Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

ON DEVIANT CASE-MARKING IN LATIN^323

The passive verb-forms in (17) appear in the neuter third-person singular
regardless of the case, gender or number of the "subject" argument.
Further, this "pseudo-subject", unlike the foregrounded argument of the
personal passive, does not receive nominative case; it retains the dative or
ablative case it bears when an "object". Hence, the quirkily case-marked
arguments in (17) neither bear subject case nor trigger agreement like sub­
jects. In these respects they are unlike the foregrounded argument of the
personal passive in (18b):
(18) a. Cicero Pompeium laudavit.
Cicero(N) () praised
"Cicero praised Pompey."
b. Pompeius a Cicerone laudatus est.
() by Cicero(Aß) praised(N) is
"Pompey was praised by Cicero."
The "derived" subject of the personal passive in (18b), Pompeius, is
nominative, and the passive past participial verb laudatus agrees with this
nominative argument in person, number and gender.
Having briefly examined the properties of impersonal passives, let us
now proceed to the final class of predicates sanctioning irregular case-mark­
ing: impersonal verbs with genitive subjects.

1.3 Genitive "subjects"

There is a small class of impersonal verbs in Latin which have roughly the

case-marking properties of English "psych-moved" predicates: the argu­

ment denoting the cognizer appears in the accusative case. In Latin, how­

ever, the argument denoting the stimulus appears not in the nominative,

but in the genitive. Examples can be seen in (19):

(19) a. Ignavum paenitebit aliquando ignaviae.

coward(A) will-shame(IIPER) one-day sloth(G).

"His sloth will one day shame the coward."

b. Me non solum piget stultitiae meae

(A) not only troubles(IMPER) foolishness(G) ()

sed etiam pudet.

but even shames(IMPER).

"My foolishness not only troubles me but also shames me."