A permi nyelvek személytelen szerkezeteinek disztribúciója az ágens háttérbe szorításának mértéke alapján

Impersonality, from a functional-semantic viewpoint, is closely related with the demotion of the agent (cf. SIEWIERSKA 2008a, GIVÓN 1990). The aim of this paper is to outline some types of impersonal expressions which are used in Permic languages, e.g. in Zyrian, in Permyak and in Udmurt. According to SIEWIERSKA (id.: 121), impersonality is associated with agent defocusing, which may involve: (a) the non-elaboration or under-elaboration of the agent, (b) the demotion of the agent from its prototypical subject and topic function or (c) both demotion and non-elaboration. In my study, I give a distribution of each subclass, using functional and structural criteria to describe the types in question. As a result, I provide a hierarchy of impersonals, which is based on prototypicality. The hierarchy can be expressed as follows: indefinite pronoun > generic noun = Pl3 impersonal > predicative noun = modal construction > causative construction = Gen+reflexive > participle > meteoverb = impersonal passive > reflexive