Talk:Quirky subject

Clarification request

Swedish-language verbs forced subjects to agree in person around the 15th century, the advent of modern Swedish. Agreement in number remained in written Swedish as late as the 20th century, though, even though all subject-verb agreement had disappeared in speech by the 17th century.

I'm a little confused about what this means. Does "agreement in number" mean, for example, that the word for "He" would be different in "He ate an orange" and "He ate some oranges"? What about "agreement in person"? Different between "He likes me" and "He likes her"? Even though English makes no distinction I feel this section would benefit greatly from some English-language examples to illustrate how it would work if it did. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.169.18 (talk) 22:25, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

See Agreement for a partial explanation. Cheers Io (talk) 22:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Example

This page would benefit from an example in Icelandic (with tranlation of course) OliAtlason (talk) 07:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

An example would be, if I have understood the subject (pun unintended) correctly:

Mér (I - dative) er (is) kalt (cold), meaning I am cold. Note that the verb is correctly translated as is, since it occurs in the third person.

Admittedly, this sentence lacks an object. But if this is an example, the same thing occurs in German, at least, a word-for-word (and also correct) translation being mir ist kalt.

Right now I can think of quite a few examples, where the subject is not in the nominative, but, alas, none where the object is governed by the verb. All I can think of are phrases of the type Subject (in an oblique case) - Verb - Object as a prepositional construct.

A good example might be “Mig vanntar penna” (I need a pen), both mig and penna are in accusative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.199.48.32 (talk) 10:44, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

And a question, again assuming I've understood the matter correctly: Shouldn't the English ungrammatical example given be *me likes him since it is the subject we're talking about? Cheers Io (talk) 17:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

In Icelandic there are verbs which always take another case than nominative, using nominative with them is impossible. I think the example I put in it is right Quirky subject but someone must fix the text because I´m not good in english.

The archaic but still heard "methinks" (descending from Old and Middle English which apparently had this "quirky subject") is maybe a better example than the current one. 24.182.227.69 (talk) 03:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Woe is me! No, "methinks" is in the reflexive case, as in "it thinks to me". -lysdexia 23:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am not quite sure if 'methinks' is 'it thinks to me', which would feature the dative case of 'I' anyway. On the contrary, it'd suspect that 'methinks' was originally 'it seems to me', is there not a 'meseemeth' in older literature? I'd suspect that 'to think' in general meant, originally, 'to seem'. In German, there is 'dünken', 'to seem', which corresponds phonetically exactly to the English 'to think', and 'denken', which does not ('to thenk' would have been the counterpart, if it had existed). At some stage of the historical development of English, these two verbs, 'to think' and 'to thenk', coalesced (got confused), a thing not unheard-of in the history of English, and 'to think' acquired the meaning it now has, its older meaning being preserved only in the phrase 'methinks'. Any good historians of English to check this? 78.52.152.201 (talk) 11:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

Check Wiktionary. The corresponding German phrase is the equally archaic and formulaic mich dünkt. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't read correctly, you are right, but the verb cognate with German denken is really thench, which is attested in Middle English (lacking in Wiktionary, however), while think is indeed the cognate of dünken. They are constructed like in German: thench on me or (later?) also thench of me = denk an mich, me thinks = mich dünkt. Only later, thench was replaced by think and the oblique me thinks construction fell out of use apart from the fossilised formula. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Pro-drop

Just to clarify: If a phenomenon is not there, it simply isn't. Chomsky has probably done more harm to linguistics than any other person. A phenomenon which cannot theoretically be observed is not there. English may have the construction "It is ...", but that does not mean that it is there in invisible form in other languages. Please be realistic. Cheers Io (talk) 21:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

PS: Any number of illogical linguists thinking something does not make it so. Io (talk) 21:57, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This was too harshly framed. Offending remark stricken with apologies. All the best Io (talk) 16:01, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Old Swedish

