Quirky subject

Quirky subjects (also called oblique subjects) are a linguistic phenomenon whereby certain verbs specify that their subjects are to be in a case other than the nominative.

For example, a sentence like "*Me like him" is ungrammatical in Standard English because the subject is ordinarily in the nominative. In many or most modern nominative–accusative languages, this rule is inflexible, the subject is indeed in the nominative case, and almost all treat the subjects of all verbs the same. Icelandic is of interest to linguistics as it has been argued to be the only modern language with quirky subjects.