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The Russian Adversity Impersonal Construction is examined for its specific construction-level semantics. The adversative semantics is argued here as derived mostly from the sentence-initial NP in accusative even in the lack of a causer NP in instrumental case. The current proposal is supported from a corresponding construction in Icelandic, dubbed as a “Fate Accusative Construction (Sigurđsson 2006), which can not overtly include a causer. The present paper also argues that the adversity impersonal construction arose to emphasize ‘eventiveness’ of the situation decribed by predicate, in contrast to passive-voice sentences which may have both eventive and resultative/stative readings. As a crucial implication of the current analysis, the adversity impersonal construction is suggested as an event passive.
