Le costruzioni impersonali con quantificatore in russo come test d’inaccusatività: un’ipotesi da verificare,

This paper provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of partitive impersonal constructions, namely constructions that display the argument of the verb in its initial position and in the genitive case followed by the impersonal form of the verb and by a quantifier: NPGEN + VIMPR + QP Ljudej sidelo troe. In the paper it is shown that these constructions can be taken as another test for the unaccusativity of the Russian language, along with other es-tablished tests like the genitive of negation, distributive po-phrases, loca-tive inversion, verbs with the quantitative prefixes na- and po- and first conjunct agreement. Finally, the paper provides an explanation for the so-called Variable Be-havior Predicates (Levin, Rappaport Hovav 1995), i.e. unergative verbs that, in certain specific contexts, behave like unaccusatives.