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In:Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical:
Edited by Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Tuomas Huumo
[Constructional Approaches to Language 16] 2015
► pp. 205–228

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The world is raining

Meteorological predicates and their subjects in a typological perspective

 | University of Oslo
 | University of Helsinki
 | University of Eastern Finland
Published online: 14 January 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.16.08eri
The peculiar semantic properties of meteorological predicates have linguistic consequences. Some of these consequences concern their subjects, which do not behave like prototypical subjects do. Meteorological predicates often lack a subject, and in the languages where they do have subjects they are non-referential, non-topical, indefinite, inanimate or non-agentive entities. They are typically either expletive elements or lexical elements referring to the spatial, temporal or atmospheric background, i.e. elements which would otherwise have been encoded as adverbial phrases. Although the nominative – or some other kind of zero marking – and default agreement marking (3rd person, singular number, neuter gender) are typical of these subjects, the study argues that they display special behavior which distinguishes them from canonical cases.
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