More on Ukrainian _vono_ and _joho_

[Alina Israeli]

One slight objection. You said:

>The "other complication" I refer to above is that _vono_ can be both a
>referential personal pronoun (i.e., "it" referring back to some
>neuter-singular nominal expression such as _vikno_ "window") or it can be
>pleonastic (also referred to as "expletive" and "dummy", Russ.
>"psevdomestoimenie", in the linguistic literature).  Pleonastic
>pronominals, as in English _It's dark_, where _it_ does not refer back to
>any neut.sg. thing, but is a place-holder in the syntax.  Ukrainian and
>Russian make use of _vono_ and _ono_ as a pleonastic nominal, as the
>examples in (m) and (n) (respectively).
>
>(n)  Ono          i    ponjatno,  v  ix     kongresse dojarok     net.
>     it           even understood in [their congress] milkmaids   none
>     neut.nom.sg.      (non-agr.)    masc.loc.pl.     fem.gen.pl.
>
>     "It goes without saying; their congress has no milkmaids."

This suggests that (n) could be discourse-initial, just as sentences with
"it" can, which is not the case. "Ono" must have an antecedent, even though
it (the antecedent) is not a noun, but an idea or an utterance.

Alina Israeli