Open AccessQuirky subjects in Icelandic, Faroese, and German: A Relational Grammar account
Author(s) -
Andreas Pankau
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
proceedings of the international conference on head-driven phrase structure grammar
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1535-1793
DOI - 10.21248/hpsg.2016.26
Subject(s) - icelandic , german , linguistics , grammar , psychology , lexical item , subject (documents) , computer science , philosophy , library science
This paper presents a new analysis of quirky subjects according towhich quirky subjects bear multiple grammatical relations and hencediffer syntactically from regular subjects. This contrasts with thestandard analysis of quirky subjects according to which quirkysubjects are regular subjects bearing lexical case and thereforediffer only morphologically from regular subjects. Based on thebehavior of quirky subjects in Faroese and German, I argue that thesyntactic account is superior. Faroese shows that the case borne by aquirky subject is not lexical, whereas German shows that quirkysubjects are not regular subjects to begin with. The behavior ofquirky subjects in Icelandic, on which the standard analysis is based,is argued to be the result of a morphosyntactic peculiarity ofIcelandic.