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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
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.
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.[26][5] 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.[3] In Icelandic, this is shown below where the dative pronoun subject Honum is only grammatical when binding the anaphor sínum:
Honumi
he.DAT
var
was
oft
often
hjálpað
helped
af
by
foreldrum
parents
sínumi/*hansi
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:
The same behavior is seen in quirky subjects in Basque where the dative subject Joni binds the anaphor bere burua:
Jon-ii
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
sichi
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
mujhei
I.DAT
अपने
apnei
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
mujhei
I.DAT
अपनी
apnii
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
 | This section may be too technical for most readers to understand. (April 2022) |
Generally, PRO is the subject in the underlying structure of an embedded phrase be it subject-controlled, object-controlled, or arbitrarily-controlled.[3] A subject can show up in a non-overt form in infinitives as PRO, but a preposed object cannot.[6] This diagnostic shows that an XP is a subject if it can be PRO.[3][5][4] To illustrate, Icelandic shows subject-controlled PRO with a nominative DP:
Égi
I.NOM
vonast
hope
til
for
[PROi
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-ki
child-ERG
PROi
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:
Laz quirky subjects are able to be relativized on:
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.[6] 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:
Conjunction reduction
The conjunction reduction test is also known as the subject ellipsis test.[6] 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:
Álfurinni
Elf-the.NOM
stal
stole
ostinum
cheese-the.DAT
og
and
ei
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
álfinni
elf-the.ACC
og
and
ei
e
bauð
invited
mér
me
í
to
mat
dinner
I met the elf and he invited me to dinner.
The Quirky Subject Hierarchy (QSH) exists to governs non-nominative subjects based on three subjecthood tests.[3]
| Subjecthood Tests | Laz | Icelandic | Hindi | German | Basque |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reduced Relatives | ✓ | x | x | x | x |
| PRO Control | ✓ | ✓ | x | x | x |
| Subject-Oriented Anaphora Binding | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
This hierarchy shows that:
- if a quirky subject passes the reduced relative clause test, it will also pass PRO control and subject-oriented anaphora (SOA) binding, and
- If a quirky subject passes PRO control, then it will also pass SOA binding.
Cross-linguistically, all quirky subjects pass SOA binding test. The QSH governs quirky subjects in Icelandic, Hindi, German, Basque, Laz, Faroese, Gujarati, Hungarian, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Marathi, Russian, Spanish, and Telugu.[3]
Quirky subjects are analyzed to determine what case a subject may bear. There are many approaches, though the two most prominent are the standard Analysis and the Height Conjecture Analysis.[5]
Standard analysis
In the standard analysis, quirky subjects are treated as regular subjects that are assigned lexical or idiosyncratic cases. Dative-marked nominals are often analyzed as subjects because they pass most subjecthood tests. By passing these tests, quirky subjects seem to bear the lexical case (cannot be overwritten), while non-quirky subjects bear the structural case (can be overwritten). This approach is most often used to analyze Icelandic,[3] as all of its quirky subjects bear the lexical case and cannot be overwritten. However, the standard analysis does not sufficiently explain why lexical cases are overwritten in several languages, such as Faroese and Imbabura Quechua.[5]
Unlike Icelandic, Faroese does not possess passive quirky subjects. Instead, passivized direct objects appear in the nominative:
Furthermore, quirky subjects do not retain its case under raising in Faroese. In the following example, the subject Jógvan changes from the dative case to the accusative case after it is raised:
Faroese: After Raising
Eg
I.NOM
helt
believe
Jógvani
Jógvan.ACC
ti
tørva
need
ein
a
nýggjan
new
bil
car
I believed Jógvan to need a new car.
The arc pair grammar (multistratal analysis) was proposed to explain why quirky subjects overwrite the lexical in languages such as Faroese. This analysis suggests that quirky subjects are the result of inversion: an initial subject is demoted to an indirect object, and subject properties are not tied to final subjects but can make reference to subjects at a distinct strata.[5]
Height conjecture
| This section may be too technical for most readers to understand. (April 2022) |
| This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, it is unclear what it means for a phrase to “land in” a specifier. (February 2024) |
In height conjecture analysis, a quirky subject gains the properties of a Focus Phrase (FP) whenever it lands in the specifier (SPEC) of that FP.
To account for the quirky subject hierarchy: TP is split into PerspP and BP
- T is split into 2 heads Persp then B; the former to bear PRO and the latter to bind to SOA # The heads are marked [⋆nom⋆] (nominative DPs only), [⋆dep⋆] (dependent-case and nominative DPs), and [⋆d⋆] (any DP). A subject can pass through both [SPEC, Persp] and [SPEC, B], or only [SPEC, B]
- If the head B agrees with the QS, they merge. If B and the QS merge successfully, the same merging occurs if head Persp agrees with the QS.
The raising of PRO to [SPEC, Persp] determines whether the quirky can occur in complement during control. This is according to the Perspectival Centre Constraint. If the quirky subject lands at [SPEC, Persp], it may be relativized on into a reduced relative clause.
In Icelandic, verbs can require a non-nominative subject. The following examples show an accusative subject and a dative subject, respectively.
Mig
I.ACC
vantar
need
peninga
money.ACC
I need money.
Quirky subjects can also occur when verbs taking a dative or genitive argument occur in the passive.[27]
Stelpunum
The girls.DAT
var
was
hjálpað
helped
The girls were helped.
Hennar
She.GEN
var
was
saknað
missed
She was missed.
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