A-2

Raising to Quirky Subject in Tatar∗
Chihiro Taguchi
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
taguchi.chihiro.td0@is.naist.jp
Keywords— Tatar, Turkic, syntax, morphology, raising, quirky subject
Abstract

Tatar (< Kipchak < Turkic) has subject-to-subject raising predicates where the raised
argument is marked by nominative, dative and genitive case, of which the latter two are“quirky (i.e., non-nominative) subjects” (Sigurðsson 1992). Poole (2016) proposed theQuirky Subject Hierarchy, a three-level hierarchy of the subjecthood of quirky subjects,
and classiﬁed languages with quirky subject into three categories: Hindi type, Icelandic
type, and Laz type. However, the Tatar data in this paper demonstrate that a language
may ﬁt more than one categories; a raised subject with dative case-marking in Tatar
displays the Icelandic-type characteristics, and a raised subject with genitive displays theLaz-type. I propose that these properties are not language-speciﬁc but lexicon-speciﬁc.

1Introduction

The Tatar language is a Kipchak language of the Turkic language family. It is an agglutinative language with several nominal case suﬃxes. The canonical word order is SOV, and themodiﬁcation order is AN.
This paper deals with two kinds of subject-to-subject raising (SSR) predicates whose subject
is marked by genitive and dative. (1)-(3) are examples of raising constructions in Tatar, (1)with a nominative subject which is a typical way of marking a subject, (2) with a dative, and (3)with a genitive, all having by and large similar deontological meaning. Section 2 outlines what
raising is and how it is analyzed in general theoretical linguistics. In section 3 it is argued thatthe raised arguments with the three kinds of case-marking are all “quirky” subjects accompanied
by non-canonical cases. Then, based on the Tatar data, section 4 presents a counterargument
against the quirky subject hierarchy (QSH) proposed by Poole (2016).
(1) Marat kit-ärgä tiješ.
pn.nom leave-inf obligatory“Marat must leave.”(2) Marat-qa kit-ärgä kiräk.
pn-dat leave-inf necessary“Marat must leave.”(3) Marat-nïŋ kit-äsebar.
pn-gen leave-fp.3 exist“Marat must leave.”∗I am grateful to Christopher Tancredi and Christopher Lucas for helpful comments and discussions on theearlier drafts, to Atsuhiko Kato for insightful comments when I started working on this, and to Bulat Shaymiev
and Rustem Sulteev, native informants, for helping me with the acceptability of the sentences prepared for thispaper. Any errors are my own.

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2

Raising

2.1

Overview

Raising is a syntactic phenomenon commonly found among languages. Compare the two English
sentences below:(4) John seemed to leave.
(5) John tried to leave.
Although they have a similar construction, the predicates show diﬀerent syntactic operations. The type of the former verb seem is called a raising verb, and the latter one try is acontrol verb. The most conspicuous diﬀerence of them is that seem does not subcategorize fora subject as its core argument, while try does. The matrix subject of (4) is in fact the subjectof leave, which is “raised” from the subordinate clause to the matrix clause. For clarifying themovement, (6) contains t (trace) in the position where it is supposed to be before the raising.
On the other hand, “John” in (5) is the subject of try as well as of leave, the latter of whichis controlled by the matrix subject. The controlled subject of leave is expressed as pro in(7).
(6) Johni seemed [ ti to leave ].
(7) Johni tried [ proi to leave ].
Raising to a subject prevents the subject position from being empty and thereby suﬃces
the Extended Projection Principle (Halle & Marantz 1993), which stipulates that the speciﬁer
position of a ﬁnite TP (i.e. subject) must be ﬁlled. The fact that any subject is not subcategorized for by seem is also conﬁrmed by a paraphrase of (4), where an expletive it substitutes
in the subject position as in (8).
(8) It seemed that John left.
It is reported that there are two types of raising: subject-to-subject raising (SSR) andsubject-to-object raising (SOR). SSR is exempliﬁed in (4), and an example of SOR is shown in(9). The subject of leave is “Mary”, but the argument is raised to the object position of thematrix clause.
(9) John believes Maryi [ ti to have left ].

