The paper analyses explanatory clauses i.e. “Schastye, chto menya podobrali” (“[It was] luck that
I was picked up”). Evaluative predicates in the main part of the sentence are divided into two classes
corresponding to the two roles of the subordinate clause, namely a sentential actant and a circumstance.
Based on the corpus data, we studied the temporal preferences for such sentences, their modification by
particles, and the morphological specialisation of their predicates. It appears that the subject of evaluation is congruent with the speaker and does not appear in the statements. In contrast to the anaphoric
object of evaluation that indicates a phenomenon or a person, deictic object of evaluation aims only
at the participant in the act of speech.