Syntactic prominence in Icelandic Experiencer arguments: quirky subjects vs. dative objects

Abstract

AbstractAs has often been demonstrated, Icelandic Quirky Subjects largely behave like canonical nominative subjects and unlike topicalized objects. Among verbs selecting for Quirky Subjects, experiential predicates with a dative Experiencer subject and a nominative Stimulus object are the most common type. Recently, several studies have proposed a sub-class within this group of dat-nom-verbs, characterized by an alternation in their argument mapping. Here, both the dative Experiencer and the nominative Stimulus can occur as either the syntactic subject or object.This paper empirically investigates this class as well as the extent to which its alternation is determined by semantic and pragmatic factors.