Subject Float, Low Subject Trapping, and Case in Icelandic

This article describes and discusses two peculiar sets of (in)defi nitenessfacts applying to subjects in Icelandic, here referred to as Subject Floatand Low Subject Trapping. Indefi nite subjects (commonly quantifi ed) inpresentational sentences and related clause types may either occupy thecomplement position within the predicate phrase or “fl oat” into variouspositions in the middle fi eld. This is Subject Float, yielding variation suchas “There would (many farmers) then (many farmers) probably (manyfarmers) be (?*many farmers) elected (many farmers)”. Conversely, andunexpectedly, defi nite NP subjects of some adjectival and verbal predicatesmust stay in the complement position. This is Low Subject Trapping,yielding orders such as “there is cold radiator-the” and “there cooledradiator-the”. It is shown that the licensing of subject NPs in the variouspositions in Subject Float and in the complement position in Low SubjectTrapping is unrelated to specifi c grammatical cases, thus refuting the widelyadopted case approach to NP licensing. Although Icelandic case markinghas been widely discussed, Subject Float and Low Subject Trapping havenot previously received a detailed scrutiny; these phenomena provideadditional and partly new knockout arguments against the case approach toNP licensing and NP movement. While high NP raising to subject (Spec,IP)is unaffected by case, it seems to involve both Person and Topic matching. (Less)