subject constructions ‒ based on A.V. Petrov’s structural-semantic classification. It examines the key syntactic and semantic features of each construction: the neutralization of the subject–object opposition in object-subject sentences, and, in instrumental-subject sentences, the syncretic function of the instrumental case, which merges the meanings of instrument and causer. Drawing on minimal oppositions, the study identifies clear functional differences between the two types: the former highlight a spontaneous process with an unexpressed causer, whereas the latter explicitly encode the cause of the state. The findings confirm that both constructions are self-sufficient impersonal sentence types, distinguished above all by their degree of semantic abstraction and their grammatical construal of the causal source.