Cover not available
Article published In:
Constructions and Frames
Vol. 11:1 (2019) ► pp.107–170

The alternating predicate puzzle

dat-nom vs. nom-dat in Icelandic and German

 | Ghent University
 | University of Iceland |
 | University of Nottingham
A long-standing divide between Icelandic and German in the literature takes for granted that there are non-nominative subjects in Icelandic, while corresponding arguments in German have been analyzed as objects (Zaenen et al. 1985; Sigurðsson 1989). This is based on two differences between these languages: (a) differences with regard to control and conjunction reduction and (b) apparent subject behavior of the nominative in dat-nom constructions in German. This article focuses on the latter, introducing into the discussion the concept of alternating predicates, that is, dat-nom predicates that systematically alternate between two diametrically-opposed argument structure constructions, dat-nom and nom-dat. A comparison between Icelandic and German shows that Icelandic dat-nom predicates are of two types, a non-alternating líka type and an alternating falla í geð type, whereas German seems to exhibit only the alternating type. On this assumption, the apparent subject behavior of the nominative in German is easily explained, since such occurrences in fact involve the nom-dat construction and not the dat-nom construction. Therefore, the subject behavior of the nominative in nom-dat constructions does not invalidate a subject analysis of the dative in dat-nom constructions in German. The analysis is couched in the framework of construction grammar.
Keywords: argument structure, alternating predicates, case marking, oblique subjects, dat-nom predicates, Icelandic, German, construction grammar
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The state of the art
  • 3.Non-canonically case-marked subjects in Icelandic
    • 3.1Subjecthood
    • 3.2 dat-nom/nom-dat predicates in Icelandic
  • 4.Non-canonically case-marked subjects in German
    • 4.1 dat-nom/nom-dat predicates in German
  • 5.A constructional account
    • 5.1Earlier theoretical accounts
    • 5.2The present account
  • 6.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00025.bar
References (104)
References
Allen, C. L. (1995). Case marking and reanalysis: Grammatical relations from Old to Early Modern English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Allen, K., Pereira, F., Botvinick, M., & Goldberg, A. E. (2012). Distinguishing grammatical constructions with fMRI pattern analysis. Brain and Language, 1231, 174–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, S. R. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In: Ch. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 1–23). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Andrews, A. (1976). The VP complement analysis in Modern Icelandic. North Eastern Linguistic Society, 61, 1–21.Google Scholar
Barðdal, J. (1998). Argument structure, syntactic structure and morphological case of the impersonal construction in the history of Scandinavian. Scripta Islandica, 491, 21–33.Google Scholar
(1999). The dual nature of Icelandic psych-verbs. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 641, 78–101.Google Scholar
(2000). The subject is nominative! On obsolete axioms and their deep-rootedness. In: C.-E. Lindberg & S. Nordahl Lund (Eds.), 17th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics (pp. 93–117). Odense: Institute of Language and Communication.Google Scholar
(2001a). The perplexity of dat-nom verbs in Icelandic. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 241, 47–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001b). The role of thematic roles in constructions? Evidence from the Icelandic inchoative. In: A. Holmer, J.-O. Svantesson, & Å. Viberg (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics 2000 (pp. 127–137). Lund: Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
(2002). Oblique subjects in Icelandic and German. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 701, 61–99.Google Scholar
(2004). The semantics of the impersonal construction in Icelandic, German and Faroese. In: W. Abraham (Ed.), Focus on Germanic Typology (pp. 105–137). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
(2006). Construction-specific properties of syntactic subjects in Icelandic and German. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(1), 39–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008). Productivity: Evidence from case and argument structure in Icelandic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011a). Alternating dat-nom/nom-dat verbs in a Germanic context. Talk delivered at the 33rd Annual Conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft , Göttingen, February 23–25.
