Russian constructions with numerals and quantifiers: Their non-standard use in the subject and object position
In the article, I describe cases of special behavior of Russian phrases with quantifiers like neskol'ko ‘some', mnogo ‘many, much' and small numerals like dva ‘two'. I show that they can occur in the subject position in contexts that usually do not contain a canonical DP/NP subject (constructions with the verb xvatat' ‘be enough', negation contexts with the verb byt' ‘be' and its habitual / iterative correlate byvat' ), and for neskol'ko -like quantifiers, the direct object position with intransitive predicates like na-…-sja circumfixed verbs is also available. The reason of noncanonical subject behavior is the possibility to be subjects without controlling plural verbal agreement, while the non-canonical direct object behavior is possible because neskol'ko -like quantifiers lack the category of case.