Construction-specific properties of syntactic subjects in Icelandic and German

Barðdal, Jóhanna

doi:10.1515/cog.2006.002

Cited by 71 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Zaenen, Maling & Thráinsson convincingly demonstrate, moreover, that case marking and syntactic functions do not go hand in hand in Icelandic (first observed by Andrews 1976), that subject-like arguments in the accusative, dative and genitive case behave syntactically as nominative subjects in Icelandic, and object-like arguments in the nominative case behave syntactically as ordinary accusative objects, despite the noncanonical case marking. The latest contribution to this discussion is found in Barðdal & Eythórsson (2003), Eythórsson & Barðdal (2005), Barðdal (2006a) and Barðdal & Eythórsson (2006) where it is shown that subject-like obliques in German also behave syntactically as subjects, exactly like in Icelandic, and hence that the difference between Icelandic and German is not categorical but gradient.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical vs. structural case: a false dichotomy

Barðdal

2010

Morphology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:This article takes issue with the two dichotomies of structural vs. lexical case and thematic vs. idiosyncratic case, on the basis of their predictions on: a) synchronic productivity, b) language change, and c) language acquisition. It is shown here that these predictions are not borne out in Icelandic. In fact, productivity data from Icelandic suggest that accusative objects to new verbs are assigned lexically and not structurally. Another problem is presented by different changes in case marking in the history of the Germanic languages, changes that can only be captured by two complementary approaches to structural case, which in turn severely undermines the general explanatory power of this concept. It turns out, moreover, that the case preservation property of lexical case, as opposed to structural case, in passives and raising-to-object constructions, is a construction-specific property, not generalizable to the language as a whole. An alternative approach is sketched in terms of a usage-based construction grammar where all case marking of core arguments in Icelandic is regarded as lexical, i.e. word-bound, and modeled in terms of lexicality-schematicity hierarchies which capture verb-specific idiosyncrasies, higher-level generalizations, as well as the default status effect found for the Nom-Acc construction.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical vs. structural case: a false dichotomy

Barðdal

2010

Morphology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Further research has shown that the subject concept hardly has a universal applicability and the common opinion in the field is that subjects are at least language specific, if not 20 construction specific (Dryer 1997;Croft 2001;Culicover & Jackendoff 2005;Van Valin 2005;Barðdal 2006;Bickel 2011).…”

Section: Subject Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most widely used coding and behavioral properties from Keenan's Control infinitives are considered to be the most conclusive evidence of subject behavior by many, as the subject argument of the infinitive is left unexpressed under 10 identity with an argument of the matrix verb, which is not a property of objects (cf. Falk 1995;Rögnvaldsson 1996;Moore & Perlmutter 2000;Barðdal 2006;Barðdal & Eythórsson 2003;Eythórsson & Barðdal 2005). However, control infinitives are generally very rare in texts, and they are found even less frequently with oblique subject predicates.…”

Section: Subject Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Position as a behavioral property of subjects

Mair

Johnson

Frotscher

et al. 2017

Indogermanische Forschungen

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A subject analysis of oblique subject-like arguments remains controver-5 sial even across the modern languages where the available data are not finite: while such arguments are considered syntactic subjects in Icelandic, they have more often been analyzed as objects in Lithuanian, for example. This issue has been left relatively unattended for the ancient Indo-European languages outside of Sanskrit (Hock 1990), Gothic (Barðdal & Eythórsson 2012) and Ancient Greek (Danesi 2015). 10 In this article, we address the status of oblique subject-like arguments in Old Irish, whose strict word order enables us to compare the position (relative to the verb and other arguments) of nominative subject arguments of the canonical type to oblique subject-like arguments. We first establish a baseline for neutral word order of nominative subjects and accusative objects and then compare their distribution 15 to that of oblique subject-like arguments under two conditions: i) on a subject analysis and ii) on an object analysis. The word order distribution differs significantly across the two contexts when the oblique arguments are analyzed as syntactic objects, but not when they are analyzed as syntactic subjects. These findings add to the growing evidence that oblique subject-like arguments should be analyzed 20 as syntactic subjects, although their coding properties are non-canonical.

show abstract

“…El empleo del sintagma en genitivo en esta posición responde en la mayor parte de los casos, por el contrario, a un uso como expresión del foco (13); solo 22 En el grupo germánico, por ejemplo, el espectro de verbos que presentan esta construcción es más amplio que en lenguas como el griego o el latín (cf. Barðdal 2006). 23 La compleja cuestión del orden de palabras en griego antiguo ha sido estudiada recientemente por H. Dik 1995 y 2007.…”

Section: Propiedades Pragmáticas Y Sintácticas Del Dativounclassified

Análisis del dativo en construcciones impersonales: los conceptos de sujeto y de semisujeto en griego antiguo

Conti¹

2010

Emerita

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Las construcciones impersonales con un complemento en dativo y otro en genitivo se documentan en griego en un número muy reducido de verbos que designan interés o necesidad. Aunque se trata de una construcción presente también en otras lenguas indoeuropeas antiguas, en griego se documenta a partir de fecha posthomérica. Las construcciones personales, más recientes en otras lenguas, se documentan en griego, sin embargo, ya desde Homero. El dativo de la construcción impersonal designa entidades humanas y, además, expresa el Experimentador y el tópico. Estas propiedades designativas, semánticas y pragmáticas, próximas a las del sujeto prototípico, permiten al dativo ciertos comportamientos sintácticos característicos del sujeto. Nos hallamos, pues, ante un semisujeto, es decir, ante un complemento verbal que, a pesar de su codificación gramatical, diferente de la del sujeto, presenta unas propiedades y unos comportamientos sintácticos próximos a los de este. El genitivo de la construcción impersonal objeto de estudio presenta también comporImpersonal constructions holding a complement both in dative and genitive are attested in Greek with a few verbs, which share the property of expressing the interests or the needs of human beings. These constructions, which occur in several ancient IndoEuropean languages, are documented in the postHomeric period in the case of Greek. In the opposite, personal constructions, which appear more recently in other languages, are already documented in Greek since Homer's times. The dative in the impersonal construction refers to human entities, codes the Experiencer and it is also the topic. These properties, which are close to those of the prototypical subject, seem to allow the dative to show some subject-like syntactic behaviour. In fact, we will argue that the dative in the impersonal construction behaves as a semi-subject, i. e. a verbal complement which, regardless of its coding, does have a set of properties that are typically associated with the subject in Greek. As well as the complement in dative, the complement in genitive in the impersonal construction exhibits a syntactic behaviour similar to

show abstract

Construction-specific properties of syntactic subjects in Icelandic and German

Cited by 71 publications

References 20 publications

Lexical vs. structural case: a false dichotomy

Lexical vs. structural case: a false dichotomy

Position as a behavioral property of subjects

Análisis del dativo en construcciones impersonales: los conceptos de sujeto y de semisujeto en griego antiguo

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About