Quirky subject

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Quirky subjects (also called "oblique subjects") are a linguistic phenomenon whereby certain verbs specify that their subjects are to be in a case other than the nominative.[1][2]

In many languages, it is normal for verbs to limit the form of objects they can take, for example the English sentence "I like he" is ungrammatical because special accusative pronouns are needed for direct objects, in this case "him". Similarly, in Latin most verbs require direct objects to be in the accusative case, though some verbs take other cases; for example the verb credo "trust" takes a dative object. In most modern languages, however, this rule does not apply to subjects, and almost all nominative-accusative languages with inflection treat the subjects of all verbs the same. As an exception to this rule, Icelandic, which has been argued to be the only language with quirky subjects,[3] is of considerable interest to linguistics.

Old Swedish was another example of the quirky subject. Swedish-language verbs forced subjects to agree in person around the 15th century, the advent of modern Swedish. Agreement in number remained in written Swedish as late as the 20th century, though, even though all subject-verb agreement had disappeared in speech by the 17th century.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur (1991). "Quirky Subjects in Old Icelandic", in Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson: Papers from the Twelfth Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, 369-378.. 
  2. ^ a b Fischer, Susann (2004). "The diachronic relationship between quirky subjects and stylistic fronting", in Peri Bhaskararao; Karumuri V. Subbarao: Non-nominative Subjects. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 193–212. ISBN 9027229708. 
  3. ^ Faarlund, Jan T. (2001). "The notion of oblique subject and its status in the history of Icelandic", in Jan T. Faarlund: Grammatical relations in change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 99–135. 

[edit] Further reading

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