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b. Mér sýnist [hún vera rík].
me(dat.) seems [she be(inf.) rich]
‘It seems to me that she is rich’
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, these two types sometimes appear to be mixed, so to
speak, such that we get sentences like (ii), that-clauses with an overt subject and a verb in
the infinitive:
(ii) Mér sýnist [að hún vera rík].
me(dat.) seems [that she be(inf.) rich]
‘It seems to me that she is rich’
Such sentences, which sound ungrammatical to most modern speakers, start to show up in
personal letters and periodicals in the third decade of the 19th century. At that time, sen-
tences like (iii), which are also ungrammatical in Modern Icelandic, were not uncommon:
(iii) Hún sýnist [að vera rík].
she seems [to be rich]
‘She seems to be rich’
Since sýnast is a raising verb in Modern Icelandic, the relationship between (ii) and (iii)
seems obvious; (iii) can be derived if the main clause is subjectless in underlying structure,
by raising the subject of the subordinate clause to the empty subject position of the main
clause.
Sentences like (iii) were already found in Old Icelandic. However, there is evidence
that the verbs sýnast and virðast — both meaning ‘seem’ in Modern Icelandic but having a
considerably different meaning in Old Icelandic — actually were control verbs in Old
Icelandic but were reanalyzed as raising verbs much later, probably in the 18th century.
Note that crucially, the complementizer að ‘that’ and the infinitival marker að ‘to’ are
homophonous in Icelandic. Thus, sentences like (iii) in Old Icelandic should be analyzed
as shown in (iva), whereas in Icelandic around 1800, their analysis is as shown in (ivb).
(iv)a. Shei seems [that PROi Vinf ...].
b. Shei seems [that ___i Vinf ...].
Since the subordinate clause subject is only raised if the main clause contains an empty
subject posi tion, this reanalysis naturally also leads to the introduction of sentences where
the subordinate clause con tains an overt subject — sentences like (ii) above. Sentences with
other verbs of sense and percep tion, like finnast and þykja, both meaning ‘find’, were then
modelled on sentences with sýnast and virðast.
The mixed construction appears to have had its peak in the 1890s and declined slowly
after that. After 1980, almost no examples can be found in Icelandic newspapers and per-
iodicals. However, its posi tion always seems to have been much stronger in North
American Icelandic. This is evident from the number of examples in Icelandic news papers
published in North America, from numerous examples in letters written by Icelanders in
North America, and from recorded interviews with descendants of Icelandic immigrants
in North America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The decline and death of the mixed construction in Iceland has no one obvious ex -
planation. However, it must be pointed out that it was in competition with two other con-
structions with the same meaning but a wider range of application. Infinitival clauses
Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson90