It's a type of subjectless sentence called impersonal where the subject is not even implied. Neuter is often used in this kind of sentences. I struggle to recall such a sentence where the verb is not in neuter when in past tense.
I think might be easier to learn all cases where the verb can be used in impersonal sentences. These sentences are usually quite short so it might be easier to recall when you see it in the wild.
"Её / его не стало" is an impersonal existential construction meaning "She / he is no longer here / no longer exists" (often with a nuance of death, disappearance, or irreversible absence).
It is not a normal subject-predicate sentence. The pronouns её / его are in the genitive case. This follows a very old and productive Russian pattern:
не + стало / будет / было + Genitive “there is / was / will be no …”
Не стало времени - There was no more time
Не стало денег - There was no more money
Не стало друзей - There were no more friends
Её не стало - She was gone
So grammatically this is the same type of sentence as:
Денег не стало. - There was no more money.
Людей не стало. - There were no more people.
"Стало" is neuter, because the sentence is impersonal. When Russian has no nominative subject and an impersonal existential meaning, the verb defaults to 3rd person singular neuter. This is standard in Russian:
Было холодно - It was cold
Стало темно - It got dark
Не стало времени - There was no more time
Её не стало - She was gone
So "стало" does not agree with “её / его”, because they are not subjects.
"Он не стал" or "она не стала" would mean something completely different:
Он не стал врачом - He didn’t become a doctor
Она не стала ждать - She didn’t start / didn’t decide to wait
Here:
"он / она" = nominative subject
"стал / стала" = personal verb, agreeing in gender
But in: "Её не стало" there is no subject, only the absence of existence.
Check it:
Она ушла - she left (neutral, factual)
Она исчезла - she disappeared
Её не стало - she is gone (final, irreversible, often euphemistic for death)
That’s why this construction is stylistically neutral to elevated common in obituaries, literature, serious speech
Wow, this is an amazingly detailed and helpful answer, спасибо большое! It really clears things up for me. Could I just confirm my understanding: in «ее не стало», since ee is in the genitive case instead of nominative, it causes the sentence to not have a subject, and so there is nothing for «стать» to agree with, and so we choose the default neuter gender?
More the other way around: since there is no subject, it means её is an object, and thus it takes the genitive case. But also since there's no subject, it makes the verb take the neuter gender, yes.
It's raining. What is raining? Nothing is actually doing the action of raining, raining isn't really an action but a state of affairs. English inserts a dummy subject "it" in such situations, but Russian doesn't - if there's no subject then there's no subject. That's the overall idea of an impersonal sentence. Although for the actual "it's raining" example we'd say "идёт дождь", with rain being the subject doing the action of "going", so there you go...
It's a type of subjectless sentence called impersonal where the subject is not even implied. Neuter is often used in this kind of sentences. I struggle to recall such a sentence where the verb is not in neuter when in past tense.
I think might be easier to learn all cases where the verb can be used in impersonal sentences. These sentences are usually quite short so it might be easier to recall when you see it in the wild.
"Её / его не стало" is an impersonal existential construction meaning "She / he is no longer here / no longer exists" (often with a nuance of death, disappearance, or irreversible absence).
It is not a normal subject-predicate sentence. The pronouns её / его are in the genitive case. This follows a very old and productive Russian pattern:
не + стало / будет / было + Genitive
“there is / was / will be no …”
Не стало времени - There was no more time
Не стало денег - There was no more money
Не стало друзей - There were no more friends
Её не стало - She was gone
So grammatically this is the same type of sentence as:
Денег не стало. - There was no more money.
Людей не стало. - There were no more people.
"Стало" is neuter, because the sentence is impersonal. When Russian has no nominative subject and an impersonal existential meaning, the verb defaults to 3rd person singular neuter. This is standard in Russian:
Было холодно - It was cold
Стало темно - It got dark
Не стало времени - There was no more time
Её не стало - She was gone
So "стало" does not agree with “её / его”, because they are not subjects.
"Он не стал" or "она не стала" would mean something completely different:
Он не стал врачом - He didn’t become a doctor
Она не стала ждать - She didn’t start / didn’t decide to wait
Here:
"он / она" = nominative subject
"стал / стала" = personal verb, agreeing in gender
But in: "Её не стало" there is no subject, only the absence of existence.
Check it:
Она ушла - she left (neutral, factual)
Она исчезла - she disappeared
Её не стало - she is gone (final, irreversible, often euphemistic for death)
That’s why this construction is stylistically neutral to elevated common in obituaries, literature, serious speech
Wow, this is an amazingly detailed and helpful answer, спасибо большое! It really clears things up for me. Could I just confirm my understanding: in «ее не стало», since ee is in the genitive case instead of nominative, it causes the sentence to not have a subject, and so there is nothing for «стать» to agree with, and so we choose the default neuter gender?
exactly, you got it
More the other way around: since there is no subject, it means её is an object, and thus it takes the genitive case. But also since there's no subject, it makes the verb take the neuter gender, yes.
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Её стошнило...
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Я просто перечитывал комментарии и меня не покидало желание добавить этот пример.
It's raining. What is raining? Nothing is actually doing the action of raining, raining isn't really an action but a state of affairs. English inserts a dummy subject "it" in such situations, but Russian doesn't - if there's no subject then there's no subject. That's the overall idea of an impersonal sentence. Although for the actual "it's raining" example we'd say "идёт дождь", with rain being the subject doing the action of "going", so there you go...
A good example of an impersonal construction for ‘it’s raining’ is ‘На улице моросило.’
That's fixed expression.
«его не стало» means "he died" ( he ceased to exist).
Let's think of it as a transformation of a person from a living being into an object.
WTF