When one verb takes another verb's clause as a complement, three different things can be going on under the surface — and Icelandic, because it spells case out on every noun, lets you see which one it is. The three are raising (the lower subject moves up into the higher clause), ECM (the higher verb assigns case down into the lower clause), and control (the lower subject is a silent pronoun, PRO, controlled by a matrix argument). They look similar on the page — verb + noun + infinitive — but they are deeply different, and Icelandic's richest single contribution to syntactic theory comes from one fact about raising: a quirky (non-nominative) subject keeps its case even after it raises. A dative subject raised to the top of the sentence is still dative. That is the clinching argument that quirky case-marked nouns are genuine subjects, and it is found, in this clean form, almost nowhere else among well-studied languages. This page lays out the three constructions and the case behaviour that distinguishes them. (For quirky subjects themselves, see the overview; for telja's ECM in detail, see its verb card.)
1. Raising: the lower subject moves up — virðast, sýnast, reynast
A raising verb has no subject of its own to assign a meaning to. virðast "seem," sýnast "appear (to one)," reynast "turn out / prove" — these do not describe an action anyone performs; they comment on a whole situation. So the subject slot of the raising verb is filled by pulling up the subject of the lower clause. In Hann virðist vera þreyttur "He seems to be tired," hann is understood as the subject of vera þreyttur "be tired," but it surfaces up top as the subject of virðist.
Hann virðist vera mjög þreyttur þessa dagana.
He seems to be very tired these days. — raising: 'hann' is logically the subject of 'vera þreyttur' but surfaces as the subject of 'virðist'. The infinitive is 'vera'.
Áætlunin reyndist vera óraunhæf.
The plan turned out to be unrealistic. — reynast as a raising verb: the subject of the lower clause raises; 'vera' is the infinitive.
The diagnostic that this is raising and not control: the raised subject keeps whatever role and case the lower verb wanted, because it is really the lower verb's subject. With an ordinary nominative subject you see nothing special — hann is nominative either way. The proof comes from quirky subjects.
The famous fact: case preservation under raising
This is the heart of the matter and the reason Icelandic appears in every syntax course. Some Icelandic verbs assign a non-nominative (quirky) case to their subject — leiðast "be bored" takes a dative subject (mér leiðist "I'm bored"), líka "like" takes a dative subject, vanta "need/lack" takes an accusative subject. Now raise one of these into virðast. The astonishing result: the quirky case survives the trip up. The subject is now the subject of virðast at the top of the sentence, yet it is still dative.
Mér virðist leiðast í þessum fyrirlestri.
I seem to be bored in this lecture. — 'mér' is DATIVE: the dative that 'leiðast' assigns is preserved when its subject raises to be the subject of 'virðist'. Not nominative 'ég'.
Honum virðist líka maturinn vel.
He seems to like the food. — 'honum' is DATIVE (the case 'líka' assigns), kept under raising; 'maturinn' is the nominative theme of 'líka'.
Hana virðist vanta peninga.
She seems to need money. — 'hana' is ACCUSATIVE (the case 'vanta' assigns), preserved under raising to subject of 'virðist'.
Look at what this means. Mér virðist leiðast has a dative "subject" mér sitting in the highest subject position of the sentence — the position that is normally nominative. The only explanation is that mér is the lower verb's quirky subject, raised while clutching the case leiðast gave it. A verb cannot assign case to a noun that isn't there yet, so virðast did not put the dative there; leiðast did, lower down, and raising carried it up. This is the cleanest possible demonstration that the dative noun is a true subject (it occupies the subject position, triggers subject behaviour, raises like a subject) — not a fronted object. That argument, built on Icelandic, reshaped how linguists think about what a "subject" is.
2. ECM: the higher verb assigns accusative downward — telja, segja, álíta
Exceptional Case Marking (ECM, also accusative-with-infinitive) is, in a sense, raising's mirror image: instead of the lower subject moving up, the higher verb reaches down and assigns accusative to the embedded subject, which stays in the lower clause. The classic ECM verb is telja "believe, consider, reckon" (also álíta, segja in some uses). The frame is tel + accusative subject + infinitive:
Ég tel hann vera einn af bestu kennurunum.
I consider him to be one of the best teachers. — ECM: 'hann' is ACCUSATIVE (assigned by 'tel'), followed by the infinitive 'vera' and the agreeing accusative predicate.
Hún telur mig vera duglegan.
She considers me to be hardworking. — ECM: accusative 'mig' + infinitive 'vera' + accusative predicate 'duglegan'.
