# adverbial with no subject



## pimlicodude

From Solzhenitsyn:


> В 1891 «часть высланных евреев незаконно поселилась в московских пригородах». Но, продолжая меры, осенью 1892 было повеление «о выселении из Москвы отставных солдат рекрутских наборов и членов их семей, не приписанных к обществам»


Продолжая меры here has no subject. Who continues the measures? It this acceptable in Russian grammar?


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## GCRaistlin

_Продолжая меры_ относится к _было повеление. _С точки зрения грамматики правильнее было бы написать, например, _в продолжение мер было повеление._


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## pimlicodude

GCRaistlin said:


> _Продолжая меры_ относится к _было повеление. _С точки зрения грамматики правильнее было бы написать, например, _в продолжение мер было повеление._


Спасибо, мне больше нравится ваш вариант!


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## nizzebro

To me, it is a syntactical discontinuity like this -  Анаколуф -  because one cannot attach adverbials to 'to be' as such.
It would be normal to attach it to a complete verbal meaning within a participle - e.g.  "было издано"


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## Awwal12

pimlicodude said:


> It this acceptable in Russian grammar?


It's very poor syntax. A frequent things among undereducated people who try to use the literary language, though. The trouble is that adverbial participles are practically absent in colloquial Russian, so to use them correctly one must have either a great experience with literary texts or decent theoretical knowledge. Otherwise it unavoidably ends up in expressions like the famous "подъезжая к сией станции и глядя на природу в окно, у меня слетела шляпа".


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## pimlicodude

I've come across this in Solzhenitsyn:


> Не случайно же в 90-х годах XIX века, впервые в России и опередив в том Европу, в южных губерниях возникли земледельческие кооперативы (под руководством графа Гейдена и Бехтеева) – как противодействие этой, по сущности вполне монопольной, скупке крестьянского хлеба.


I think опередив is another adverbial used incorrectly. кооперативы is nominative to возникли, but I'm not sure that возникли кооперативы as a phrase can govern an adverbial participle.


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## Awwal12

pimlicodude said:


> I think опередив is another adverbial used incorrectly. кооперативы is nominative to возникли, but I'm not sure that возникли кооперативы as a phrase can govern an adverbial participle.


Why not? Formally it looks correct (though maybe not very eloquent).


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## pimlicodude

Awwal12 said:


> Why not? Formally it looks correct (though maybe not very eloquent).


I see. Maybe продолжая меры, осенью 1892 было повеление  is not good, because повеление is the predicate in an impersonal sentence (было повеление) and not the nominative of было whereas here in вознили кооперативы, кооперативы is actually the nominative.


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## Awwal12

pimlicodude said:


> Maybe продолжая меры, осенью 1892 было повеление is not good, because повеление is the predicate in an impersonal sentence (было повеление) and not the nominative of было


Let's just try and turn everything into sentences with a conjoined predicate.
Кооперативы возникли *и опередили* в том Европу - more or less fine.
Повеление было *и продолжило* меры - definitely not.
Formally повеление is a subject (for starters, it does control the verb's gender: был указ vs. *было указ), so the problem doesn't lie here. In principle, it *may* be also used with "продолжило меры", though it would be better to say "продолжило собой меры". Still, even with that correction "продолжая собой меры, осенью 1892 было повеление" doesn't sound well at all. Apparently, nizzebro is right and the issue is in the type of the predicate, which doesn't get conjoined with other predicates well (technically, it's a restriction on elliptic deletion of the repeating subject*) and has equal problems with being modified by adverbial participles.

*cf.: осенью 1892 года было повеление «о выселении из Москвы отставных солдат», и *оно* продолжило собой меры.....


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## nizzebro

I cannot see


pimlicodude said:


> Maybe продолжая меры, осенью 1892 было повеление is not good, because повеление is the predicate in an impersonal sentence (было повеление) and not the nominative of было whereas here in вознили кооперативы, кооперативы is actually the nominative.


I frankly don't see a syntactical difference between  'было повеление' and 'возникли кооперативы'. Yes, the former could be translated with "there was a command" - and interpreted as impersonal, but in Russian, it is "a command was" where the topic-comment rearrangement makes it appear as  "there was".
The issue is purely semantical. Было means "took place (on the timeline)" . Even though it is an "action" of повеление - it is not just a stative one, but is so abstract imperfective sense that it cannot be accompanied by something else in a way like "he walked _slowly_, _stumbling _and _cursing_".
The sense "и опередив ..., ... возникли" is normal as it shows some dynamics; it is not so consistent, but, as Awwal noted, the author additionally uses the trick "в том", forcing the adverbial to refer to that preliminary "in that", smearing the actual link. Plus there is "впервые в России" which mimics the main adverbial sense - so it looks as if "опередив в том" is an additional modification (though it is not). I believe such manipulation is possible only due to the introductory position of these adverbials, and the generalizing sense of "в том".


