Quirky subject

Grammatical features
Related to nouns
Related to verbs
General features
Syntax relationships
Semantics
Phenomena

In linguistics, quirky subjects (also called oblique subjects) are a phenomenon where certain verbs specify that their subjects are to be in a case other than the nominative.[1][2] These non-nominative subjects are determiner phrases that pass subjecthood tests such as subject-oriented anaphora binding, PRO control, reduced relative clause, conjunction reduction,[3] subject-to-subject raising, and subject-to-object raising.[4][5]

It has been observed cross-linguistically that the subject of a sentence often has a nominative case. However, this one-to-one relationship between case and grammatical relations (subjecthood) is highly debatable.[6][3] Some argue that nominative case marking and controlling verb agreement are not unique properties of subjects.[6] One piece of evidence in support of this proposal is the observation that nominative can also mark left-dislocated NPs, appellatives and some objects in the active in Icelandic. In addition, agreeing predicate NPs can also be marked nominative case:[6]

María

Mary.NOM

er

is

snillingur

genius.NOM

María er snillingur

Mary.NOM is genius.NOM

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assuming NOM means "nominative case";

In Standard English, a sentence like "*Me like him" is ungrammatical because the subject is ordinarily in the nominative case. In many or most nominative–accusative languages, this rule is inflexible: the subject is indeed in the nominative case, and almost all treat the subjects of all verbs the same. Icelandic was argued to be the only modern language with quirky subjects,[4] but other studies investigating languages like Basque,[7] Faroese,[5][8][6][9] German,[5] Gujarati,[10] Hindi,[11] Hungarian,[12] Kannada,[13] Korean,[14] Laz,[15] Malayalam,[16] Marathi,[17] Russian,[18][19][20] Spanish,[21][22][23] and Telugu[24] show that they also possess quirky subjects.

The class of quirky subjects in Icelandic is a large one, consisting of hundreds of verbs in a number of distinct classes: experiencer verbs like vanta (need/lack), motion verbs like reka (drift), change of state verbs like ysta (curdle), verbs of success/failure like takast (succeed/manage to), verbs of acquisition like áskotnast (acquire/get by luck), and many others.[25]

In superficially similar constructions of the type seen in Spanish me gusta "I like", the analogous part of speech (in this case me) is not a true syntactical subject.[citation needed] "Me" is instead the object of the verb "gusta" which has a meaning closer to "please", thus, "me gusta" could be translated as "(he/she/it) pleases me" or "I am pleased by [x]."

Many linguists, especially from various persuasions of the broad school of cognitive linguistics, do not use the term "quirky subjects" since the term is biased towards languages of nominative–accusative type. Often, "quirky subjects" are semantically motivated by the predicates of their clauses. Dative-subjects, for example, quite often correspond with predicates indicating sensory, cognitive, or experiential states across a large number of languages. In some cases, this can be seen as evidence for the influence of active–stative typology.

  1. ^ Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur (1991). "Quirky Subjects in Old Icelandic" (PDF). In Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson (ed.). Papers from the Twelfth Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics. pp. 369–378.
  2. ^ Fischer, Susann (2004). "The diachronic relationship between quirky subjects and stylistic fronting". In Peri Bhaskararao; Karumuri V. Subbarao (eds.). Non-nominative Subjects. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 193–212. ISBN 90-272-2970-8.
  3. ^ a b Poole, Ethan (2014). Deconstructing quirky subjects. University of Massachusetts Amherst. North East Linguistic Society 45.
  4. ^ a b Faarlund, Jan T. (2001). "The notion of oblique subject and its status in the history of Icelandic". In Jan T. Faarlund (ed.). Grammatical relations in change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 99–135. ISBN 9789027298041.
  5. ^ a b c Pankau, Andreas (2016). Quirky subjects in Icelandic, Faroese, and German: a relational account. Presentation at the Joint 2016 Conference on HPSG and LFG, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
  6. ^ a b c d Þráinsson, Höskuldur (2007). The syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  7. ^ Rezac, M. and Fernández, B. (2012). "Dative displacement in Basque". In Variation in datives: A microcomparative perspective, ed. Beatriz Fernández and Ricardo Etxepare, Chapter 9. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  8. ^ Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli (2009). "Convert nominative and dative subjects in Faroese". Nordlyd. 37: 99. doi:10.7557/12.2025.
  9. ^ Þráinsson, Höskuldur, Hjalmar P. Petersen, Jógvaní Lon Jacobsen, & Zakaris Svabo Hansen (2003). Faroese: An overview and reference grammar. Tórshavn: Føroya Fróðskaparfelag.
  10. ^ Mistry, P.J (2004). Subjecthood of non-nominatives in Gujarati. In Non-nominative subjects, ed. Peri Bhaskararao & Karumuri Venkata Subbarao, volume 2, 1–13. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  11. ^ Bhatt, Rajesh (2003). Experiencer subjects. Handout from MIT course "Structure of the Modern Indo-Aryan Languages".
  12. ^ Rákosi, György (2006). Dative experiencer predicates in Hungarian. Utrecht: LOT.
  13. ^ Amritavalli, R (2004). Experiencer datives in Kannada. In Non-nominative subjects, ed. Peri Bhaskararao & Karumuri Venkata Subbarao, volume 1, 1-24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  14. ^ Yoon, James (2004). Non-nominative (major) subjects and cases tacking in Korean. In Non-nominative subjects, ed. Peri Bhaskararao & Karumuri Venkata Subbarao, volume 2, 265-314. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  15. ^ Demirok, Omar (2013). Agree as a unidirectional operation: evidence from Laz. Master's thesis. Boğaziçi University.
  16. ^ Jayaseelan, K.A (2004). The possessor-experiencer dative in Malayalam. In Non-nominative subjects, ed. Peri Bhaskararao & Karumuri Venkata Subbarao, volume 1, 227-244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  17. ^ Wali, Kashi (2004). Non-nominative subjects in Marathi. In Non-nominative subjects, ed. Peri Bhaskararao & Karumuri Venkata Subbarao, volume 2, 223-252. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  18. ^ Schoorlemmer, Maaike (1994). Dative subjects in Russian. In Formal approaches to Slavic linguistics: The Ann Arbor meeting, ed. Jindřich Toman, 129-172. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications.
  19. ^ Moore, John, & David Perlmutter (2000). What does it take to be a dative subject? Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18: 373-416.
  20. ^ Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann (2002). To be an oblique subject: Russian vs. Icelandic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20: 691-724.
  21. ^ González, Nora (1988). Object and raising in Spanish. New York: Garland.
  22. ^ Masullo, Pascual J (1993). Two types of quirky subjects: Spanish versus Icelandic. In Proceedings of the 23rd Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 23), ed. Amy J. Schafer, 303-317. Amherst, MA: GLSA.
  23. ^ Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo (2006). A interpretation of quirky subjects and related phenomena in Spanish. In New perspectives in Romance linguistics, ed. Chiyo Nishida & Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil, 127-142. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  24. ^ Subbarao, Karumuri Venkata and Bhaskararao, Peri (2004). Non-nominative subjects in Telugu. In Non-nominative subjects, ed. Peri Bhaskararao & Karumuri Venkata Subbarao, volume 2, 161-196. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  25. ^ Jónsson, Jóhannes G. (2003). "Not so quirky: On subject case in Icelandic". In Ellen Brandner; Heike Zinsmeister (eds.). New Perspectives on Case Theory. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. pp. 127–163.