Unaccusativity and the subject pronoun in Middle and Early Modern Irish

Hoyne, Mícheál (2020) Unaccusativity and the subject pronoun in Middle and Early Modern Irish. Celtica, 32. pp. 145-181. ISSN 0069-1399 (Accepted Version)

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Abstract

This article examines Middle and Early Modern Irish sentences like /in mairenn hé/? ‘does he live?’ and /do-chádar d’éag uile iad/ ‘they all died’ in which the subject pronoun has the form normally associated with the subject of a passive-impersonal verb or the direct object of a transitive verb. References to this construction in the Classical Modern Irish grammatical tracts are discussed first, Middle and Early Modern Irish examples are then presented, and their syntax and semantics are investigated. It is argued that the subject in these sentences is not the semantic agent and that this motivates the use of these pronominal forms. This construction is then placed in a wider typological context. Finally, attention is drawn to a possible precursor construction in which the subject pronoun takes the form of an infix.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Unaccusativity, pronoun, infix, semantics, syntax
Divisions:	School of Celtic Studies
Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2021 16:28
Last Modified:	18 Dec 2022 15:04
URI:	https://dair.dias.ie/id/eprint/1104

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