The emergence of oblique subjects
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Sigridur Saeunn Sigurdardottir
Abstract
Predicate-specific oblique subjects have emerged throughout the history of Icelandic. The novel contribution of this paper is spelling out the precise mechanisms of the changes. We focus on three general processes: Oblique-Case Substitution (OCS), Case-Preserving Anticausativization (CPA) and Argument Swapping (ARS). OCS involves morphosyntactic leveling targeting experiencer predicates, causing nominative experiencer subjects to be replaced by oblique ones. CPA is a special kind of anticausativization, where the oblique case of the object of a transitive verb matches the case of the subject of the corresponding anticausative, resulting in an oblique-subject construction. Finally, ARS involves a reanalysis of an object as a subject. The oblique subject in dative-nominative structures, in particular with st-predicates (‘middles’), arose through ARS from earlier nominative-dative structures, motivated by the animacy of the dative.
Abstract
Predicate-specific oblique subjects have emerged throughout the history of Icelandic. The novel contribution of this paper is spelling out the precise mechanisms of the changes. We focus on three general processes: Oblique-Case Substitution (OCS), Case-Preserving Anticausativization (CPA) and Argument Swapping (ARS). OCS involves morphosyntactic leveling targeting experiencer predicates, causing nominative experiencer subjects to be replaced by oblique ones. CPA is a special kind of anticausativization, where the oblique case of the object of a transitive verb matches the case of the subject of the corresponding anticausative, resulting in an oblique-subject construction. Finally, ARS involves a reanalysis of an object as a subject. The oblique subject in dative-nominative structures, in particular with st-predicates (‘middles’), arose through ARS from earlier nominative-dative structures, motivated by the animacy of the dative.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Resurrecting rhymes, reasons and (no) rhotics 5
- Diachronic phonology with Contrastive Hierarchy Theory 20
- The life cycle of phonological patterns explains drift in sound change 35
- The diachronic typology of retroflex vowels 50
- Diachronic shifts among sound ideophones 62
- The classification of the Plains Algonquian languages 79
- Modelling combined linguistic and non-linguistic evidence in language reconstruction 94
- Dissimilatory constraints discriminate between variants in analogical change 110
- Patterns of suppletion in inflection revisited 128
- Differential object marking in early Italo-Romance and old Sardinian 150
- Semantic factors in case loss 166
- Morphosyntactic borrowing in closely related varieties 184
- Nominal privative suffixes as a diachronic source of verbal negative markers 198
- The emergence of oblique subjects 215
- Grammaticalization of sentence adverbs and modal particles revisited 232
- A discourse analysis of left-dislocation in Old English 249
- The semantics of word borrowing in late medieval English 263
- Approximative adverbs in modern and pre-modern languages 279
- The history of numerals as a history of East African languages 294
- Language index 307
- Subject index 309
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Resurrecting rhymes, reasons and (no) rhotics 5
- Diachronic phonology with Contrastive Hierarchy Theory 20
- The life cycle of phonological patterns explains drift in sound change 35
- The diachronic typology of retroflex vowels 50
- Diachronic shifts among sound ideophones 62
- The classification of the Plains Algonquian languages 79
- Modelling combined linguistic and non-linguistic evidence in language reconstruction 94
- Dissimilatory constraints discriminate between variants in analogical change 110
- Patterns of suppletion in inflection revisited 128
- Differential object marking in early Italo-Romance and old Sardinian 150
- Semantic factors in case loss 166
- Morphosyntactic borrowing in closely related varieties 184
- Nominal privative suffixes as a diachronic source of verbal negative markers 198
- The emergence of oblique subjects 215
- Grammaticalization of sentence adverbs and modal particles revisited 232
- A discourse analysis of left-dislocation in Old English 249
- The semantics of word borrowing in late medieval English 263
- Approximative adverbs in modern and pre-modern languages 279
- The history of numerals as a history of East African languages 294
- Language index 307
- Subject index 309
