Peter Kosta

• The traditional and functional grammars differentiate between primary (obligatory) and secondary (optional) constituents of the sentence. The primary parts are subject, predicate, their attributive extensions and indirect and direct objects. The secondary parts are Adjuncts, Prepositional Phrases and Frames (Adverbials). The present article analyzes different models, starting off with the models of generative grammar, continuing with the dependency and valency grammars and ending up with alternative models of Russian and/or Czech functional grammars. Under standard generative analysis the most discussed point is the problem of impersonal sentences and the status of subjects and objects therein: neither the concept of subject, being the Noun phrase (NP) of a finite verb [NP,IP], nor of object headed by a verbal phrase [NP,VP], fit into the picture of Universal grammar as it has been discussed in the Standard Theory (Chomsky 1965) because in impersonal sentences the subject NP is not assigned Nominative case and the object often has toThe traditional and functional grammars differentiate between primary (obligatory) and secondary (optional) constituents of the sentence. The primary parts are subject, predicate, their attributive extensions and indirect and direct objects. The secondary parts are Adjuncts, Prepositional Phrases and Frames (Adverbials). The present article analyzes different models, starting off with the models of generative grammar, continuing with the dependency and valency grammars and ending up with alternative models of Russian and/or Czech functional grammars. Under standard generative analysis the most discussed point is the problem of impersonal sentences and the status of subjects and objects therein: neither the concept of subject, being the Noun phrase (NP) of a finite verb [NP,IP], nor of object headed by a verbal phrase [NP,VP], fit into the picture of Universal grammar as it has been discussed in the Standard Theory (Chomsky 1965) because in impersonal sentences the subject NP is not assigned Nominative case and the object often has to move out of the complement position for reasons of case assignment and case filter. Thus, this chapter tries to redefine the notion of 'subject' and 'object' in impersonal constructions based on the results of current theories of Minimalism (Chomsky 1995 forthcoming, Szucsich 2008, and others).…