Some aspects of the valence of the infinitive in the context of the ergative basis of the Russian language

the article examines the functional and grammatical features of infinitive constructions in the history of the Russian literary language in comparison with dialectal variants, and identifies individual traces of the ergative structure in modern Russian. According to the results of the study, it can be concluded that constructions with the Nominative case of the direct complement with the infinitive were well-spread in the Old Russian language and are still used in a number of Northern Russian dialects. Russian nominative forms presented in the article can be considered as traces of the ancient ergative structure in the history of the Russian language and partially correlate such a Nominative with the Absolute case of the patient in ergative languages, for example, in Sumerian. Regarding the selective combination of such a nominative case with feminine forms of nouns, an analogy can be drawn with the process of formation of the grammatical category of animateness-inanimateness in the history of the Russian language. Another feature related to the use of constructions "Infinitive in combination with a name in the Nominative case as part of impersonal sentences" requires a closer study of such phenomena of the Old Russian language and its dialectal forms as constructions of the impersonal passive, which were also well-known in ancient ergative languages, for example, in Sumerian. But this topic requires a separate and more in-depth study.

ergative languages, Russian, Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek