Covert nominative and dative subjects in Faroese

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a recent survey of dative subjects in Faroese, using a judgment task and data elicited from interviews with native speakers. The results indicate that dative subjects are in the process of being replaced by nominative subjects. Moreover, dative subjects behave like nominative subjects in that they may trigger number agreement with the finite verb. It is hypothesized that dative subjects in Faroese have an unrealized nominative case assigned by T(ense) and this makes number agreement possible. This hypothesis is argued to account for certain differences between Faroese and Icelandic, most notably the fact that verbs with dative subjects take accusative objects in Faroese but nominative objects in Icelandic.