2.2

Raising in Tatar

A non-modal example of (1)-(3) is (10), in which the subject of leave is marked by nominative.
When this phrase is embedded within another matrix clause as an inﬁnitival construction(here the matrix predicate can be tiješ, kiräk and bar), the subject is raised to the matrix
clause because inﬁnitives do not assign a nominative case in Tatar. As a result of raising, amorphological case of the raised subject is assigned by the matrix predicate.
(10) Marat kit-ä.
pn.nom leave-prs.3“Marat leaves.”－9－For instance, the syntactic structure of (1) is (11).
(11) Marat i [IP ti kit-ärgä ] tiješ.
The fact that this construction is not a ﬂat structure but raising can be conﬁrmed by thepassivization test. The diﬀerence is evident in the semantic representations of sentences (12)(15). As in (12) and (13), the semantic relationship of the core arguments is the same evenafter passivization. In contrast, for control predicates in (14) and (15), the semantic role isswitched and their meanings are no longer similar at all.
(12) Marat xat-nï
jaz-arGa tiješ.
pn.nom letter-acc write-inf obligatory“Marat must write the letter.”: write⟨marat, letter⟩(13) xat
Marat taraf-ïn-nan jaz-ïl-ïrGa
tiješ
letter.nom pnside-3-abl write-pass-inf obligatory“The letter must be written by Marat.”: write⟨marat, letter⟩(14) Marat xat-nï
jaz-arGa tïrïš-tï.
pn.nom letter-acc write-inf try-pst.3“Marat tried to write the letter.”: try⟨marat, λx.write⟨x, letter⟩⟩(15) xat
Marat taraf-ïn-nan jaz-ïl-ïrGatïrïš-tï.
letter.nom pnside-3-abl write-pass-inf try-pst.3“The letter tried to be written by Marat.”: try⟨letter, λx.write⟨marat, x⟩⟩
Whether the raised arguments are in fact subjects or not will be discussed in section 3.2.

3

Quirky Subject

3.1

Overview

Quirky subjects refer to subjects with non-canonical case-marking (particularly non-nominative),typically reported in Icelandic (Sigurðsson 1992).
(16) Þeirhjálpuðu
okkur.
they.nom help.pst.3.pl we.dat“They helped us.”(17) Okkur var
hjálpað.
we.dat be.pst.3.sg help.pp“We were helped.”
This construction is contrasted by so-called “quirky-like” construction, epitomized by German in (18) and (19). Although these sentences look similar to the Icelandic counterparts (16)and (17), Zaenen et al. (1985) pointed out that uns in (19) is not a subject but an object, i.e.,
not Spec,IP.
(18) Siehalfen
uns.
they.nom help.pst.3.pl we.dat“They helped us.”－10－

(19) Uns
wurde
geholfen.
we.dat be.pst.3.sg help.pp“We were helped.”
This fact is empirically conﬁrmed by means of subjecthood tests (Sigurðsson 1992). For
instance, while the dative subject in Icelandic can bind pro in the subordinate clause in (20),the pseudo-subject of the German sentences cannot as in (21)1 .
(20) Viðvonuðumst
til [ að verðahjálpað ].
we.nom hope.med.pst.1.pl for [ to become.inf help.pp ]“We hoped to be helped.”(21) *Wirhoﬀten[ geholfen zu werden ].
we.nom hope.pst.1.pl [ help.pp to become.inf ]“We hoped to be helped.”

3.2

Quirky subject in Tatar raising constructions

To determine that the raised arguments observed in section 1 is a subject, we shall now employ the subjecthood tests introduced in Sigurðsson (1992) to Tatar. Below we examine theAnaphoric Binding test and the pro test applied to Tatar; although Sigurðsson (1992) alsomentions the Reduced Conjunction test, it cannot be applied to Tatar because the subject
does not have to be morphologically overt, and it is diﬃcult to judge whether the subject was
reduced due to the conjunction or just covert.
3.2.1