Will someone clarify the bit about Old Swedish? Subjects don't agree in person, since subjects (or other declined, as opposed to conjugated) words don't decline for person at all. Cheers Io (talk) 21:04, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. Pronouns, of course, take different forms for person, but that is not the same as agreeing with the verb in person. They (pronouns as subjects and the verb) do agree in number, of course. Cheers Io (talk) 22:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Disregard my above nonsense. But the bit about Swedish is still unclear, nonetheless. Io (talk) 23:40, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

German example

Has the "Mir ist kalt" example been described as a quirky subject in the syntactic literature? And is "Es ist mir kalt" really ungrammatical? I'm a fluent but non-native speaker of German, and it sounds okay to me, if less common than "Mir ist kalt". I checked German GoogleBooks for the phrase "Es war ihm kalt" (the past tense and the 3rd person being more likely to occur in writing) and got 32 hits (vs. 245 for "Ihm war kalt"), so it does seem to occur, if relatively infrequently. —Angr 23:59, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm a fluent speaker too, and lived in Germany for years. I don't have a refernce for *Es ist mir kalt, but every native speaker I've known would call it ungrammatical, and I have been corrected for making that mistake. So, yes, I would say it's ungrammatical with a minority accepting it. But that would only make it ungrammatical from a prescriptive viewpoint. A descriptive grammar might include it.

I wouldn't know about the specialist literature. I'm a hobbyist, although I do pride myself on my ear, if I'm allowed to. But that, of course, falls under the category of boasting. But considering the enormous output of articles, it is not for a non-specialist to say if something is or is not treated in the literature. All the best, may we meet again. Io (talk) 20:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm a native speaker of German, and it's really curious: "Es ist mit kalt" ("I'm cold") is definitely ungrammatical, while "Es war mir kalt" (I was cold") sounds rather posh, but is correct, especially in poetry. Equally, "Es ist ihm kalt" ("He's cold") is wrong, "Es war ihm kalt" ("He was cold") is okay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.14.41.96 (talk) 18:06, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This is really weird: I have asked two native German native speakers, both of whom were very competent speakers, and both told me that both 'Mir ist kalt' and 'Es ist mir kalt' were perfectly grammatical. This shows how unreliable native speakers' intuitions sometimes are. 78.49.195.204 (talk) 09:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

I'm a native speaker and "Es ist mir kalt", while not used often, is perfectly grammatical for me. 178.190.14.185 (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Weitere Beispiele: There are a lot of examples in German:

• Ihm ist kalt (He is cold)
• Uns deucht es besser, ihm zu gehorchen (We think it would be better to obey him)
• Ihnen friert (They are freezing)
• Dich dürstet (Thou art thirsty)

--Benutzer:Ziolf, 08:05, 20. Hornung 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ziolf (talk • contribs) 08:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Original research and references

Since I'm the culprit in Angr's latest revisions, here goes: Constructing the sentence Mir ist kalt does not qualify as original research unless one interprets that concept so broadly as to render it useless. Since we have had a discussion on your (is it unethical to address a user directly?) user page, and you have shown greater knowledge in parts of the discussion than I have, feel free to rephrase or remove. But the citation needed does not apply as for the German itself, since it is followed by a valid German example (i.e. valid German example, not, according to your definition, a valid case of a quirky subject). The only thing I have to answer for is my claim that *Es ist mir kalt is ungrammatical and that one could be called original research, if conversations with hundreds of people qualify as such. I don't have a reference handy. So, the first citation needed is redundant, since it is followed by an example, the label original research is dubious, but the second citation needed is probably justified. Edit as you wish, I don't like to take part when I'm not 100% sure (although that has never prevented me so far - my character flaw :-). All the best. Io (talk) 20:04, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

