Quirky subject

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. Some argue that nominative case marking and controlling verb agreement are not unique properties of subjects. 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:

María

Mary.NOM

er

is

snillingur

genius.NOM

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, but other studies investigating languages like Basque, Faroese, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Kannada, Korean, Laz, Malayalam, Marathi, Russian, Spanish, and Telugu 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.

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. "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.

In ergative–absolutive languages, the absolutive case is not considered a quirky subject, because it functions as the default, structurally unmarked case for the subjects of intransitive verbs and the objects of transitive verbs. However, in languages with split ergativity based on tense or aspect—such as Middle Persian and Kurdish—the alignment reverses in the past tense: the logical agent appears in the ergative case, while the argument in the absolutive position acquires core syntactic properties typically associated with subjects (such as agreement and control). In these systems, the absolutive argument is not the canonical subject from a morphological perspective, yet it behaves like one syntactically, and therefore it can be analyzed as a form of quirky subject within a split-ergative alignment.

Subjecthood tests

Generally, nominative subjects satisfy tests that prove their "subject" status. Quirky subjects were also found to pass these subjecthood tests.

Subject-oriented anaphora binding

Some anaphors only allow subjects to be their antecedents when bound. This is also called reflexivization. Subject-oriented anaphoras (SOA) are a special subclass of anaphora that must have subjects as their antecedents. This test shows that an XP is a subject if it binds to a subject-oriented anaphora. In Icelandic, this is shown below where the dative pronoun subject Honum is only grammatical when binding the anaphor sínum:

Honum_i

he.DAT

var

was

oft

often

hjálpað

helped

af

by

foreldrum

parents

sínum_i/*hans_i

his.[+REFL]/his.[-REFL]

'He was often helped by his parents.'

Faroese quirky subjects also pass this diagnostic where the subject Kjartani in the dative binds the anaphor sini:

Kjartani_i

Kjartin.DAT

dámar

likes

væl

well

nýggja

new

bil

car

sini_i

REFL

'Kjartin likes his new car.'

The same behavior is seen in quirky subjects in Basque where the dative subject Joni binds the anaphor bere burua:

Jon-i_i

Jon-DAT

[bere

his

buru-a]_i

head-DET.NOM

gusta-tzen

like-IPFV

zaio

AUX(3SG.ABS-3SG.DAT)

'Jon likes himself'

In German, the dative DP subject Dem Fritz binds the anaphor sich:

[Dem

the.DAT

Fritz]_i

Fritz

gefällt

likes

das

the.NOM

Bild

picture

von

of

sich_i

REFL

'Fritz likes the picture of himself'

Quirky subjects in Hindi also pass this test where the dative subject मुझे (mujhe) binds the anaphor (the reflexive possessive pronoun) अपना (apnā):

मुझे

mujhe_i

I.DAT

अपने

apne_i

REFL.MASC.PL

सब

sab

all.NOM

रिश्तेदार

rishtedār

relatives.MASC

पसंद

pasand

like

हैं

haiṁ

be.PRS.PL

'I like all my relatives'

मुझे

mujhe_i

I.DAT

अपनी

apni_i

REFL.FEM.PL

चीज़ें

cīzeṁ

things.NOM.FEM.PL

लानी

lānī

bring.INF.PTCP.FEM.PL

हैं

haiṁ

be.PRS.PL

'I have/want to bring my things.'

PRO control

Generally, PRO is the subject in the underlying structure of an embedded phrase be it subject-controlled, object-controlled, or arbitrarily-controlled. A subject can show up in a non-overt form in infinitives as PRO, but a preposed object cannot. This diagnostic shows that an XP is a subject if it can be PRO. To illustrate, Icelandic shows subject-controlled PRO with a nominative DP:

Ég_i

I.NOM

vonast

hope

til

for

[PRO_i

PRO.ACC

að

to

vanta

lack

ekki

not

peninga]

money.ACC

'I hope not to lack money'

Similarly, in Laz, the same can be seen:

Bere-k_i

child-ERG

PRO_i

PRO.DAT

layç’-epe

dog-PL.NOM

o-limb-u

NMLZ-love-3.ERG

gor-um-s

want-IPFV-3

ama

but

a-s̹k’urin-en

APPL-fear-IPFV-3

'The child wants to love the dogs, but s/he fears'

Reduced relatives

A reduced relative may only appear in as a subject position in a reduced relative clause. This test shows that a constituent is a subject if it can be relativized in a reduced relative clause.

Icelandic quirky subjects are not able to be relativized on:

*[_____i

____.DAT

ekni]

driven

bíll-inn

car-the.NOM

'Intended: the driven car'

Laz quirky subjects are able to be relativized on:

*[_____i

____.DAT

ma]

1.NOM

limb-eri

love.PTCP

berei

child.NOM

'the child who loved me'

Subject-to-object raising

In Icelandic, some verbs (e.g., telja, álíta) can have their complement in the 'Exceptional Case Marking' (ECM), also known as the 'Accusativus-cum-Infinitivo' (AcI) or 'Subject-to-Object Raising' (SOR) construction. It has been proposed that some non-subject (e.g. a preposed object) cannot be so embedded. The ECM construction occurs when a sentence of the form subject-finite verb-X is selected by verbs such as telja, álíta as a CP complement (embedded clause). The nominative subject shows up in the accusative (or else in the dative or genitive) in ECM construction and the verb is in the infinitive.

Ég

I.NOM

tel

believe

álfinn

elf-the.ACC

hafa

have.INF

stolið

stolen

ostinum

cheese-the.DAT

I believe the elf to have stolen the cheese.

Note: The object ostinum cannot be embedded in ECM construction. The following sentence is ungrammatical:

*Ég

I.NOM

tel

believe

ostinum

cheese-the.DAT

hafa

have.INF

álfurinn

elf-the.NOM

stolið

stolen

I believe the elf to have stolen the cheese.

An example of subject-to-object raising in German:

Ich

I.NOM

sehe

see

ihn_i

he.ACC

t_i

das

the

Haus

house.ACC

verlassen

leave

I see him leave the house.

Conjunction reduction

The conjunction reduction test is also known as the subject ellipsis test. In coordinated structures, the subject of the second conjunct can be left out if it is coreferential (i.e., coindexed) with the subject in the first conjunct but not if it is coreferential with the object:

Álfurinn_i

Elf-the.NOM

stal

stole

ostinum

cheese-the.DAT

og

and

e_i

e

bauð

invited

bræðrum

brothers

sínum

his.REFL

í

to

mat

dinner

The elf stole the cheese and (he) invited his brothers to dinner.

The following example is ungrammatical:

*Ég

I.NOM

hitti

met

álfinn_i

elf-the.ACC

og

and

e_i

e

bauð

invited

mér

me

í

to

mat

dinner

I met the elf and he invited me to dinner.