On the quirky difference Icelandic vs. German: A note of doubt

It is well known that NPs marked with inherent or lexical Case in Icelandic may appear in positions in which Nominative or Accusative subjects usually appear, e.g. Specifier of finite T or an ECM subject position. It has been claimed in the literature that German NPs marked with inherent or lexical Case cannot occur in these positions. Three major empirical arguments are discussed in the literature to support the distinction between German and Icelandic, based on the different behavior of German and Icelandic 'quirky' NPs in the contexts of a) coordination reduction, b) control and c) certain agreement restrictions. In this paper I revisit all three empirical domains and show that the relevant German/Icelandic contrasts can be given alternative, independent, accounts which are compatible with the opposite claim, namely, that German NPs do in fact occur in positions where structural Case is assigned, just like in Icelandic. The existing - and often noted - similarities in the syntactic distribution of German and Icelandic 'quirks' point to the same conclusion.