It is called exceptional because, normally, a verb assigns case only inside its own clause; ECM verbs exceptionally assign accusative across the clause boundary to a subject that belongs to the lower clause (it gets its meaning from vera góðan, "be good," not from telja). The tell-tale signs of ECM: the embedded subject is accusative, and the embedded verb is an infinitive (vera, hafa, geta), never finite. The most common learner error in all of Icelandic complementation is to break the infinitive requirement — splicing in a finite er (\ég tel hann er góður*), which English's "I believe that he is good" wrongly suggests is available here.
ECM also preserves quirky case downward, mirroring raising: if the embedded subject is itself a quirky-case subject of the lower verb, that case can win out over the accusative telja would assign — ég tel henni hafa leiðst "I believe her to have been bored" keeps the dative henni (the case leiðast wants). For learners, the safe core is: ordinary embedded subjects go accusative under ECM (tel hann vera), and the lower verb is always an infinitive.
3. Control: a silent PRO controlled by a matrix argument — reyna, lofa, vona
Control looks like the others but has no second overt noun at all. The embedded subject is a silent pronoun that linguists write PRO, and it is obligatorily coreferent with an argument of the matrix verb — the controller. In Ég reyni að læra "I try to learn," there is no spoken subject of læra; the silent PRO is controlled by ég, so the learner is necessarily me. You met this informally with reyna að "try to."
Ég reyni að læra íslensku á hverjum degi.
I try to learn Icelandic every day. — control: the silent subject of 'læra' (PRO) is controlled by the matrix 'ég'. The learner is necessarily me.
Hún lofaði að koma fyrir kvöldmat.
She promised to come before dinner. — control: PRO (subject of 'koma') is controlled by 'hún'; the one who comes is the promiser.
Þau vonast til að vinna keppnina.
They hope to win the competition. — control: PRO subject of 'vinna' controlled by 'þau'.
The deep difference from raising: in raising, the matrix verb (virðast) assigns no role to its subject — the noun is there only because it raised. In control, the matrix verb (reyna, lofa) does give its subject a real role (you are the tryer, the promiser) and there is a separate, silent subject (PRO) down below doing the lower verb. Raising = one noun, two positions (it moved). Control = two subjects, one silent (they corefer). Icelandic even lets you see the silent PRO indirectly: a predicate adjective agreeing with PRO surfaces in a default case, and quirky-case verbs under control reveal PRO's case through agreement — but the practical point is that control verbs (reyna, lofa, vona, ætla, ákveða) take að + infinitive with no overt lower subject.
Putting the three side by side
The same skeleton — verb + (noun) + infinitive — hides three structures, and the case is the x-ray:
| Construction | Higher verb | Embedded subject | Case fact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raising | virðast, sýnast, reynast | raised up to matrix subject | keeps the lower verb's case (quirky dative/accusative preserved: mér virðist leiðast) |
| ECM | telja, álíta, segja | stays low, accusative | higher verb assigns accusative down (tel hann vera); quirky case can override |
| Control | reyna, lofa, vona, ætla | silent PRO | no overt case; PRO corefers with a matrix argument (reyna að koma) |
Why this is hard for English speakers
English has all three constructions, but English never shows case on these nouns, so the distinctions are invisible and you have no transfer intuition for them. "He seems to be tired" (raising), "I believe him to be good" (ECM), and "I try to come" (control) all look alike in English, and the pronoun is just "he/him/I" with no informative case. Two specific traps follow. First, the ECM finite-clause trap: because English offers both "I believe him to be good" and "I believe that he is good," learners splice them into the ungrammatical \ég tel hann er góður — Icelandic ECM demands an *infinitive (vera), full stop. Second, the quirky-case-under-raising trap: English "I seem to be bored" has a bland nominative "I," so learners nominativise the Icelandic raised subject — \ég virðist leiðast — when it must stay *dative mér, because leiðast assigns dative and raising preserves it. The fix in both cases is to ignore the English surface and ask which of the three structures you are in, then let the case follow.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ég tel hann er góður.
ECM error — telja takes an accusative subject + INFINITIVE, not a finite 'er'. English 'believe that he is' doesn't transfer.
✅ Ég tel hann vera góðan.
I believe him to be good.
ECM requires the infinitive (vera) and an accusative subject (hann), with the predicate in the accusative (góðan). A finite er is ungrammatical in this frame.
❌ Ég virðist leiðast í tímum.
Quirky-case error — 'leiðast' assigns DATIVE to its subject, and raising preserves it: 'mér virðist leiðast', not nominative 'ég'.
✅ Mér virðist leiðast í tímum.
I seem to be bored in classes.
The raised subject keeps the lower verb's case. leiðast wants dative, so even at the top of the sentence it is mér, never ég.
❌ Hún virðist líkar maturinn.
