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I think that Ilja Seržant is right: A term like "dative experiencer"
would be better for constructions like:<br>
<br>
à Sasha tout lui réussissait (French, cited by Jocelyne
Fernandez-Vest)<br>
to Sasha all to-her succeeded<br>
<br>
Calling the dative experiencer (à Sasha) a "non-canonical (dative)
subject" here (maybe on the basis of its pre-verbal position) is
confusing, because there are no limits to what could be called a
"non-canonical subject" – one might propose, for example, to call
inanimate objects in Spanish non-canonical subjects because they are
subject-like in that they lack an object-marking preposition.<br>
<br>
Spike says that the question “what is a non-canonical subject in
theory?” is ultimately necessary, but I don't think so. An
explanatory theory might not make use of the notion "subject" at all
(and instead rely on more fine-grained parameters), let alone the
notion of "non-canonical subject".<br>
<br>
What we do need is a general definition of the *term* subject",
because we use it all the time anyway and it would be best if we
used it uniformly. Nobody disputes that the transitive A-argument
and the intransitive S-argument are subjects, so I think it's best
to say that "subject" is "A or S" (as in Dixon 1994). Since A, S and
P are defined in terms of their coding properties (Haspelmath 2011),
this means that a dative-marked argument is never a subject (since
A/S are by definition nominative/absolutive- or ergative-marked).<br>
<br>
It is interesting, of course, that some non-A/S arguments share some
behavioural properties with A/S arguments, but behavioural
properties are extremely diverse and are not a good basis for
terminology. Pre-verbal order is extremely common when an argument
is the only animate argument of a predicate, so dative experiencers
will very often be subject-like in this regard – but do we want to
call this a "subject property" in view of the fact that inanimate
S-arguments often occur in a later position? It seems that word
order is more driven by animacy and specificity than by
semantic/syntactic role. It seems best to define subject/S/A by
argument coding (flagging and indexing), not by behavioural
properties.<br>
<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 04.01.19 17:22, Spike Gildea wrote:<br>
</div>
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cite="mid:A4340724-DFA1-4FA7-922C-2FE85583350B@uoregon.edu"
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First, I thank everyone for sharing examples of dative subjects
with predicates of success. Alongside the expected examples in
Indo-European languages of the Slavic, Romance, Germanic, and
Indic families, examples were proposed from Causasian languages in
general (with Akhvakh as an example), North Saami and Finnish
(Uralic), Hebrew (Semitic), and Japhug (Tibeto-Burman) — while
there are at least examples outside of IE, this is not a
particularly robust cross-linguistic attestation of the
phenomenon. I originally posted the query because I am aware of no
examples in the non-canonical case-marking languages of South
America, and it is interesting that nobody has mentioned examples
from the language families of North America or Austronesia
<div class="">that are known for semantic alignment.
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Second, with regard to Ilja’s query, there is a
long tradition of disputing the use of the term “subject” for
apparent primary arguments that do not bear the canonical
case-marking of subjects in a given language, in particular
for analyses of "dative subjects". Much of Jóhanna’s own work
(particularly Eythorsson & Barðdal 2005, Barðdal &
Eyth̩órsson 2012) participates in this dispute, in that she
has consistently used a range of syntactic tests to
distinguish dative subjects from non-subject dative
experiencers, such as order, raising, reflexivization (both
long-distance and clause-bound), control infinitives, and
conjunction reduction. The disputes arise from the fact that
these syntactic tests do not give consistent results, even in
closely related Germanic languages like Icelandic, where all
such tests show that the only distinction between nominative
subjects and non-canonical subjects is case-marking and verb
agreement, and German (which is more akin to the range of
other European languages), where only a subset of the tests
syntactically align potential dative subjects with nominative
subjects. It is true that different theoretical perspectives
interpret this phenomenon differently, and in particular, some
prefer to privilege the term “subject” as a theoretical label
that should not be assigned on the basis of some
(non-specific) subset of “subject tests”. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">In this query, I was hoping to finesse the
(ultimately necessary) question of “what is a non-canonical
subject in theory?” and its operational correlate “which
criteria should count most in identifying them?” That is, I
hoped just to use the term “dative subject” as a shorthand by
which colleagues might recognize constructions in individual
languages that show a combination of properties that would
then constitute potentially interesting cases for follow-up. I
could re-formulate the query in more precise terms as follows:
we are looking for indications of languages for which (i)
predicates of success mark the “succeeder” as a dative (or
other non-canonical case that could be used to mark recipients
or benefactives), and (ii) the syntactic properties associated
with this dative “succeeder” are distinct from clear “indirect
object” dative arguments in that they share one or more
syntactic properties with canonical subjects. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Spike</div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div><b class="">References</b></div>
<div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height:
normal;" class="">
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal;
line-height: normal;" class="">Barðdal, Jóhanna &
Thórhallur Eythórsson. 2012. ‘Hungering and lusting for
women and fleshly delicacies’: Reconstructing
grammatical relations for Proto-Germanic.
<i class="">Transactions of the Philological Society</i>
110(3): 363–393.</div>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height:
normal;" class="">Eythórsson, Thórhallur & Jóhanna
Barðdal. 2005. Oblique Subjects: A Common Germanic
Inheritance.
<i class="">Language</i> 81(4): 824–881.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height:
normal;" class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On Jan 3, 2019, at 11:34 PM, Ilja Seržant
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:ilja.serzants@uni-leipzig.de" class="">ilja.serzants@uni-leipzig.de</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class="">
<p class="">Dear all,</p>
<p class="">I apologize for a side remark. But do we
call any kind of argumental and non-argumental
animate (experiencer) dative NP a non-canonical
<b class="">subject</b>? :-) Does it really make
sense to use the notion of subject that way? Woudn't
be a term like "dative experiencer" or
"dative/recipient-like experiencer" be more adequate
for a cross-linguistic comparison?<br class="">
</p>
<p class="">Best,</p>
<p class="">Ilja<br class="">
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 21.12.2018 um 17:00
schrieb Spike Gildea:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:F4C5778F-9F81-493F-9FAD-3A3CF8974967@uoregon.edu"
class="">
Dear colleagues,
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">I forward a query from my colleague,
Jóhanna Barðdal, who is looking for examples of
predicates of "success” with non canonical subject
marking, in particular those that take a dative
subject. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom:
0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
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sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style:
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normal; word-spacing: 0px;
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background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration: none;" class="">
We are working on Indo-European
verbs/predicates with the meanings
'succeed', 'be successful', 'make
progress', 'turn out well', 'go well'. The
last one in the sense "he is doing well in
his dance class" or even "he is doing well
in life”. </div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
Thank you in advance for indications of other
places in the world where we might find such
predicates taking a dative subject!</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Best,</div>
<div class="">Spike</div>
<br class="">
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc
Project "Grammatical Universals"
Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199)
Nikolaistraße 6-10
04109 Leipzig
URL: <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/">http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/</a>
Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713
Room 5.22</pre>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig
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