Изреченията с екзистенциално значение в българския и руския език

The paper discusses some sentences with the verbs съм/быть, имам/иметь and some nominative sentences. It gives general characteristics of the basic (semantically non-extended) types of existential sentences in Bulgarian and Russian. Their underlying invariable structure is determined in relation to the propositional content. A contrastive approach is used to define the functional and formal orientation of the verbal predicates and they are compared with the nucleus of the verbless (nominative) sentences. An explanation is given for the compulsory and/or optional character of some temporal and local adverbials.