Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2017, Síða 106

summary
Key words: structural case, lexical case, passives, existential infinitivals, Faroese, Icelandic
In this paper, I look at case preservation on subjects in Faroese and Icelandic in (a) passives
and (b) existential infinitival clauses. Lexical case is usually preserved on subjects in
Icelandic whereas it is sometimes preserved in the passive in Faroese and sometimes not.
I argue that a crucial factor regarding case preservation on an argument is whether it is an
indirect or a direct object of the verb; if an argument originates as an indirect object, lexical
case in subject position is usually preserved as shown in (i) below. On the other hand, if an
argument originates as a direct object, as in (ii), lexical case is often lost.
(i) Faroese
a. Teir seldu bóndanum kúnna.
they sold the.farmer.DAT the.cow (Höskuldur Þráinsson et al. 2012:269)
b. Bóndanum varð seld ein kúgv.
the.farmer.DAT was sold a cow (Barnes 1986:35–36)
(ii) Faroese
a. Politiið steðgaði honum.
the.police stopped him.DAT
b. Hann varð steðgaður (av politinum).
he.NOM was stopped (by the.police) (Höskuldur Þráinsson et al. 2012:269)
In existential infinitivals, structural accusative case is preserved in Icelandic, see (iii), but
not in Faroese, see (iv).
(iii) Icelandic
Enga aðra hjálp var að fá.
no.ACC other.ACC help was to get
(iv) Faroese
Studningur var eingin at fáa.
support.NOM was none.NOM to get
Syntactic accounts have been given for this construction in Icelandic (see especially H.Á.
Sigurðsson 1989, 2006 and Wood 2015) but as far as I know, no syntactic analysis has been
discussed for the equivalent construction in Faroese. I do not propose a syntactic analysis
of the construction but point out important differences between Icelandic and Faroese in
this regard and discuss a few properties regarding its syntax that need to be studied in
much more detail.
Einar Freyr Sigurðsson
Málvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands
IS-101 Reykjavík
einasig@hi.is
Einar Freyr Sigurðsson106