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The change that never happened: the story of oblique subjects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2003

JÓHANNA BARĐDAL  and
THÓRHALLUR EYTHÓRSSON
JÓHANNA BARĐDAL
Affiliation:
Lund University/University of Bergen
THÓRHALLUR EYTHÓRSSON
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Abstract

This paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the syntactic status of oblique subject-like NPs in the ‘impersonal’ construction (of the type me-thinks) in Old Germanic. The debate is caused by the lack of canonical subject case marking in such NPs. It has been argued that these NPs are syntactic objects, but we provide evidence for their subject status, as in Modern Icelandic and Faroese. Thus, we argue that the syntactic status of the oblique subject-like NPs has not changed at all from object status to subject status, contra standard claims in the literature. Our evidence stems from Old Icelandic, but the analysis has implications for the other old Germanic languages as well. However, a change from non-canonical to canonical subject case marking (‘Nominative Sickness’) has affected all the Germanic languages to a varying degree.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , November 2003 , pp. 439 - 472
Copyright
2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We would like to thank Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, Kjartan Ottosson, Sverrir Tómasson, Christer Platzack, Joan Maling, Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson, Caroline Heycock and two anonymous JL referees for comments and/or discussions. We are also indebted to the audiences at the LAGB spring meeting in Leeds, 5–7 April 2001, the Workshop on Case and Argument Structure in Reykjavík, 27 May 2001, the XV ICHL in Melbourne, Australia, 13–17 August 2001, and the Linguistics Colloquium, Department of English, University of North Texas, 28 November 2001. This research was partly funded by a grant from STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) to the first author and by a fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) to the second author.