Re: THEORY: "Quirky" Case -- "Quirky" Subjects and "Quirky" Objects

Hi!

Markus Miekk-oja writes:
>...
> and my point is that there is going on other things under the surface here.
>
> I can imagine that it's something like this in German:
> Sp= subject phrase, VP = verb phrase.
> There might be errors in here, I'm not very good at representing X-bar
> with [] instead of trees.
>
> SP[S'[S'[S[0] [some kind of complement to the subject
> phrase.dat/acc/whatever]]VP[....]]]
>
> but like this in Icelandic:
> SP[S'[S'[S[Nom.ACC/DAT/NOM]]VP[...]
>
> In Icelandic, the quirky case subject commands the verb phrase by
> virtue of being the head of the SP, in German it does not command the
> verb phrase by virtue of not being the head of the SP.
How can this be tested *without* using the ellipsis argument?  I mean,
you cannot use it as a definition for what you want to prove.  I'm
confused.

> >In what way?  Ok, there are less non-nominative subjects in German
> >than in Icelandic, but in what way are they less subject-like?  Often
> >the typical examples of Icelandic can be translated one-to-one into
> >German, keeping the cases.
>
> On account of not being able to take reflexives, nor to be elided in
> coordinated sentences. ...
Hmm?  Ok, it's obvious it can't -- the sentence is not grammatical.
But you can't use that as an argument for that it can't be left out.
You must use a *different* argument.  Again: you said in German you
cannot leave the nominative argument in the second clause because you
think it's less subject-like.  I asked why it is less subject like and
you said because it cannot be elided in the second clause.  Hmm??

> And I think this depends on them not commanding the verb phrase in
> the same way that a subject normally does, and this depends on
> underlying syntactic reasons.
How can that be tested?

**Henrik