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Re: Mir ist kalt -- How to analyze this sentence?

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 20, 2007, 4:40
On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 09:38:17PM -0400, MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:
> In a message dated 6/19/2007 4:58:38 PM Central Daylight Time, > laokou@COMCAST.NET writes: > > > > > "Mir ist kalt"? That's German for "I feel cold", and breaks down > > > into 1sg.DAT is cold. But what is the subject in this sentence? > > > "Kalt", despite it's an adjective? > > > > If you Google search "dative structures in Germanic languages" or > > "mir ist kalt grammatical explanation", you'll find a plethora of > > pedantic information -- some moderately interesting, some > > mind-numbingly dry -- on the subject. And you'll find out more on > > Icelandic, Faroese, Old Swedish, and German than you could ever have > > thought you might have wanted to know.
[...]
> > Russian has this dative construction too (mne kholodno/zharko).
[...] Russian has a lot of such dative constructions. E.g., Мне надо + infin. (I need to), мне нравиться + subj. (I like), мне всё равно (I don't care), мне кажется (I feel that ...), etc.. I'm sure native speakers will be able to supply a lot more examples. T -- Elegant or ugly code as well as fine or rude sentences have something in common: they don't depend on the language. -- Luca De Vitis