(2011b). The rise of dative substitution in the history of Icelandic: A diachronic construction grammar approach. Lingua, 121(1), 60–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barðdal, J., & Eythórsson, Th. (2003). Icelandic vs. German: Oblique subjects, agreement and expletives. Chicago Linguistics Society, 39(1), 775–773. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006). Control infinitives and case in Germanic: ‘Performance error’ or marginally acceptable constructions. In: L. Kulikov, A. Malchukov, & P. de Swart (Eds.), Case, valency and transitivity [Studies in Language Companion Series 77] (pp. 147–177). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012). “Hungering and lusting for women and fleshly delicacies”: Reconstructing grammatical relations for Proto-Germanic. Transactions of the Philological Society, 110(3), 363–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018). What is a subject? The nature and validity of subject tests. In: J. Barðdal, N. Pat-El, & S. M. Carey (Eds.), Non-canonically case-marked subjects: The Reykjavík – Eyjafjallajökull Papers (pp. 257–273). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barðdal, J., Kristoffersen, K. E., & Sveen, A. (2011). West Scandinavian ditransitives as a family of constructions: With a special attention to the Norwegian V-REFL-NP construction. Linguistics, 49(1), 53–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barlow, M., & Kemmer, S. (Eds). (2000). Usage-based models of language. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Barnes, M. (1986). Subject, nominative, and oblique case in Faroese. Scripta Islandica, 381, 3–35.Google Scholar
Bayer, J. (2004). Non-nominative subjects in comparison. In: P. Bhaskararao & K. V. Subbarao (Eds.), Non-nominative subjects 11 (pp. 31–58). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bayer, J., Bader, M., & Meng, M. (2001). Morphological underspecification meets oblique case: Syntactic and processing effects in German. Lingua, 1111, 465–514. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belletti, A., & Rizzi, L. (1988). Psych-verbs and theta-theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 61, 291–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bernódusson, H. (1982). Ópersónulegar setningar [Impersonal sentences]. University of Iceland Master’s Thesis.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. L. (2013). Usage-based theory and exemplar representations of constructions. In: T. Hoffmann & G. Trousdale (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 49–69). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, J., & Hopper, P. (Eds). (2001). Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cole, P., Harbert, W., Hermon, G., & Sridhar, S. N. (1980). The aquisition of subjecthood. Language, 56(4), 719–743. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Comrie, B. (1973). The ergative: Variations on a theme. Lingua, 321, 239–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W. (1998). Event structure in argument linking. In: M. Butt & W. Geuder (Eds.), The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors (pp. 1–43). Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
(2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2003). Lexical rules vs. constructions: A false dichotomy. In: H. Cuyckens, Th. Berg, R. Dirven, & K.-U. Panther (Eds.), Motivations in language: Studies in honour of Günter Radden (pp. 49–68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012). Verbs: Aspect and causal structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W., & Cruse, D. A. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diessel, H. (2015). Usage-based construction grammar. In: E. Dąbrowska & D. Divjak (Ed.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 295–321). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eythórsson, Th., & Barðdal, J. (2005). Oblique subjects: A common Germanic inheritance. Language, 81(4), 824–881. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Faarlund, J. T. (2001). The notion of oblique subject and its status in the history of Icelandic. In: J. T. Faarlund (Ed.), Grammatical relations in change (pp. 99–135). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Falk, C. (1997). Fornsvenska upplevarverb [Old Swedish experiencer verbs]. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Fanselow, G. (2002). Quirky subjects and other specifiers. In: I. Kaufmann & B. Stiebels (Eds.), More than words: A festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich (pp. 227–250). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Fedriani, Ch. (2014). Experiential constructions in Latin: A synchronic and diachronic study. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Ch. J., Kay, P., & O’Connor, M. K. (1988). Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone . Language, 641, 501–538. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Ch. J., Lee-Goldman, R., & Rhodes, R. (2012). The FrameNet constructicon. In: I. A. Sag & H. C. Boas (Eds.), Sign-based construction grammar (pp. 283–299). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Fischer, O. (1990). Syntactic change and causation: Developments in infinitival constructions in English. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Fischer, O., & van der Leek, F. C. (1983). The demise of the Old English impersonal construction. Journal of Linguistics, 19(2), 337–368. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, S., & Blaszczak, J. (2001). Diachronic perspective of quirky subjects. In: P. Bhaskararao (Ed.), International Symposium on “Non-Nominative Subjects”, organized by ILCAA, Tokyo, 18–21 December 2001. Working Papers, 42–56.Google Scholar
