A construction exists where what is normally a non-argument can become the subject of the sentence, as in English, where <i>One can buy this porcupine for ten dollars</i> corresponds to <i>Ten dollars buys this porcupine</i> (Marantz 1984:145). <br><br>Years can also ‘sporadically advance’ such as in the sentence <i>1979 found the country at the brink of economic disaster</i>. The construction is called <i>sporadic</i> because which verbs allow this kind of construction seems lexically idiosyncratic. 

<br><br><b>Reference</b><br>
Marantz, Alec. 1984. <i>On the Nature of Grammatical Relations</i>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 
