Slavic nominative construction with verbs of perception, thought, and speech.

The nominative construction with verbs of perception, thought, and communication attested in Slavic medieval texts was inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language. The necessary structural conditions of its use were the referential identity of the subject of the matrix predicate and the subject of the nominative construction as well as the ellipsis of the subject of the nominative construction. If the matrix predicate was transitive and its object was implicit, then the matrix predicate could only superordinate a participial construction. If the matrix predicate had an overt direct object or was in the medial voice, then the matrix predicate could superordinate either a participial nominative construction or a construction with a noun (or other substantives) in the nominative case. Usually, the subject of the subordinate predicate did not agree for case with the co-referential direct object of the matrix predicate. The subject of the subordinate predicate agreed for case with the co-referential subject of the matrix predicate in the constructions with nouns and other substantives, but the agreement could be absent from the participial constructions — this fact may evidence a certain autonomy of embedded clauses and make them similar to subordinate clauses.