linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

, quirky subjects (also called oblique subjects) are a phenomenon where certain

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s specify that their subjects are to be in a case other than the nominative. These non-nominative subjects are

determiner phrase In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches, take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, headed, in this case, by the determiner ''many''. This i ...

s that pass subjecthood tests such as subject-oriented anaphora binding, PRO

control Control may refer to: Basic meanings Economics and business * Control (management), an element of management * Control, an element of management accounting * Comptroller (or controller), a senior financial officer in an organization * Controllin ...

reduced relative clause A reduced relative clause is a relative clause that is ''not'' marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as ''who'', ''which'' or ''that''. An example is the clause ''I saw'' in the English sentence "This is the man ''I saw''. ...

, conjunction reduction,Poole, Ethan (2014)
Deconstructing quirky subjects
University of Massachusetts Amherst. North East Linguistic Society 45. subject-to-subject

raising Raising may refer to: *Raising (linguistics), a syntactic construction *Raising (phonetics), a sound change *Raising (metalworking), a metalworking technique *Barn raising, a community event to erect the wooden framework for a building *Fundraising ...

, and subject-to-object raising.Pankau, Andreas (2016)
Quirky subjects in Icelandic, Faroese, and German: a relational account
Presentation at the Joint 2016 Conference on HPSG and LFG, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. It has been observed cross-linguistically that the subject of a sentence often has a

nominative case In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...

. However, this one-to-one relationship between case and grammatical relations (subjecthood) is highly debatable. Some argue that nominative case marking and controlling verb agreement are not unique properties of subjects. One evidence in support of this proposal is the observation that nominative can also mark left-dislocated NPs, appellatives and some objects in the active in Icelandic. In addition, agreeing predicate NPs can also be marked nominative case: In Standard English, a sentence like "''*Me like him''" is ungrammatical because the subject is ordinarily in the nominative case. In many or most nominative–accusative languages, this rule is inflexible: the subject is indeed in the nominative case, and almost all treat the subjects of all verbs the same. Icelandic was argued to be the only modern language with quirky subjects, but other studies investigating languages like Faroese,Þráinsson, Höskuldur (2007). The syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

,Bhatt, Rajesh (2003). Experiencer subjects. Handout from MIT course “Structure of the Modern Indo-Aryan Languages”.

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

, Laz,Demirok, Omar (2013)
Agree as a unidirectional operation: evidence from Laz
Master's thesis. Boğaziçi University.

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub ...

, Hungarian,

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

, and

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

show that they also possess quirky subjects. The class of quirky subjects in Icelandic is a large one, consisting of hundreds of verbs in a number of distinct classes: experiencer verbs like ''vanta'' (need/lack), motion verbs like ''reka'' (drift), change of state verbs like ''ysta'' (curdle), verbs of success/failure like ''takast'' (succeed/manage to), verbs of acquisition like ''áskotnast'' (acquire/get by luck), and many others. In superficially similar constructions of the type seen in

''me gusta'' "I like", the analogous part of speech (in this case ''me'') is not a true syntactical subject. "Me" is instead the object of the verb "gusta" which has a meaning closer to "please", thus, "me gusta" could be translated as "(he/she/it) pleases me" or "I am pleased by " Many linguists, especially from various persuasions of the broad school of

cognitive linguistics Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are con ...

, do not use the term "quirky subjects" since the term is biased towards languages of nominative–accusative type. Often, "quirky subjects" are semantically motivated by the predicates of their clauses. Dative-subjects, for example, quite often correspond with predicates indicating sensory, cognitive, or experiential states across a large number of languages. In some cases, this can be seen as evidence for the influence of active–stative typology.

Subjecthood tests

Generally, nominative subjects satisfy tests that prove their "subject" status. Quirky subjects were also found to pass these subjecthood tests.

Subject-oriented anaphora binding

Some anaphors only allow subjects to be their antecedents when bound. This is also called reflexivization.Zaenen, Annie, Joan Maling, & Höskuldur Þráinsson (1985). Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. ''Natural Language and Linguistic Theory'' 3: 441-483. Subject-oriented anaphoras (SOA) are a special subclass of anaphora that must have subjects as their antecedents. This test shows that an XP is a subject if it binds to a subject-oriented anaphora. In Icelandic, this is shown below where the dative pronoun subject ''Honum'' is only grammatical when binding the anaphor ''sínum'': Faroese quirky subjects also pass this diagnostic where the subject ''Kjartani'' in the dative binds the anaphor ''sini'': The same behavior is seen in quirky subjects in Basque where the dative subject ''Joni'' binds the anaphor ''bere burua'': In German, the dative DP subject ''Dem Fritz'' binds the anaphor ''sich'': Quirky subjects in

also pass this test where the dative subject मुझे (''mujhe)'' binds the

anaphor In linguistics, anaphora () is the use of an expression whose interpretation depends upon another expression in context (its antecedent or postcedent). In a narrower sense, anaphora is the use of an expression that depends specifically upon an a ...