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## pimlicodude

nizzebro said:


> I cannot see
> 
> I frankly don't see a syntactical difference between  'было повеление' and 'возникли кооперативы'. Yes, the former could be translated with "there was a command" - and interpreted as impersonal, but in Russian, it is "a command was" where the topic-comment rearrangement makes it appear as  "there was".
> The issue is purely semantical. Было means "took place (on the timeline)" . Even though it is an "action" of повеление - it is not just a stative one, but is so abstract imperfective sense that it cannot be accompanied by something else in a way like "he walked _slowly_, _stumbling _and _cursing_".
> The sense "и опередив ..., ... возникли" is normal as it shows some dynamics; it is not so consistent, but, as Awwal noted, the author additionally uses the trick "в том", forcing the adverbial to refer to that preliminary "in that", smearing the actual link. Plus there is "впервые в России" which mimics the main adverbial sense - so it looks as if "опередив в том" is an additional modification (though it is not). I believe such manipulation is possible only due to the introductory position of these adverbials, and the generalizing sense of "в том".


Yes, I was misled by English into thinking было повеление must be impersonal, because in English there is the redundant "there".


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## nizzebro

pimlicodude said:


> because in English there is the redundant "there".


I don't think it is redundant. Actually "было повеление" sounds incomplete taken separately; such phrases typically are based on fronted adverbials - and the author implements this function as 'осенью 1892' . Absence of an initial adverbial (like "Идёт дождь" or "Начался чемпионат по футболу") is generally a rare bookish/formal feature, and is used only when there's no need to specify the  environment.

I've seen in English wiki that they are defining "there is" as a separate verb - I don't understand why. To me, everything should be taken as is. "there was an event" in my understanding means "Some-thing-not-defined-yet, was in a general domain which we call 'there' - okay? and now we tell you that thing is an event". Roughly the same principle works in Russian, but, as it uses word reordering for topicalization, any verb can be placed in front - but still the initial environment needs to be set.


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## pimlicodude

nizzebro said:


> I don't think it is redundant. Actually "было повеление" sounds incomplete taken separately; such phrases typically are based on fronted adverbials - and the author implements this function as 'осенью 1892' . Absence of an initial adverbial (like "Идёт дождь" or "Начался чемпионат по футболу") is generally a rare bookish/formal feature, and is used only when there's no need to specify the  environment.
> 
> I've seen in English wiki that they are defining "there is" as a separate verb - I don't understand why. To me, everything should be taken as is. "there was an event" in my understanding means "Some-thing-not-defined-yet, was in a general domain which we call 'there' - okay? and now we tell you that thing is an event". Roughly the same principle works in Russian, but, as it uses word reordering for topicalization, any verb can be placed in front - but still the initial environment needs to be set.


Yes, I see the "there" as meaning the same thing, although I think few native speakers of English sit down and try to work out what the there means - we just take the language as given as all native speakers of any language do. 

If you look at было, and see that it is the past tense form of --- (i.e. a deleted present-tense form, or есть), then if you can say:

adverbial + было повеление

then you should be able to say:

adverbial + (deleted present-tense copula) +noun

ожидая меня, на этом столе - книга

which sounds odd.


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## Rosett

pimlicodude said:


> ожидая меня, на этом столе - книга
> 
> which sounds odd.


Ожидая меня, на столе лежала записка = На столе меня ожидала записка. The first phrase is correct, but the second one sounds better, and there’s a historical reason for that.


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## nizzebro

pimlicodude said:


> If you look at было, and see that it is the past tense form of --- (i.e. a deleted present-tense form, or есть), then if you can say:
> 
> adverbial + было повеление
> 
> then you should be able to say:
> 
> adverbial + (deleted present-tense copula) +noun
> 
> ожидая меня, на этом столе - книга
> 
> which sounds odd.


Well, "на этом столе - книга" already has an adverbial which sets the topic (in the sense of the environment), so it is fine (even though without "лежит",  it sounds as "and as for this table, there is a book on it (unlike another table/chair/etc) - that is, the copula lacks a complete picture of the subject's state).

But "ожидая меня, ... (есть)/была" is unacceptable, whatever the tense, only due to the indefinite meaning of 'to be'. "На столе была книга" means only that, in relation to the table's surface (the topic), there was a time stretch in the past with the book present. On the other hand, "ожидая меня, на этом столе лежит/лежала книга" is fine because ожидая can serve as an extension of the state of "лежит".  "Ожидая меня" doesn't affect anything in the structure so it can be placed anywhere in this sentence - it is only a modifier of the verb, while the topical part is 'на этом столе'. Verbal adverbials are in general a perversion. In real life they would say "...лежала и ждала меня".


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## Sobakus

I haven't read most of the thread, but I think nizzebro is on the right track when he mentions semantics. Specifically it's about the agency/animacy hierarchy, which is involved on many levels in many various languages (look for studies in Google if interested - I can't seem to find a good summary).

The phrase «было повеление» is explicitly de-agentive, i.e. intentionally concealing the agent and presenting the occurrence as a matter of course or even necessitated by the metaphysical fabric of the universe (so that it cannot be questioned) - something characteristic of generic European bureaucratese. This *demotion in animacy* appears to put it low enough on the scale that it becomes incompatible with the semantic feature that I will for the moment call 'controller' and associate with the syntactic notion of control, which the expression «продолжая меры» appears to require from its subject.

I think the same basic explanation applies to all those oft-ridiculed cases of "bad participle agreement" like «проезжая...шляпа». I want to reiterate in this respect that this is underlied by a gradual hierarchy determined by several conflicting factors, making facile, categorical judgements of the "if there's no subject to the participle, it's wrong" type unproductive.

So all in all, it's not bad grammar, it's unusual and marked semantics.


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