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In:Footprints of Phrase Structure: Studies in syntax in honour of Tim Stowell
Edited by María J. Arche, Jan-Wouter Zwart, Hamida Demirdache and Hagit Borer
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 288] 2025
► pp. 111–134

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Mind your Ps and Ks!

Quirky subjects and nominal licensing

 | Queen Mary University of London
Published online: 2 October 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.288.06adg
Abstract
This paper revisits a puzzling construction found in Scottish Gaelic and Modern Irish where subjects of modal and experiencer predicates look like prepositional phrases. These have previously been argued to involve raising to the complement of the preposition, or prepositions that are really case markers. Both approaches have theoretical and empirical problems. I argue instead that the experiencer cases are prepositional phrases Merged as the specifiers of an applicative functional projection, while the modal cases are to be understood as raising to that same position (so applicatives are like v in allowing thematic and non-thematic specifiers). Only in the latter situation is the preposition a realization of case, as Stowell (1989) proposed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Two quirky subjects in Scottish Gaelic
  • 3.Structure of Experiencer constructions
  • 4.Structure of modal constructions
  • 5.Implications
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (24)
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