• Language and Information
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.107-126
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• 2005

The impersonal or psyc-predicate construction in Old English (=OE) poses a special challenge for most case theories in generative linguistics. In the OE impersonal construction, the experiencer argument is marked by dative, accusative, or nominative, whereas the theme is marked by nominative, genitive, or accusative, or by a PP. The combinations of possible cases for experiencer and theme are not random, bringing about daunting complexity for possible and impossible case frames. In this paper, I develop a conceptual semantic case theory (a la Jackendoff 1990, 1997, 2002; Yip, Maling, and Jackendoff 1987) to provide a unified account for the complicated case frames of the OE impersonal construction. In the conceptual semantic case theory, syntax and semantics have their own independent case assignment principles. For impersonal verbs in OE, I propose that UG leave an option of determining either syntactic or semantic case to lexical items. This proposal opens a new window for the OE impersonal construction, in that it naturally explains both possible and impossible case frames of the construction.

• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.93-127
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• 2002

This paper deals with a class of Middle English impersonal constructions that involve verbs of two-place argument structure. As is generally understood, the term 'impersonal' is notoriously murky, and after all those researches that have been performed in this area, quite a few issues still remain controversial. The issues we center around in the present study concern the following two. In the type of impersonal constructions we consider, the two arguments-Cause and Experiencer-are both expressed in oblique case, posing the problem of determining which of them functions as the grammatical subject. The issue, however. is not how an argument in oblique case can be taken as the subject: it is well blown that the so called 'dative subject Experiencer' already occurred in Old English. The real issue is why both of the arguments are syntactically realized as nonnominative. The other issue concerns the 3rd-person singular form of the verb. Here again, the crux of the problem may be blurred by the fact that impersonal construction is often defined as one in which the verb has 3rd-person singular form with no apparent nominative W controlling verb concord. But this definition is more nebulous than clear because the notion 'subjectless' is itself highly controversial. Thus, for an expression like me thinketh that-S, it may well be that the verb thinketh ('seems') is 3rd-person singular because the that-clause is the subject. What should be explained of the data brought up here is why the impersonal verb is 3rd-person singular when neither of the NPs associated with it is 3rd person or singular. I argue that we can account for our paradigm examples by looking upon them as 'mixed construction' in which semantic interpretation conflicts with syntactic parsing as a result of case syncretism and gradual establishment of SVO word order. This amounts to saying that the peculiarities of the construction originate with the confused use of impersonal verbs between the sense of 'give an impression' and that of 'receive and impression.'

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.119-129
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• 2005