Non-Canonically Case-Marked Subjects: The Reykjavík-Eyjafjallajökull papers(200 Studies in Language Companion Series)

Interest in non-canonically case-marked subjects has been unceasing since the groundbreaking work of Andrews and Masica in the late 70’s who were the first to document the existence of syntactic subjects in another morphological case than the nominative. Their research was focused on Icelandic and South-Asian languages, respectively, and since then, oblique subjects have been reported for language after language throughout the world. This newfangled recognition of the concept of oblique subjects at the time was followed by discussions of the role and validity of subject tests, discussions of the verbal semantics involved, as well as discussions of the theoretical implications of this case marking strategy of syntactic subjects. This volume contributes to all these debates, making available research articles on different languages and language families, additionally highlighting issues like language contact, differential subject marking and the origin of oblique subjects.

Review :
The collection of papers in this volume represents an authoritative study, by both leading scholars and younger researchers. It provides important insights, new data, analyses and research perspectives, from both under-researched and thoroughly discussed languages, in a highly valuable comparative perspective and with a multiplicity of theoretical approaches and breadth of issues covered, including also the role played by contact and inheritance in shaping the phenomenon. The volume also re-addresses the issue of the parameters involved in the identification and definition of the notion of subject. It will stand out as a reference work for future studies on the issue. This volume contains an extraordinary treasure of cross-linguistic data from a wide range of languages with succinct analyses and detailed discussions of various issues on the nature of subject and subject properties, demonstrating that non-nominative case marking of subjects is a robust phenomenon and is not ‘quirky’ in any sense, as it was once thought to be. These scholarly papers testify to how the study of cross-linguistic variation in terms of different case marking strategies of subjects enables a better understanding of Universal Grammar and its implications for word order, argument structure, control phenomena, antecedent-anaphor relations, verbal semantics, language change and structural typology. This volume is thus a valuable addition and contribution to the existing theory of knowledge concerning non-nominative subjects. This is a fine volume with many excellent and well-written contributions. The authors’ arguments and the evidence from the various languages are presented in a clear and readable manner, making it easy to follow the discussion even if the language(s) under investigation is/are unfamiliar to the reader.