Anaphoric Binding Test

In (22), the raised subject Marat is marked by dative, and it is possible to anaphorically bindthe reﬂexive pronoun berüze, which morphologically appears in the default nominative form.
This is also the case for the raised argument marked by genitive as in (23).
(22) Marat-qai [ berüz-eikit-ärgä ] kiräk.
pn-dat [ oneself-3.nom leave-inf ] necessary"Marat must leave by himself."(23) Marat-nïŋi [ berüz-eikit-äse ]bar.
pn-gen [ oneself-3.nom leave-fp.3 ] exist"Marat must leave by himself."
This shows that the raised genitive and the raised dative have some subjecthood property.
3.2.2

pro Test

In Sentence (24), the unpronounced pro is assumed to be case-marked by dative assigned by
the predicate kiräk, and is bound by Marat. Likewise, pro in (25) is bound by the matrix
subject, in which case it is more obvious that pro is assumed to be marked by genitive byvirtue of the third person possessive suﬃx -ï(n) in the verbal noun. It should be noted herethat the verb bul- is selected instead of bar seen in (3), because bar cannot be inﬂected and bulis an alternative to it in such cases.
1The sentences are cited from Sigurðsson (1992) to which I added glossing.

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(24) Marati [[ proikit-ärgä kiräk ]bul-u-Ga ] künder-el-de.
pn.nom [[ pro.dat leave-inf necessary ] be-vn-dat ] persuade-pass-pst.3“Marat was persuaded that he had to leave.”(25) Marati [ proikit-äse bul-u-ïn-a ]künder-el-de.
pn.nom [ pro.gen leave-fp be-vn-3-dat ] persuade-pass-pst.3"Marat was persuaded that he would have to leave."
3.2.3

Reduced Relative Test

Reduced relative clauses (RRC) are relative clauses that do not use a relative pronoun including
optionally dropped relative pronouns. Poole argues that in RRC the relativized argument has
to be in the subject position, and makes an assumption that “If XP can be relativized in reduced
relatives, XP is a subject” (2016: 7). In English, for example, Sentence (26) is grammatical,
while (27) and (28) are not when the same meaning is intended.
(26) Johni [_i giving the cattle the hay](27) *The cattlei [_i giving John the hay](28) *The hayi [_i giving John the cattle]
In Tatar, the grammaticality of RRC varies between the relativized dative subject (29) andthe relativized genitive (30). The phrase (29) is controversial as to its grammaticality among
native speakers, and they prefer avoiding this structure. In contrast, phrase (30) was accepted
as a grammatical one. Therefore, while the acceptability of (29) remains unclear, the genitiveargument in (30) is tested to be a subject.
In (30), ixtimal bul- “be possible” is employed instead of -äse bar, because the elicitation
was diﬃcult with the latter expression.
(29) ??_i kit-ärgä kiräk
bul-Gan kešei
leave-inf necessary be-adjvz person"The person who had to leave"(30) _i kit-üixtimal-ï
bul-Gan kešei
leave-vn possibility-3 be-adjvz person"The person who might leave"

3.3

Raising to Quirky Subject: Uyghur

SSR with a quirky case-marking is also reported in Uyghur, a Karluk language of the Turkic
language family (Asarina 2011). In (31), the verb in the subordinate clause oqu-š is a verbal
noun form, i.e., a non-ﬁnite form, therefore it cannot assign a nominative case to its subject.
As a result of raising, The morphological genitive case is assigned to the raised argument by
the third person possessive suﬃx -i, while the argument syntactically plays a role of the matrix
subject. The raised argument is the subject, because bu ehtimalda “probably” modifying theentire sentence can be inserted between Ötkür-niŋ and oqu-š-i, whereas it is impossible for acontrol predicate muhim “important” as in (32). Therefore, the ﬁrst argument Ötkür-niŋ in(31) is located in Spec,IP position, while that in (32) is not2 .
2

It is probably in Spec,CP.

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(31) Ötkür-niŋi bu+ehtimalda ti oqu-š-ikérek.
(from Asarina (2011))
pn-gen probably
read-vn-3 necessaryÖtkür probably must read.
(32) *Ötkür-niŋi bu+ehtimalda ti oqu-š-imuhim. (from Asarina (2011))
pn-genprobably
read-vn-3 important
intended: “It is probably important for Ötkür to read.