The first [citation needed] tag refers to a need for citation for the claim that Mir is kalt is a quirky subject, not for the claim that's it's a grammatical German sentence. Since several of the syntacticians who have done research on the quirky subject are themselves native speakers of German and have nevertheless claimed that the quirky subject may be found only in Icelandic among modern languages, that strongly suggests to me that those native German speakers do not consider Mir is kalt to be a quirky subject. Whether Es ist mir kalt is grammatical or not is, in that case, irrelevant. —Angr 21:25, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, but that only refers to their opinion of what a quirky subject is, and it seems they agree with you. In that context their native language is irrelevant, since it is not a question of correct German. (My misunderstanding, sorry.) Cheers Io (talk) 21:37, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Some clarification needed

From reading this article, I could clearly understand the dynamics of the phaenomenon: namely, "certain verbs specify that their subjects are to be in a case other than the nominative." However, not knowing one such language (i.e. most probably Icelandic) one wonders which are the charachteristics of such verbs or more precisely one is led to suspect that they may have a certain semantics associated with that of the "other case." Some clarification is needed in this regard. --Blazar.writeto() 22:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps my reputation is dead, but I can tell you that most of the Icelandic verbs in this class are "egocentric". Mig langar (I want), mig vantar (I need), mér finnst (I believe) etc. The list is not very long. A professional linguist might perhaps clarify it better. Cheers Io (talk) 15:57, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

For Icelandic at least, the list is in fact quite long, including hundreds and hundreds of verbs, not all experiencers (which are an important subset of oblique-subject verbs). For example, you have "Bátnum hvolfdi" (the boat (dative) capsized), with dative on "the boat". Moreover, passives of ditransitives typically feature oblique subjects, such as "Mér var gefin bókin" (me (dative) was given a book (nominative)) where the dative is the subject and the nominative is the object. (This has been demonstrated and is not considered controversial.) Researchers have spent a lot of energy trying to find semantic coherence to the class of oblique subject verbs, and while this has partially been successful, it is clear that there is at least some arbitrariness there. But for sure, this list is long, and the verbs are not all "egocentric".

Early Modern English

Would the the Early Modern English "methinks" usage not also be considered a quirky case?

86.160.211.86 (talk) 14:00, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Possibly, yes. See above. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:38, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Middle English, Polish

John knew the wey, -- hem nedede no gyde, -- -- saith Master Geoffrey in The Reeve's Tale... .

In Polish (might be in other Slav languages too) such constructions are a-plenty. 'Jest mi zimno', for instance, literally, 'Is me (or to-me, dative) cold', 'Było mi zimno', 'Was me cold', 'Będzie ci smutno', (will-be to-you, dative, sad), 'you'll be sad', etc. etc. No end. We even say: 'chce mi się", 'wants to-me itself', sort of "I feel like it' or 'nie chce mi się', "not wants to-me itself', 'I am too lazy'. We make a difference between that and the 1st person constructions 'Chcę', "nie chcę"/I want, I don't want, I have (not) the will, where the idea of personal subjectivity is implied. 78.52.240.6 (talk) 20:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

In Russian too: 'Mne kholodno' = "Me is cold" ("I'm cold"), 'Mne khochetsa' = "Me wants" ("I'd like"), but 'ya khochu' "I want". It's very widespread in Slav languages. But in Russian dialects it has more use, for example: 'mne priyekhavshi' = "Me have come" in a subordinate clause.195.113.149.177 (talk) 14:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are lots of languages that allow sentences in which the only noun or noun present is in the dative case, and no nominative case is anywhere in sight. But those aren't quirky subjects unless there's independent evidence that those dative forms are actually the grammatical subject of the sentence. —Angr 20:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Ist there a canonical definition of `grammatical subject of the sentence', or one counting as such in the Wikipedia? If there is, I should try to find the independent evidence you are mentioning. The Polish sentence `jest mi zimno' seems to me (I am a native speaker of Polish and what the Wikipedia would call `near-native-level' speaker of German) to be exactly like, in all possible respects I can think of, the German sentence 'Mir ist kalt' (To-me, dative of 'I', is cold, in both cases) So if the latter is a good example of Q. C., so must be the former.

I once read, in a respectable-looking linguistic treatise, whose title and author I alas forget, an explanation why the Q. C. of that sort should be frequent in Slav idioms and rare in the Western European ones. In a nutshell: Eastern Europeans are passive, have no true idea of personal subjectivity, and see lots of things as happening to them rather than as actively done by themselves. In German, a transition from Q. C. construction to the nominative case constructions: Mir traeumte (to-me dreamt) ---> Ich traeumte, I dreamt, I had a dream, being an example of a 'Westernization' of German, change in mentality of the speakers and such-like. I should not deny that there might a a grain of truth in that, even though taken literally this 'theory' is rather funny. However, Q. C. constructions are extremely popular (more so than in Polish) in Icelandic, which is by no means a Slav, or an Eastern European, language (well, maybe it will soon be, given that the Icelandic treasury has recently been rescued by Russia...). 78.52.152.201 (talk) 11:06, 15 November 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

Well, I don't think "Mir ist kalt" is a quirky subject either, which is why the claim is peppered with "citation needed" tags. I'm unaware of any independent evidence that "mir" is the subject of that sentence. In the Icelandic examples, though, there is: there are reflexive anaphors in Icelandic that can refer back only to the subject of a sentence, and that includes subjects in the quirky dative case. There's some other evidence too, which I can't remember at the moment, but it's in the papers cited in the article. —Angr 14:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I've had an impressionistic looking-over of the papers cited. OK, the Polish 'jest mi zimno' fails on most of the tests, I mean 'mi' qua the subject. But is the concept of 'subject' in those articles a bit overly recondite and abstruse? I'd rather propone this one: If x is the subject of a sentence, then the main verb therein must agree with x in number and person (if there are distinct forms for it, that is), and on this test 'Mir is kalt' and 'Jest mi zimno' fail too, because 'mir/mi' is the first person singular, while 'ist/jest' is the 3rd person. Not sure about the Icelandic 'mér er kalt', because 'er' might just as well be the third person too. In Old Icelandic there was a separate form for 'am', namely 'em', Modern Icelandic I dunno. What you effectively require is that it should be grammatical to say, for instance, to-me AM something-or-other, not: to-me IS, right?

78.49.156.165 (talk) 21:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

Re reflexivization: It sort of seems to me that in Polish it is grammatical to say: 'przykro mi z powodu swoich błędów', 'I am sorry because of my errors', where 'swój' is the reflexive possessiv pronoun, very much like 'sin' in Icelandic. 'przykro mi' is something like the Latin 'paenitet me'. 78.49.156.165 (talk) 21:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

For the moment, I'll add Lithuanian (and most probably Latvian, too) as languages that employ the aforementioned constructions very often. The point is, that I don't see any difference between what is called a quirky subject in Icelandic (Mer er kalt) and a, say, Russian example (Mne [jest] xolodno). What is the proof that the dative Mer IS a quirky subject whereas the exact same dative Mne is not??

I believe there is no such thing as a 'Quirky Subject'. This is probably just an IMPERSONAL SENTENCE. For example,

Man (yra) šalta - lit. For me (is) cold. = I am cold Man puikiai sekasi. - For me perfectly succeeds = I am doing very well etc.

In Lithuanian, we say that here there is no subject at all, thus this is an impersonal sentence. The verb (which may be omitted) governs the object "Man" ("For me") but THAT'S AN OBJECT OF THE VERB, not THE SUBJECT OF THE SENTENCE!

At the moment, I don't see any difference between "Man (yra) šalta" and "Mer er kalt".

P.S. also note in Ancient Greek "dokei moi" (it seems to me ...) - all manifestations of impersonal sentences.

--RokasT (talk) 00:01, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

There are a few tests that show the dative subject in Icelandic is truly a subject. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is that possessive pronouns that agree with it take the reflexive form, which is only possible when they agree with the subject. There are others, mentioned in the academic literature on quirky subjects, but I can't remember them right now. —Angr 10:50, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Russian has this for quirky subjects in the dative ("mne kholodno" = "to me it is cold"), but also in the genitive: "U menya net deneg" = "By me is none of money" = "I have no money". Probably the strongest appearance of non-nominative subjects is in the past: "Y menya ne bylo deneg" = "By me there wasn't any of money" = "I had no money", where the verb is in the neuter singular, despite the masculine or feminine quirky subject and the feminine plural quirky complement: it's hard to make a case for buried subject or object movement when the verb gender specifically denies any ties to the other nouns. As an aside, the linguist above who declared Slavic impersonals to be a sign of passivity probably didn't know that modern Russian has no passive voice. Scutigera (talk) 03:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Other languages

This sort of construct seems to be common in Romance languages (e.g., Spanish "me gusta X", Romanian "îmi place X" = "I like X"). It also exists in Georgian's indirect/inverted verbs ("Class 4" verbs; see Georgian verb paradigm). Or am I misunderstanding something here? Richwales (talk) 04:43, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there evidence that "me" in "Me gusta X" is the subject? Considering "gusta" agrees in number with X (it becomes plural when X is plural, e.g. "Me gustan tus zapatos"), I think X is the subject of "gustar" and "me" is the object. I don't know about Romanian and Georgian. —Angr 15:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't go so far as to say that "me" is the subject, but it's interesting that gustar is almost always used with the subject after the verb: "Me gustan los huevos", rarely "Los huevos me gustan" (which is emphatic/contrastive), which is unusual for a Spanish verb. I don't know if it deserves mention in the article, though. - furrykef (Talk at me) 17:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, since it has nothing to do with quirky subjects, I'd say not. —Angr 17:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say "nothing". The sentence structure is "backwards", putting the subject in the object position, so you could hypothetically analyze "me" as the subject and say that the verb agrees in number with its object. It's more complicated and inconsistent to analyze it that way than the conventional way, so of course we don't analyze it that way; my point is just that how we analyze it is sort of a matter of convention. - furrykef (Talk at me) 02:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I was quite surprised not to see me gusta misidentified as a quirky subject in this article, so I clicked through, thinking, ‘someone will definitely have naïvely brought up gustar on the Talk page. I wasn’t disappointed. It is not unusual in the slightest for a Spanish verb to precede its subject. If we said me os gusta, then fine; but me gustáis just has a subject in the usual form and an object in the usual form (indirect, in this particular case).

If you want an example of an object pronoun becoming a subject, just look at impersonal or passive se. Most of the time it holds onto its reflexive roots, but in sentences where what is supposed to be the subject is human and has been deprived of all agency, the phenomenon of ‘personal a’ steps in and boldly brands them as the object: se detuvo a los culpables. Se is then unambiguously an impersonal subject pronoun exactly equivalent to French on (and therefore third-person singular) and the culprits are the direct object. — Chameleon 06:09, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Frustrating article...

Can there be better examples given of this in the article? What is proposed for Spanish is basically the same argument as for German. The construction rendering the person as an object, usually indirect object. "It is cold to me" and "It is pleasing to me", are basically the same. So how can you accept one and not the other? Even if you "take out" the "It is" from the German sentence, you are still talking about the "Cold is to me" If you say "we are cold" you don't say, "Uns sind kalt"... it's obviously conjugating the verb based on our dummy subject, "es".

Would the Old Norse situation with passives, be an example of a quirky subject? For example, taken from the book "The syntax of Old Norse" by Jan Terje Faarlund:

Var gefinn þeim matr. - Was given them-dat food-nom. (Translates to "They were given food.") however:
*Váru þeir gefnir mat. - Were they-nom given food-akk. (Translates literally to "They were given food" but is ungrammatical.)

Thus here in the passive, and only the passive, there is no way of constructing the "They were given food" with the subj-patient in the nominative. Here the subj-recipient is in the dative, whereas the obj-patient is in the nominative. Obviously the agent is removed. Also notice the change in the verb conjugation.

Additionally, the German version of this page quotes mostly German examples (hahaha) and also mentions that this happens with Hindi. Can any further, concrete examples of this be given?

Thanks :) Retailmonica (talk) 20:35, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I've removed German because I'm not aware of any published source describing the "Mir ist kalt" construction as a quirky subject, and because it induces people to think that things like Spanish "me gusta X" is also a quirky subject, and that too has (AFAIK) never been described as such. —Angr 21:43, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, another Old Norse example from Faarlund is that sometimes a sentence requires the subject to be in the so-called 'lexical accusative' See here:

þat dreymdi mik

that-Nom dreamt me-Acc

"I dreamt that..."

Perhaps this is as well an example?Retailmonica (talk) 15:17, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Icelandic example

Example: Mig(I-accusative) vantar(needs) penna(a pen-accusative). (I need a pen.)

Surely, the translation should be: Me need a pen? If Mig is accusative that would translate as me.

Also, there is an inconsistancy in the use of needs and need: which is it? I will use need. The whole example should then read:

Example: Mig(me-accusative) vantar(need) penna(a pen-accusative). (Me need a pen.)

I don't know Icelandic, so this needs verification. Jubilee♫clipman 03:23, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The literal meaning of the words one by one is "me" (accusative), "needs" (3rd person singular), "pen" (accusative). But the translation of the entire sentence into grammatical English is "I need a pen". +Angr 08:28, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Additions to this Article

Hi everyone! We are Linguistics students at UBC and we will be adding content to this article very soon. We will be providing analyses and drawing examples from languages like Basque, Hindi, and German. If you could give us any tips on where to start or if there are other languages that exhibit Quirky Subjects, please feel free to let us know! Thank you Jan.urquico (talk) 23:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

"Gefallen" and quirky subjects

Does the German example really include a quirky subject? I was taught that "gefallen" can be translated as "to please," so that, for example, "es gefaellt mir" means "it pleases me." Therefore, the example sentence can be translated as "the picture pleases Fritz." In that case, the subject would be "das Bild" (what else would "das Bild" be besides the subject?), which is of course in the nominative case (as the article correctly indicates), so there is no quirky subject as defined in this article. 2604:2000:EFC0:2:4DF6:6328:1154:9482 (talk) 04:22, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

"I see him leave the house"

That's odd enough in English. German is much more reluctant than English to use AcI constructions, preferring or insisting on separate clauses in a much wider range of cases. To me as a native speaker, ich sehe ihn den Mann mögen is grammatical, but only in the way that colorless green ideas sleep furiously is grammatical: how do you see someone like? What's that supposed to mean? It's so unidiomatic it suggests incompetence in German on the part of whoever came up with it as an example sentence.

The German article on quirky subjects in Icelandic avoids this issue quite elegantly by using ich sehe ihn das Haus verlassen, which is completely unobjectionable. It does have the theoretical disadvantage that das Haus looks the same in the nominative and the accusative, but everything else makes clear that it's accusative: ich can only be nominative, so that should be the subject, and verlassen requires an accusative (expressing what you leave is not optional like it is in English; "I'm leaving" has to be rendered as such things as ich gehe – *ich verlasse as a complete sentence is not grammatical).

The problem is that ich sehe ihn das Haus verlassen is probably not in ref. 5, while the analysis (with an empty position called "t") isn't in the German Wikipedia article. What do we do? David Marjanović (talk) 23:03, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Crucial bits of information missing in the explanations/examples

The sections 'PRO control', 'Subject-to-object raising' and 'Conjunction reduction' currently explain how normal subjects meet these subjecthood criteria, but they don't show how quirky subjects do that, which is actually the crucial part for the topic of this article. It seems especially pointless to give examples of normal subjects in Icelandic if you don't then give an example of what's actually specific for Icelandic, namely the quirky subject - if you are going to stick to normal subjects, examples from English would have worked just as well. It looks almost as if some parts of the text have been deleted without much thought being given to the coherence of what is left. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 20:12, 25 December 2023 (UTC)