In Russian, argument clauses can be nominalized by the demonstrative pronoun to ‘that’ (henceforth, to čto-clauses). Although to čto-clauses have often been discussed in the literature, their distribution is still not fully understood and is subject to conflicting claims, partly owing to the fact that to čto in the accusative/nominative position coincides with the “emerging” (noninflected) complementizer to čto in nonstandard colloquial varieties of Russian. This paper focuses on the acceptability status of to čto-clauses in the accusative position, which have been deemed generally degraded (or unacceptable) in standard Russian by some accounts (referred to here as case-based accounts), in contrast to the oblique/object-of-P position (where both čto- and to čto-clauses are optional). On other accounts that view to čto as the marker of given/familiar information, there is no general constraint against to čto-clauses in the accusative as long as the predicate is compatible with familiar complements. In this paper, we test these two accounts experimentally, focusing on the prediction of the givenness-based account according to which different predicate classes, specifically presuppositional vs. nonpresuppositional, differ in the frequency of to čto-clauses (irrespective of their case properties). Using elicited production and acceptability judgments, we confirm the view that to čto-clauses in the accusative position with presuppositional predicates, e.g. otricat’ ‘deny’, osoznat’ ‘realize’, etc. are indeed acceptable, in contrast to nonpresuppositional predicates. In addition, we show that presuppositional predicates show a higher rate of to čto-clauses in the oblique/object-of-P position, further supporting the givenness-based account. Yet, we also find that accusative-marked to čto-clauses with predicates like osoznat’ ‘realize’ are produced much less frequently than expected based on their presuppositionality. We explain this by an independent dispreference for accusative-marked to čto-clauses in production, supporting a weaker version of the case-based view. We offer a tentative proposal as to how case and presuppositionality can be combined in a unified account of the distribution of to čto-clauses. Last but not least, our results also shed light on the status of nonstandard to čto, which, as we show, displays a specific acceptability profile characteristic of stigmatized grammatical variants.

在俄语中，论证从句可以通过指示代词“that”（以下称为čto子句）来名词化。尽管to čto从句经常在文献中讨论，但它们的分布仍然没有被完全理解，并且受到相互冲突的主张的影响，部分原因是宾格/主格位置的to čto与“新兴”（非屈折变化）重合。俄语非标准口语变体中čto的补足词。本文重点讨论宾格位置中to čto子句的可接受性状况，在标准俄语中，某些说法（此处称为基于案例的说法）认为这些从句普遍被降级（或不可接受），与间接/ object-of-P 位置（其中čto - 和to čto - 子句都是可选的）。在其他将čto视为给定/熟悉信息标记的帐户中，只要谓语与熟悉的补语兼容，宾格中就没有对to čto子句的一般限制。在本文中，我们通过实验测试这两个帐户，重点关注基于给定的帐户的预测，根据不同的谓词类别，特别是预设与非预设，to čto子句的频率不同（无论其格属性如何） 。使用引出式产生式和可接受性判断，我们证实这样的观点：与非预设谓词相比，带有预设谓词的宾格位置的to čto子句，例如otricat' 'deny'、osoznat' 'realize' 等确实是可以接受的。此外，我们还表明，预设谓词在间接/宾语 P 位置上显示出更高的to čto子句比率，进一步支持了基于给定的解释。然而，我们还发现，带有像osoznat' 'realize' 这样的谓词的宾格标记到čto子句的产生频率远低于基于其预设性的预期。我们通过对生产中宾格标记到čto子句的独立不偏好来解释这一点，支持基于案例的观点的较弱版本。我们提出了一个关于如何将案例和预设性结合到to čto子句分布的统一说明中的初步建议。最后但并非最不重要的一点是，我们的结果也揭示了非标准的现状 to čto，正如我们所展示的，它显示了污名化语法变体的特定可接受性特征。