Onpersoonlijke datief-nominatiefwerkwoorden in het hedendaagse Duits: definitie, inventaris en semantische classificatie

Abstract

Several studies have drawn attention to the fact that subjecthood is not necessarily associated with nominative case-marking (Andrews 1976, Þráinsson 1979, Zaenen, Maling & Þráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1989, inter alia).1 This article seeks to contribute to the study of non-canonically case marked subjects by zooming in on nominative-dative verbs in Present-Day with a subject-like oblique argument (henceforth: impersonal dative-nominative verbs). The aim of this article is twofold. First, I present an exhaustive list of all German impersonal dative-nominative verbs, and secondly, I aim to classify them according to the semantic typology suggested by Barðdal et al. (2016). The results show that impersonal dative-nominative verbs are far more numerous than hitherto assumed, and that their semantic distribution gravitates towards meanings pertaining to emotions, cognitive processes, and contexts of gain and benefit.