Fried, M., & Östman, J.-O. (2005). Construction grammar and spoken language: The case of pragmatic particles. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(11), 1752–1778. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument atructure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. E., & Bencini, G. M. L. (2005). Support from language processing for a constructional approach to grammar. In: A. Tyler, M. Takada, Y. Kim, & D. Marinova (Eds.), Language in use: Cognitive and discourse perspectives on language and language learning (pp. 3–18). Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics.Google Scholar
Haider, H. (2005). How to turn German into Icelandic – and derive the OV–VO contrast. Journal of Comparative Germanic Syntax, 81, 1–53.Google Scholar
(2003). V-clustering and clause-union: Causes and effects. In: P. A. M. Seuren & G. Kempen (Eds.), Verb constructions in German and Dutch (pp. 91–126). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010). The syntax of German. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harbert, W. (2007). The Germanic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, M. (2001). Non-canonical marking of core arguments in European languages. In: A. Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, & M. Onishi (Eds.), Non-canonical marking of subjects and objects, (pp. 53–83). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1986). A comparative typology of English and German: Unifying the contrasts. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Helbig, G., & Buscha, J. (1988). Deutsche Grammatik: Ein Handbuch für den Ausländerunterricht. 11th ed. Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie.Google Scholar
Holvoet, A. (2013). Obliqueness, quasi-subjects and transitivity in Baltic and Slavonic. In: I. A. Serzant & L. Kulikov (Eds.), The diachronic typology of non-canonical subjects, (pp. 257–282). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Höhle, T. N. (1978). Lexikalistische Syntax: die Aktiv-Passiv-Relation und andere Infinitivstrukturen im Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hopper, P. J. (1987). Emergent grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Society, 131, 139–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyams, N., & Sigurjónsdóttir, S. (1990). The development of ‘long-distance anaphora’: A cross-linguistic comparison with special reference to Icelandic. Language Acquisition, 11, 57–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1997). Twistin’ the night away . Language, 731, 534–559. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jónsson, J. G. (1996). Clausal architecture and case in Icelandic. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Doctoral Dissertation.Google Scholar
(1997–98). Sagnir með aukafallsfrumlagi [Verbs with quirky subjects]. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði, 19–201, 11–43.Google Scholar
(2001). Oblique subject predicates in Icelandic. Unpublished ms., University of Iceland.Google Scholar
Kay, P., & Fillmore, Ch. J. (1999). Grammatical constructions and linguistic generalizations: The ‘What’s X doing Y?‘ construction. Language, 751, 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keenan, E. L. (1976). Towards a universal definition of subject. In Ch. N. Li (Ed.), Subject and Topic (pp. 303–333). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Keller, F., Lapata, M., & Ourioupina, O. (2002). Using the web to overcome data sparseness. In: J. Hajič & Y. Matsumoto (Eds.), Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, (pp. 230–237). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania & the Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
Kiss, T. (2003). Die Genese der Ausnahmeanapher. In: L. Gunkel, G. Müller, & G. Zifonun (Eds.), Arbeiten zur Reflexivierung (pp. 157–188). Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kristoffersen, K. E. (1996). Infinitival phrases in Old Norse: Aspects of their syntax and semantics. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lenerz, J. (1977). Zur Abfolge nominaler Satzglieder im Deutschen. Tübingen: Günter Narr.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2001). Emergentist approaches to language. In: J. Bybee & P. Hopper (Eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure (pp. 449–470). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maling, J. (1986). Clause-bounded examples in Modern Icelandic. In: L. Helland & K. Koch Christensen (Eds.), Topics in Scandinavian syntax (pp. 53–63). Dordrecht: Reidel. [Also published in J. Maling & A. Zaenen (Eds.), Modern Icelandic syntax (pp. 277–287). Syntax and Semantics 24. San Diego: Academic Press.] DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Masica, C. P. (1976). Defining a linguistic area: South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Michaelis, L. A., & Ruppenhofer, J. (2001). Beyond alternations: A construction-based account of the applicative construction in German. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Moore, J., & Perlmutter, D. M. (2000). What does it take to be a dative Subject? Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 181, 373–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, S. (2012). On the copula, specificational constructions, and type shifting. Ms. Freie Universitet Berlin.Google Scholar
