Oblique Subjects: A Common Germanic Inheritance

We argue that subject-like obliques of the impersonal construction show behavioral properties of syntactic subjects in Old Germanic, contrary to standard assumptions (Cole et al. 1980). Subject tests, including control infinitives, reveal that subject-like obliques in Old and Early Middle English, Old Swedish, and Old Norse-Icelandic exhibit behavioral properties of subjects, as they do in Modern Icelandic and Faroese. We also present new data from Modern German, illustrating the same syntactic behavior of corresponding arguments in that language. Thus, we conclude that subject-like obliques exhibit behavioral properties of syntactic subjects from the earliest attested Germanic period onwards. Our findings contradict the standard view that these arguments were objects, which gradually acquired subject properties. We show that data from Gothic intended to support the standard view has been misinterpreted. Given the validity of our findings there are no grounds for reconstructing a stage at which subject-like obliques were objects in Germanic.