Two errors — the lower verb under a raising verb is an INFINITIVE ('líka', not finite 'líkar'); and its dative subject must be present: 'Henni virðist líka maturinn'.
✅ Henni virðist líka maturinn.
She seems to like the food.
Under virðast the embedded verb is non-finite (líka, infinitive), and the quirky dative subject henni of líka is preserved by raising.
❌ Ég reyni hann að koma.
Control error — control verbs take NO overt lower subject; the subject of 'koma' is the silent PRO, controlled by 'ég'. You can't insert 'hann'.
✅ Ég reyni að koma.
I try to come.
Control verbs (reyna, lofa, vona) take a bare að + infinitive with a silent PRO subject controlled by the matrix subject. Inserting a noun turns it into a different (ungrammatical-here) structure.
❌ Hann lofaði að María kemur.
Wrong structure for control — 'lofa að' is control (silent PRO = the promiser). To say 'he promised that María would come', use a finite að-clause: 'Hann lofaði að María kæmi'.
✅ Hann lofaði að koma. / Hann lofaði að María kæmi.
He promised to come. / He promised that María would come.
lofa að + infinitive is control (he himself will come). To attribute the coming to someone else, you need a finite að-clause (subjunctive kæmi), not the control infinitive.
Key Takeaways
- Three infinitival constructions share the shape verb + (noun) + infinitive but differ structurally; Icelandic case distinguishes them.
- Raising (virðast, sýnast, reynast): the lower subject moves up to be matrix subject and keeps the lower verb's case. Quirky case is preserved — mér virðist leiðast (dative), hana virðist vanta (accusative). This is the clinching evidence for quirky subjecthood and Icelandic's signature contribution to syntax.
- ECM / accusative-with-infinitive (telja, álíta): the higher verb assigns accusative to the embedded subject, which stays low before an infinitive — tel hann vera góðan. Never a finite verb (*tel hann er).
- Control (reyna, lofa, vona, ætla): the embedded subject is a silent PRO coreferent with a matrix argument; bare að
- infinitive, no overt lower subject — reyna að koma.
- English shows no case here, so the distinctions are invisible to transfer: beware the finite-clause ECM trap (*tel hann er) and the nominativised-quirky-raising trap (\ég virðist leiðast*).
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- Quirky (Oblique) Subjects: OverviewA2 — Icelandic's flagship feature: a large class of verbs whose logical subject — the experiencer — stands in the accusative, dative, or genitive instead of the nominative, with the verb frozen in 3rd-person singular. mér finnst, mig langar, mér er kalt: why 'I' is so often mér or mig, not ég.
- Dative-Subject Verbs: mér finnst, mér líkar, mér tekstB1 — The family of Icelandic verbs whose grammatical subject is in the DATIVE — finnast 'think', líka 'like', takast 'manage', leiðast 'be bored', batna 'recover', detta í hug 'occur to', and the vera-kalt/heitt feeling phrases — with the crucial rule that the verb agrees with the nominative THEME, not with the dative experiencer, so it can be plural while 'mér' stays singular.
- teljaB2 — Full conjugation of the weak j-verb telja (tel / taldi / töldu / talið), which spans two meanings: literal 'count' (telja peningana) and the believe/consider sense that takes an accusative-with-infinitive (ECM: ég tel hann vera góðan 'I consider him to be good'). Covers the i-umlaut and u-umlaut in the stem, the middle teljast 'be counted / be considered', and why the ECM object stays accusative with an infinitive 'vera', never a finite clause.
- Long-Distance Reflexives: the Famous sigC1 — The construction that made Icelandic central to syntactic theory: the reflexive sig / sér / sín can be bound NON-LOCALLY — by the subject of a higher clause, across one or more clause boundaries — provided the intervening clauses are SUBJUNCTIVE. An indicative complement blocks the long-distance link and leaves only the local reading. The subjunctive, Icelandic's other flagship feature, is the licenser; one generalisation ties the two together.
- Verbs and the Case of Their ObjectsB1 — Icelandic verbs assign a fixed case to their object that you cannot predict from meaning: most take the accusative (sjá hann), a sizable cluster take the dative (hjálpa honum), a few take the genitive (sakna hennar), and ditransitives take dative-then-accusative (gefa honum bók) — why object case is lexical, and the high-frequency dative-governing verbs to memorise.
- reynaB1 — Full conjugation of the weak Class-2 verb reyna (reyni / reyndi / reyndu / reynt), the model -di verb, 'to try / attempt'. Covers reyna að + infinitive 'try to', reyna á + accusative 'strain / put to the test', the middle reynast 'turn out / prove to be', and the contrast with prófa 'test / try out'.