고대러시아어 텍스트에서 지시적 선택(Referential Choice)으로서의 영대용(Zero Anaphora)

Abstract

This study investigates grammaticaI and discourse constraints on zero anaphora in OId Russian used as a referentiaI choice for the third person subjects (topics), as attested in the selected 17th century narrative texts. The study shows that the speaker (author) 's choice of zero anaphora or (pro)noun is never arbitrary or random: the choice is based on the controIIer's topicaIity and the speaker' s narrative strategies. The target of zero anaphora is aIways the grammaticaI subject and topic of the cIause (sentence) it belongs to, whereas the controIIer is Ioosely constrained both on the grammatical and discourse plane. The controller shows salient topi • caIity either on Iocal or gIobaI discourse Ievel: it may be the topic of preceding discourse with no other intervening topic, or the discourse topic on the gIobal narrative IeveI. Although the unmarked controIIer of zero anaphora is the preceding continuous topic, it may aIso be strongly controIIed by comments with saIient topicaIity: subjects or objects in existentiaI or functionaIIy existentiaI sentences. This type of controIIer can be regarded as showing prominence in topicaIity on the prospective plane of discourse development. Thus, this study supports the notion of topicality functioning not only on the retrospective discourse plane, but aIso on the prospective discourse development, and more relevant in the controI of zero anaphora is not the binary partition of topic and comment, but the set of properties of topicality. When the controller of zero anaphora does not reveal any kind of salient topicality, it is usually the object of the preceding cIause and is mostly dictated by the speaker's discourse strategies: in order to downplay the zero subject's agency, initiative, volition or overall transitivity of the given clause and to make the clause including the zero anaphora cohesive to the preceding clause containing its controller, which imparts the narrative some sense of continuity. The study also finds correlations between zero anaphora on one hand, and register and text genre on the other. Relatively less Slavonic or more vernacular register tends to favor (pro)nouns instead of zero anaphora, and in terms of the text genre, tend to favor (pro)noun repetition instead of zero anaphora, compared to the traditional saints' lives. The revolutionary paradigm shift in the marking of the subject and topic seems to have taken place first in the vernacular language and the relatively new genre.