Re: Sentences without any subject

On Oct 5, 7:52 pm, John Atkinson <johna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Adam Funk wrote:
On 2009-10-05, Guy Barry wrote:

"Christian Weisgerber" <na...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hab9or$8mr$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I don't know how remarkable all of this is in the bigger linguistic
picture.  It is pretty crazy if you are looking at it from English.
It's only remarkable if you're taught that a verb has to have a subject.

(It doesn't have to have an expressed subject in Latin, for example.)

After all, the German usage is perfectly logical: in a passive construction
the direct object of the active verb becomes the subject.  So if the verb
has no direct object, either because it's intransitive or because it takes
some other object, then it makes sense that the passive verb should have no
subject.  (In English, of course, you can't form the passive of an
intransitive verb.)

What's interesting is that in such cases the verb is always third person
singular.  Is this to be taken as the "default" form of the verb?  Or is
there in fact an implied subject which is third person singular, although
never expressed?  Difficult to say.

I'm curious as to whether Modern English is an exception among current
and past Germanic languages here.  Do most other Germanic languages
allow this?  How about Old English?

Modern English isn't an absolute exception to the "always third person
singular" principle.  In many colloquial registers, "there's" and "it's"
are perfectly acceptable, even standard, when followed by a plural noun.
 (I'm not so sure to what extent this is also the case for  the (rarer)
expanded versions, "there is" and "it is".)

I wonder whether the "ungrammaticality" of this in more formal registers
is due to prescriptionist disapproval, as is apparently the case with
singular "they".  Someone should check to see whether Shakespeare and
Jane Austin used it.

See any handbook of non-sexist writing.
.

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