(the reflexive possessive pronoun) अपना (''apnā)'':

PRO control

Generally, PRO is the subject in the underlying structure of an embedded phrase be it subject-controlled, object-controlled, or arbitrarily-controlled. A subject can show up in a non-overt form in infinitives as PRO, but a preposed object cannot. This diagnostic shows that an XP is a subject if it can be PRO. To illustrate, Icelandic shows subject-controlled PRO with a nominative DP: Similarly, in Laz, the same can be seen:

Reduced relatives

A reduced relative may only appear in as a subject position in a

. This test shows that a constituent is a subject if it can be relativized in a reduced relative clause. Icelandic quirky subjects are not able to be relativized on: Laz quirky subjects are able to be relativized on:

Subject-to-object raising

In Icelandic, some verbs (e.g., ''telja, álíta'') can have their complement in the ‘Exceptional Case Marking’ ( ECM), also known as the ‘Accusativus-cum-Infinitivo’ (AcI) or ‘Subject-to-Object Raising’ (SOR) construction. It has been proposed that some non-subject (e.g. a preposed object) cannot be so embedded. The ECM construction occurs when a sentence of the form subject-finite verb-X is selected by verbs such as ''telja, álíta'' as a CP complement (embedded clause). The nominative subject shows up in the accusative (or else in the dative or genitive) in ECM construction and the verb is in the infinitive. Note: The object ''ostinum'' cannot be embedded in ECM construction. The following sentence is ungrammatical: An example of subject-to-object raising in German:

Conjunction reduction

The conjunction reduction test is also known as the subject ellipsis test. In coordinated structures, the subject of the second conjunct can be left out if it is coreferential (i.e., coindexed) with the subject in the first conjunct but not if it is coreferential with the object: The following example is ungrammatical:

Quirky Subject Hierarchy

The Quirky Subject Hierarchy (QSH) exists to governs non-nominative subjects based on three subjecthood tests. This hierarchy shows that: # if a quirky subject passes the reduced relative clause test, it will also pass PRO control and subject-oriented anaphora (SOA) binding, and # If a quirky subject passes PRO control, then it will also pass SOA binding. Cross-linguistically, all quirky subjects pass SOA binding test. The QSH governs quirky subjects in Icelandic, Hindi, German, Basque, Laz, Faroese, Gujarati, Hungarian, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Marathi, Russian, Spanish, and Telugu.

Proposed analyses

Quirky subjects are analyzed to determine what case a subject may bear. There are many approaches, though the two most prominent are the standard Analysis and the Height Conjecture Analysis.

Standard analysis

In the standard analysis, quirky subjects are treated as regular subjects that are assigned lexical or idiosyncratic cases. Dative-marked nominals are often analyzed as subjects because they pass most subjecthood tests. By passing these tests, quirky subjects seem to bear the lexical case (cannot be overwritten), while non-quirky subjects bear the structural case (can be overwritten). This approach is most often used to analyze Icelandic, as all of its quirky subjects bear the lexical case and cannot be overwritten. However, the standard analysis does not sufficiently explain why lexical cases are overwritten in several languages, such as Faroese and

Imbabura Quechua Kichwa (, , also Spanish ) is a Quechuan language that includes all Quechua varieties of Ecuador and Colombia (''Inga''), as well as extensions into Peru. It has an estimated half million speakers. The most widely spoken dialects are Chimborazo ...

. Unlike Icelandic, Faroese does not possess passive quirky subjects. Instead, passivized direct objects appear in the nominative: Furthermore, quirky subjects do not retain its case under raising in Faroese. In the following example, the subject ''Jógvan'' changes from the dative case to the accusative case after it is raised: The

arc pair grammar In linguistics, arc pair grammar (APG) is a theory of syntax that aims to formalize and expand upon relational grammar. It primarily builds upon the relational grammar concept of an arc, but also makes use of more formally stated ideas from model t ...

(multistratal analysis) was proposed to explain why quirky subjects overwrite the lexical in languages such as Faroese. This analysis suggests that quirky subjects are the result of inversion: an initial subject is demoted to an indirect object, and subject properties are not tied to final subjects but can make reference to subjects at a distinct strata.

Height conjecture

In height conjecture analysis, a quirky subject gains the properties of an FP whenever it lands in the SPEC of that FP. To account for the QSH: * TP is split into PerspP and BP *# T is split into 2 heads Persp then B; the former to bear PRO and the latter to bind to SOA *# The heads are marked ��nom⋆(nominative DPs only), ��dep⋆(dependant-case and nominative DPs), and ��d⋆(any DP). * A subject can pass through both PEC, Perspand PEC, B or only PEC, B*# If the head B agrees with the QS, they merge. If B and the QS merge successfully, the same merging occurs if head Persp agrees with the QS. The raising of PRO to PEC, Perspdetermines whether the quirky can occur in complement during control. This is according to the Perspectival Centre Constraint. If the quirky subject lands at PEC, Persp it may be relativized on into a reduced relative clause. Height Conjecture

Other examples of quirky subjects

In Icelandic, verbs can require a non-nominative subject. The following examples show an accusative subject and a dative subject, respectively. Quirky subjects can also occur when verbs taking a dative or genitive argument occur in the passive.