Introduction

Impersonal constructions have always intrigued syntacticians because they run counter to the traditional definition of a sentence as including a nominative subject and an agreeing predicate. Therefore, as Siewierska (2008b: 115) puts it, "[t]he notion of impersonality is a broad and disparate one". The Slavic languages, as is well known, are particularly rich in impersonal constructions, which is why their analysis has long been a center of interest.

Research about impersonals in Slavic began with the advent of the first handbooks and grammars dealing with syntax at the turn of the twentieth century (above all, Miklosich 1883; Jagić 1899; Potebnja 1899; Peškovskij 1914; Vondrák [1906] 1928; not to forget Havránek's 1928, 1937 fundamental works). The first specific studies of impersonals, including monographs, appeared in the 1950s (e.g., Fodor 1957; Galkina-Fedoruk 1958; Micklesen 1968; Doros 1975; Wolińska 1978). During the last third of the twentieth century, generative accounts have taken up a growing share of the literature, with two related but distinguishable points of focus. Accounts with the first type of focus seek to integrate impersonal structures into a broader typology of diathesis (e.g., Růžička 1986; Kosta 2021). Other generativist studies have analyzed impersonals against the background of syntactic unaccusativity (e.g., Harves 2002; Szucsich 2007; Lavine and Franks 2008; Lavine 2010, 2014).

The last two decennia have seen a peak in interest in impersonal constructions, with an emphasis on comparative studies and typology, both within and outside of Slavic linguistics. One pioneering effort regarding Slavic linguistics is the overview of impersonal structures provided by Mrazek 1990. The growing interest in impersonality also appears in anthologies, some with and some without the consideration of Slavic languages (e.g., Siewierska 2008a; Kor Chahine 2013; Redder 2012; Herbeck, Pöll, and Wolfsgruber 2019).

One of the most influential recent typological accounts is the functionally based outline given in Malchukov and Ogawa 2011. With reference to Siewierska 2008b, Malchukov and Ogawa include impersonals in the domain of agent-defocusing devices (other such constructions are passives or de-causatives). Given that impersonal constructions lack a full-fledged subject not only in terms of formal (structural, behavioral) but also functional (that is, semantic and pragmatic) criteria (Malchukov and Ogawa 2011: 22), the authors distinguish impersonals with respect to the semantic-pragmatic subject property they mostly lack as Agentivity impersonals (A-impersonals), Reference impersonals (R-impersonals), and Topicality impersonals (T-impersonals).¹ Typical examples of A-impersonals are weather impersonals (e.g., Russian gremit 'it thunders'), impersonals denoting physical and emotional states (e.g., Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian dosadno mi je 'I am bored'; lit. 'it is boring to me'), and modal impersonals (e.g., Bulgarian trjaba da 'it is necessary to').² R-impersonals involve a human agent; crucially, the referential status of this agent is decreased. A typical instance of R-impersonals in Slavic is 3pl impersonals, traditionally referred to as neopredelënno-ličnye predloženija 'indefinite-personal sentences' in Russian. T-impersonals are not very frequent in Slavic, because they signal non-topicality of the subject referent. As is well known, Slavic languages make use of word order to signal non-topicality of the subject referent by putting the subject constituent in post-verbal position. Therefore, Slavic languages are not in need of specialized T-impersonals.³ Some existential constructions, however, may also be classified as T-impersonals in Slavic. Cases in point are existential constructions with the verb 'have' in Polish and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, or the Russian reflexive existential verb imet′sja.

There is also a growing body of work suggesting typologies of impersonals, either for individual languages (e.g., Kibort 2008 for Polish; Babby 2010 and Schlund 2018 for Russian) or for subsets of impersonal constructions across languages (e.g., Siewerska and Papastathi 2011; Gast and van der Auwera 2013).

A new strand of research in impersonality seeks to assess how particular impersonal constructions are actually used—that is, how they function in discourse. Zinken's 2016 study of (impersonal) requesting strategies in Polish and English and Mazzitelli's 2019 analysis of Lithuanian reference impersonals are pioneering studies in this regard...