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I’m trying to find an exhaustive-ish list of predicates with quirky subjects (Lexikalischer Kasus) to get a better idea of how many of these there are (a dozen, a hundred?), how common they are, and whether there is any sort of sub-type structure.

An object is called a quirky subject if it is an object only grammatically due to a predicate having a ”quirky“ grammatical behaviour and, weren’t it for these grammatical specialities, you would make it the subject of the sentence. Such predicates don’t take a nominative complement (or at least resist it, at least for some speakers). For example:

Mir ist kalt.
Es ist mir kalt.

Mich friert.
Es friert mich.

Non-quirky:

Ich friere.

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  • Mich friert. is outdated. Apart from ich friere, it's more common to say Mich friert es., which has a subject.
    – Toscho
    Jun 1, 2014 at 17:11
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    Mir ist [warm/kalt/langweilig/schlecht]. And most transfer-verbs in passive : Mir wird [gegeben/geschrieben/geschenkt]....
    – Emanuel
    Jun 2, 2014 at 9:25
  • Do you want us to contribute to or provide source links to such a list? Jun 2, 2014 at 20:08
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    @dervonnebenaan Hm, I was just wondering if anyone had already made such a list. Although if they haven't, I guess we could turn this into a wiki-post (I know that's a stackexchange feature; don't know anything bout the details tho) and people could contribute to making a list.
    – Owen_AR
    Jun 2, 2014 at 20:18
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    »Mich friert.« I wouldn't call that outdated. It is excellent German, bit high-level maybe. »Mir ist kalt.« That's the most common, at least in Norddeutschland.
    – Lumi
    Jun 4, 2014 at 20:33

1 Answer 1

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Here are some words that could match your search. Some of them seem to be outdated or aristocratic (at least when they are used without a subject). But maybe this small list can help you to look for more of such words...

mich friert, mich dürstet, mich hungert, mich schwitzt, mich schläfert, mich reuet, mich schaudert, mir graut, mir ekelt, mich dünkt, mich deucht, mir schwant, mir schwindelt, mich verlangt, mich gelüstet, mich schmerzt, mich wundert

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