Nedjalkov, V. P. (1976). Kausativkonstruktionen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Platzack, Ch. (1999). The subject of Icelandic psych-verbs: A minimalistic account. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 641, 103–116.Google Scholar
Primus, B. (1994). Grammatik und Performanz: Faktoren der Wortstellungsvariation im Mittelfeld. Sprache und Pragmatik, 321, 39–86.Google Scholar
(2012). Semantische Rollen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Reis, M. (1973). Is there a rule of subject-to-object-raising in German? Chicago Linguistic Society, 91, 519–529.Google Scholar
(1976). Reflexivierung in deutschen A.c.I.-konstruktionen: Ein transformationsgrammatisches Dilemma. Papiere zur Linguistik, 91, 5–82.Google Scholar
Rögnvaldsson, E. (1991). Quirky subjects in Old Icelandic. In: H. Á. Sigurðsson (Ed.), Papers from the Twelfth Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics (pp. 369–378). Reykjavík: Institute of Linguistics, University of Iceland.Google Scholar
(1996). Frumlag og fall að fornu [Subject and case in Old Icelandic]. Íslenskt mál, 181, 37–69.Google Scholar
Rott, J. A. (2013). Syntactic prominence in Icelandic experiencer arguments: Quirky subjects vs. dative objects. STUF – Language Typology and Universals, 66(2), 91–111.Google Scholar
Sasse, H.-J. (1978). Subjekt und Ergativ: Zur pragmatischen Grundlage primärer grammatischer Relationen. Folia Linguistica, 121, 219–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sigurðsson, H. Á. (1989). Verbal syntax and case in Icelandic. Lund University Doctoral dissertation.Google Scholar
(1990–91). Beygingarsamræmi [Agreement]. Íslenskt mál, 12–131, 31–77.Google Scholar
(2006a). The nominative puzzle and the low nominative hypothesis. Linguistic Inquiry, 371, 289–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006b). Agree in syntax, agreement in signs. In: C. Boeckx (Ed.), Agreement systems (pp. 201–237). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stepanov, A. (2003). On the ‘quirky’ difference Icelandic vs. German: A note of doubt. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 711, 1–32.Google Scholar
Struckmeier, V. (2016). Scrambling in German is driven by prosody and semantics. In: K.-M. Kim, P. Umbal, T. Block, Q. Chan, T. Cheng, K. Finney, M. Katz, S. Nickel-Thompson, & L. Shorten (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 381–389). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (1985). Force dynamics in language and thought. Chicago Linguistic Society, 211, 293–337.Google Scholar
(1988). Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science, 12(1), 49–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thráinsson, H. (1979). On complementation in Icelandic [Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics]. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
(2007). The syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thráinsson, H., Petersen, H. P., Jacobsen, J. í L., & Hansen, Z. S. (2012). Faroese: An overview and reference grammar. Second edition. Tórshavn: Føroya Fróðskaparfelag.Google Scholar
Wood, J. (2011). Icelandic let-causatives and case. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 971, 1–44.Google Scholar
Wood, J., & Sigurðsson, H. Á. (2014). Let-causatives and (a)symmetric DAT-NOM constructions. Syntax, 17(3), 269–298. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wunderlich, D. (2008). The force of lexical case: German and Icelandic compared. In: K. Hanson & Sh. Inkelas (Eds.), The nature of the word: Essays in honor of Paul Kiparsky (pp. 587–620). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wurmbrand, S. (2003). Infinitives: Restructuring and clause structure. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zaenen, A., Maling, J., & Thráinsson, H. (1985). Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 31, 441–483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Somers, Joren, Gard B. Jenset & Jóhanna Barðdal
2024. Argument structure constructions in competition: The Dat-Nom/Nom-Dat alternation in Icelandic. Nordic Journal of Linguistics ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Vázquez-González, Juan G.
2024. Updating Old English Dative–Genitives: A Diachronic Construction Grammar Account. Languages 9:6 ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Ilioaia, Mihaela & Marleen Van Peteghem
2021. Dative experiencers with nominal predicates in Romanian: a synchronic and diachronic study. Folia Linguistica 55:s42-s2 ► pp. 255 ff. DOI logo
Barđdal, Jóhanna, Leonid Kulikov, Roland Pooth & Peter Alexander Kerkhof
2020. Oblique anticausatives: A morphosyntactic isogloss in Indo-European. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 56:3 ► pp. 413 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.