The Distribution of Nominative Case in Modern Irish

The purpose of this paper is to present Double Subject Construction data in Irish that have not yet been discussed in the literature, and investigate the distribution of Nominative Case in Irish. Based on the data, we argue (i) that a certain class of adverbs can introduce a small clause, and (ii) that a small clause as a whole can check Nominative Case. We then discuss the implications of the analysis: (i) that Irish is not characterized as a null subject (pro-drop) language, unlike McCloskey’s (1985) claim in his analysis of raising constructions in Irish, and (ii) that NPs/PPs that are raised in raising constructions in Irish discussed in McCloskey (1984) should not bear inherent Case, unlike Stowell’s (1989) claim.