Impersonal constructions in Russian

[Alina Israeli]

>A Czech-speaking linguist has asked me to inquire about impersonal
>expressions in Russian of the sort: "dorogu zaneslo snegom" or "trup
>uneslo rekoj" (These are discussed briefly in T. Wade, A Comprehensive
>Russian Grammar pp. 320-321.)
>
>The question is this: do these expressions ever appear in the non-past?

Of course. Although future perfect pauses problems of predicting the future
with certainty, which Russian language avoids doing (unless we think of
Annushka: Annushka uzhe razlila maslo i Berliozu nepremenno otrezhet
golovu). But it is easy to make conditional sentences:

Tebja ub'et tokom, esli ty ne prekratish' balovat'sja.

Present actual is also possible:

Smotrite, ego unosit vniz po techeniju.

The agent is hardly needed there. Even the sentence you gave can be
paraphrased without the agent:

K vecheru dorogu zaneset [everybody understands that we are talking about
snow], i my ne smozhem vybrat'sja.

>Beyond that, can they be considered productive?

I think so.

*************************************************************
Alina Israeli
LFS, American University                phone:  (202) 885-2387
4400 Mass. Ave., NW                     fax:    (202) 885-1076
Washington DC 20016-8045