German subject (was: Do Children Learn Languages at ...)

Joachim Pense:

>> I see another issue with the concept of a "dative subject" : Look at "Dem
>> König gefällt Musik" ('the king likes music', literally the 'king<dat>
>> pleases music<nom>'.) By your definition, "Dem König" should be subject,
>> and "Musik" object. This is ok semantically and pragmatically, but
>> syntactically, it is clear that "Musik" is the subject, and "Dem König" is
>> an object. You see it if you put der König into the plural; the verb,
>> agreeing with the syntactical subject, remains in the singular.

I was aware of such examples when I wrote my contribution. Its message was
"it is not as simple as you think, to wit that subject is nominative and
vice versa". Its message was not "it is quite simple if you see it my
way". It is *not* simple.

All the following is meant to hold for the German language; it may or may
not hold for other languages.

There are a number of facts (if I miss no counter-example) that are simple:

1) The inflected verb of the main clause goes into the second place, no
matter what happens, even if one has to insert an absolutely
meaningless "es" in the beginning. Such an "es" must not be mistaken
for an unpersonal "es" as in "es regnet" which is never dropped.

2) The topic of the sentence usually (pragmatic rules are seldom without
exception) goes somewhere at the beginning of the sentence. This is
the main reason to construct sentences in passive voice or with an
object at the beginning. It is also the main reason to begin a sentence
with a meaningless "es": to place a noun away from the topic position.
Consider the song lyric "Es klappert die Mühle am rauschenden Bach".
Would you start with the subject "Die Mühle klappert ...", the mill
would be the topic, and the listeners would interrupt you after the
first two words with the question "which mill?". To avoid this, you
would have to use "Eine Mühle klappert ..." but even that would be
unidiomatic compared to "Am rauschenden Bach klappert eine Mühle" - but
that would not fit to the tune - and hardly to any tune.

3) If there is something in the nominative case, there is a good chance
that the verb agrees with it at least in number and mostly in person as
well. The rules are not simple. Consider "Wir sind das Volk", "Der
Staat bin ich", "Ich bin es, der gestern zu spät gekommen ist" and
explain for each sentence with what the verb agrees and why.

4) If there is nothing in the nominative case, the verb will be in 3rd
person singular.

Now we have one syntactic, one pragmatic and two morphological rules. Now,
where does subjecthood fit in?

Subjects are typically topics, they come early in the sentence, they are
in nominative case, the verb agrees with them in number and person, they
are semantically active, and most of them are definite. These are
pragmatic, syntactic, morphological, and semantic criteria all mixed up,
and it is easy to construct sentences where there is nothing that meets
more than one or two of them. The problem is: we learn grammar (at least I
did learn the grammar of my own language thoroughly in school) as if it
were clear what a subject is so that we can assign the nominative case to
it. But it is the other way round: it is clear where the nominative goes
and this may be the decisive hint about where the subject is. Subjecthood
is a fuzzy concept already in a single language, and the more so when
different languages are compared. Grammar lessons not pointing that out
are at a loss.

> An even shorter example: "Uns wird geholfen" (not: *Uns werden geholfen).

Even worse: "Mir werden die Briefe vorgelesen". Here the syntactic and
pragmatic position of subject is at the beginning but something else is in
the nominative case and reigns the verb.

I wonder whether there is unanimity about the definition of subject in
German, comprising also such examples as we had them here. Perhaps the
simplest is: a noun, pronoun, or name in nominative case without
which the sentence would be incomplete and with which the verb agrees. But
then we have to live with many complete sentences that have no subject at
all.

Helmut Richter
.

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