4Quirky Subject Hierarchy

4.1

Overview

Through a cross-linguistic study of quirky subject, there seems to be a hierarchy about theproperties of quirky subject. Poole (2016) proposes the quirky subject hierarchy (QSH) (33)
which categorizes three properties of quirky subjects, and names them Hindi type, Icelandictype, and Laz type respectively. The hierarchy is alternatively expressed in Table 1. For example, a Laz-type language which allows for quirky subject with reduced relativization (lackingCP layer in contrast to a ﬁnite relative clause) must also allow for the preceding two properties.
(33) QSH: SOA Binding ≫ pro Binding ≫ Reduced Relatives (cited from Poole (2016))
Hindi type
Icelandic type
Laz type
For a hierarchy p1 ≫ p2 ≫ · · · ≫ pn , a DP has property pi+1 only if it has property pi

Hindi type
Icelandic type
Laz typeTable 1: QSH
SOA Binding pro Binding
✓
*
✓✓
✓
✓

Reduced Relatives**✓

Table 2 is a table based on the partial typological distribution of languages in terms of QSHtypes given by Poole (2016). Laz-type languages are rarely found and controversial languages
are put in parentheses.

Hindi type
Icelandic type
Laz type

4.2

Table 2: Typology of QS (Poole 2016)
Hindi, German, Basque, Gujarati, Hungarian, Kannada,Korean, Malayalam, Russian, Spanish
Icelandic, Faroese, Tamil, Telugu
Laz, (Marathi, Tamil, Telugu)QSH types are not language-speciﬁcAccording to this categorization, Tatar is categorized into two types of the QSH. A dative
subject in SSR can bind subject-oriented anaphora (SOA) as in (22), and can bind a pro asin (24). Likewise, the genitive subject passes both the Binding diagnostic (23) and the pro－13－

diagnostic (25). From this observation, SSR predicates requiring lexical dative case-marking
on the subject belong to the Icelandic type, whereas the ones requiring lexical genitive casemarking belong to the Laz type. The distribution is represented in Table 3, and the ambiguous
typological position is expressed in Table 4.
Table 3: QSH and Tatar QS
SOA Binding pro Binding
Hindi type✓
*Icelandic type✓✓
Laz type✓✓
Tatar dative subject✓✓
Tatar genitive subject ✓✓Reduced Relatives**✓??
✓Table 4: Ambiguous classiﬁcation of Tatar
Hindi type
Hindi, German, Basque, Gujarati, Hungarian, Kannada,Korean, Malayalam, Russian, Spanish
Icelandic type Icelandic, Faroese, Tamil, Telugu, (??Tatar)
Laz typeLaz, (Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, ??Tatar)

This result empirically demonstrates that the order of the QSH is valid for the Tatar raised
quirky subjects. Notably, however, it also tells us that one language may contain several quirky
subjects occupying diﬀerent positions on the QSH, and that the degree of subjecthood of aquirky subject is not language-speciﬁc but rather lexically (or morphologically) determined.
For this reason, it is wrong to label a language with one of the three types suggested by Poole(2016). In order to evaluate the properties of a language’s quirky subjects, it is necessary tolook through the comprehensive dataset of the quirky subjects.
Abbreviations: 3 — 3rd person (possessive for nouns); adjvz — adjectivizer; d — dative;
fp — future participle; g — genitive; inf — inﬁnitive; med — mediopassive; n — nominative;
pass — passive; pl — plural; pn — personal name; pp — past participle; pst — past tense;
vn — verbal noun (nominalizer for verbs)
References
Asarina, A. A. (2011). Case in Uyghur and beyond. PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology.
Halle, M. & A. Marantz. (1993). Distributed morphology and the pieces of inﬂection. In K.
L. Hale & S. J. Keyser (eds.), The view from Building 20: Essays in Honor of SylvainBromberger. MIT Press, pp. 111-76.
Marantz, A. (2000). Case and licensing. In E. Reuland (ed.), Arguments and case: Explaining
Burzio’s generalization. John Benjamins, pp. 11-30.
Poole, E. (2016). Deconstructing subjecthood. Ms., University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Sigurðsson, H. A. (1992). The case of quirky subjects. Working papers in Scandinavian syntax,
49. Department of Scandinavian Languages, Lund University.
Zaenen, A., H. Thráinsson & J. Maling. (1985). Case and grammatical functions: the Icelandicpassive. In Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3(4). Springer Verlag, pp. 441-483.

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