Hallo,

ich bin eine 25 ja Studentin aus Italien und ich bin neue zum Forum. :) Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache und ich hoffe, dass was ich schreibe verstaendlich ist.

Ich habe eine Frage:

gibt es Sprachen (oder Konstruktionen in besonderer Sprachen), die zwei Subjekte fuer den gleiche Referent in einer einzige Satz benutzen?

Vielen Dank!

Pia

Hallo Pia,
keine Sorge, das klappt schon mit der Verständigung. [As I wrote in the PM, we can always switch to English if that's more convenient for you]

Nun, je nach dem, welchem Dogma der Syntax man gerade anhängt, ist es per Definition ausgeschlossen, dass ein Satz zwei Subjekte hat – koreferentiell oder nicht.

Spontan fallen mir nur zwei Grenzfälle ein:

1. Eine tautologische Subjekts-Phrase, in der zwei koreferentielle NPs zusammengefasst sind: Der Papst und (der) Bischof von Rom hat gesagt ....
   
2. Eine Identitätsaussage, bei der das syntaktische Objekt koreferentiell mit dem Subjekt ist, wir also letztlich kein semantisches Objekt haben aber zwei Referenzen auf das (identische) semantische Subjekt: Der Morgenstern ist der Abendstern.
   

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Well, depending on which syntactic dogmas you believe in, it would be ruled out by definition to have more than one subject, coreferential or not, in a sentence.

There are two borderline cases I can think of spontaneously:

1. A tautological subject phrase consisting of two coreferential NPs: The Pope and (the) Bishop of Rome said ....
   
2. A statement of identity where the syntactic object is coreferential with the subject and we thus have no semantic object but two references to the (same) semantic subject: The morning star is the evening star.
   

Thank you. I love that Wittgenstein one
By the way what I meant is that for example in Arabic I can say "Marwen1 huwua2 jamil3" (lit. "Marwen1 he2 (is) beautiful3" and both 'merwan' and 'he' must be there to have a contrastive sentence from what it seems. In English I can say "he, merwan, is beautiful" but just in case there may be ambiguity concerning 'he''s referent. One of the subjects can be dropped and the sentence is still a felicitous sentence. But in Arabic it requires repetition from what I seem to have understood. I was wondering if there were languages where this phenomenon occurs as well. :)

Hm, isn't that just a repetition, an emphasis? Structurally, that would both be part of the same (single) subject, I think. And isn't French a language with a similar construction? Like: "Moi, je m'appelle ..."

(18.08.2014, 15:03:47)janwo schrieb: Hm, isn't that just a repetition, an emphasis? Structurally, that would both be part of the same (single) subject, I think. And isn't French a language with a similar construction? Like: "Moi, je m'appelle ..."

That's it! That was the perfect example. Trouble is, French needs to add 'moi' as well because 'je' can't carry phonological contrast being made up of a semi vowel and a consonant. So in order to achieve contrast on the referent, another subject must be added. This language I'm doing my research on adds a second subject even if the first one can carry phonological contrast. The speakers I have interviewed consider sentences without one of the subjects agrammatical, so I was trying to understand whether other languages behaved in a similar way.

I think (cave!) that in contrastive contexts, Russian allows (but not requires) a similar construction:

Zitat:В итоге сказали, все было хорошо, но меня я не знаю почему ...

(Source)
V itogye skazali, vsye bylo xorošo, no menya ya nye znayu počemu ...
'After all, they said everything was all right, but I don't know why ... (lit.: 'but me I')

This is interesting... I didn't know Russian could allow such constructions, I think it may be heplful to read something on Information Structure in Russian and other Slavic languages. I remember reading somewhere that Austronesian languages do the same thing, I need to refind that paper...

Uff, not the Austronesian ones I can think of. But maybe @gurupintar, @Sebastian or @tyuditha can enlighten us here?

There's also a reply on tumblr: http://mypling.tumblr.com/post/954481088...2-subjekte

Thanks, that's so kind of you! ^-^

I have explained the phenomenon in the reblog again, so maybe they know some other languages that allow such construction :)

Also (I've written this in the reblog too) I've thought of a similar phenomenon that happens in colloquial Italian (even though it has nothing to do with the nominative case): the dative case is often repeated twice in colloquial contexts "a me1 mi2 piace3" (lit. "Mir1 mir2 gefällt3) even though "a me piace" is already a perfectly formed contrastive sentence and can function without the second dative without problems.