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

Quoting Carsten Becker <carbeck@...>:

> Hi,
>
> The topic already says it all. How do I analyze the sentence
> "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?
Some grammars will tell you that _mir_ is a "dative subject" here. I don't like
this analysis, among other reasons because there is no obvious reason verbal
agreement should change just because a subject is put in an odd case form -
one'd expect **_Mir bin kalt_.

The other analysis I've seen, and that I prefer, is that the sentence simply has
no grammatical subject. As other replies to this thread has shown, subjectless
sentences aren't terribly unusual.

                                Andreas