The Perplexity of Dat-Nom Verbs in Icelandic

Abstract

This paper presents data from Modern Icelandic of a small group of Dat-Nom verbs which select for two arguments: a Dative human argument and a Nominative stimulus. When applying independently established subjecthood tests on these arguments it turns out that both pass the tests, i.e. both arguments can behave like subjects and like objects, but not at the same time. An examination of the lexical meanings of these predicates reveals that they can be divided into the following main groups: Emotive verbs, Perception Verbs, Cognition Verbs, Verbs of Attitude and Benefactive verbs. A Construction Grammar analysis is proposed, assuming two different syntactic constructions to exist in Icelandic, i.e. a Dat-Nom construction versus a Nom-Dat construction. It is argued that the occurrence of these predicates in the two constructions follows directly from their conceptual causal structure. Furthermore, the choice of subject seems to be contextually determined, i.e. the more topical argument takes on the subject function. The relation between the two constructions, i.e. the Dat-Nom and the Nom-Dat, seems to be like the relation between an ordinary transitive construction and its topicalization construction, in that when the lower argument is “topicalized” to first position the other construction is activated, hence the ordinary topicalization construction in Icelandic is not as readily available to these verbs as the other construction is.