Direct quotation construction with the verb dumaf (‘think') in Russian
Finite asyndetic complement clauses present an interesting phenomenon to the theoretical and typological works, considering that they allow a number of different interpretations: a parenthetical clause (Eto interesnyj, ya dumayu, vopros, lit. 'This is an interesting, I think, question'), a complement clause (Ya-to, durak, dumal, segodnya vyhodnoj, lit. 'I, as a fool, thought there is a holiday today') or a direct speech construction (On dumal: «Kto zhe na menya napal?», 'He was thinking: «Who assaulted me then?»'). The paper is devoted to the direct speech construction with the verb dumat' 'think' in Russian. First, I show that the clause that conveys the matter of thought actually has all the properties of the direct speech constructions in Russian, see the list of the direct speech properties in works. Second, I argue that the direct speech construction with dumat' (almost) does not show clause reduction, as it happens with the asyndetic constructions of supposition. Namely, the direct speech construction with dumat' can have common nouns as subject of thought, the matrix clause can host adverbials, converbal clauses, epistemic expressions and main clause phenomena. All these properties are attested with both initial, medial and final clauses with dumat' (i.e. irrespective of the linear position of the matrix clause to the dependent clause).