scholarly journals Person agreement with inherent case DPs in Chirag Dargwa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Ganenkov
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Intrinsic Property ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Theta Role ◽  
Syntactic Behavior ◽  
Person Agreement ◽  
Selective Sensitivity ◽  
Inherent Case

AbstractThe article argues that the syntactic behavior of non-absolutive subjects of finite clauses in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Chirag Dargwa is a result of their interaction with two different functional heads in a clause: v and T. Discussing empirical data from Chirag, I present the puzzling behavior of person agreement, which shows selective sensitivity to arguments in the ergative, dative, and genitive cases. The primary evidence comes from the periphrastic causative, which displays some typologically unusual properties in case marking and agreement. I show that the ability to trigger person agreement is not an intrinsic property of ergative, dative, and genitive DPs in Chirag, but rather is endowed to the highest DP in T’s c-command domain over the course of the derivation. I propose that all non-absolutive subjects start out as DPs assigned inherent case and a theta-role by v, and that T further assigns structural nominative case to the DP in Spec,vP, thus making it accessible to φ-probes.

Ergativity in Nakh–Daghestanian

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Forker
Keyword(s):  
Language Family ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Person Agreement

This chapter presents an analysis of ergativity and more general alignment in the Nakh-Daghestanian (or East Caucasian) language family. The surveyed constructions are gender and person agreement on verbs, case marking, valency changing operations, imperatives, reflexive and reciprocal constructions, conjunction reduction, complement control and the lexicon. In accordance with previous studies on this topic, I show that the evidence for ergativity is mainly to be found in the morphology. The syntactic alignment shows tendencies towards accusativity or neutral, but clearly no indications for ergative subjects. This is in line with researchers such as Kibrik who describes Nakh-Daghestanian languages as dominated by (semantic) roles.

Intransitivity and the Development of Ergative Alignment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Aldridge
Keyword(s):  
Common Source ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Possessive Constructions ◽  
Case Licensing ◽  
Inherent Case ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Genitive Case

This chapter surveys pathways that have been proposed for how ergative alignment develops diachronically in an accusative language. The most common source cited for ergative alignment is a clausal nominalization. This is because the v (or n) in the nominalization has the same case-licensing featural composition as transitive v in an ergative language: 1) the external argument in the specifier is assigned inherent (typically genitive) case; and 2) there is no structural licensing capability for an object. After reanalysis, the external argument continues to receive inherent case, and the object values nominative case with T, resulting in an ergative pattern in transitive clauses. Other proposed sources are also typically intransitive constructions lacking accusative objects and in which the external argument is assigned inherent case or is packaged as a PP, for example possessive constructions and passives

Complex negative adjectives in Japanese: The relation between syntactic and morphological constructions

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hideki Kishimoto ◽  
Geert Booij
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Remarkable Property ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Noun Incorporation

Japanese has a fairly large set of complex adjectives formed by combining a noun with the adjective nai ‘null, empty’. The complex negative adjectives have the remarkable property that they allow nominative case marking to appear inside them optionally. We argue that these complex negative adjectives can be classified into three classes, and that the differences in their syntactic behaviour can be accounted for by positing three distinct morphosyntactic configurations (ranging from a fully phrasal structure to a complex word involving morphological compounding). Some, though not all, complex negative adjectives with case marking show a behaviour which suggests that they constitute single lexical units, while at the same time their components are susceptible to syntactic operations that normally do not apply to the internal structure of words. The data on the Japanese complex adjectives illustrate that adjectives formed via quasi-noun incorporation do not constitute words in a strict morphological sense, in that the entire complexes behave as lexical units, while their components remain visible syntactically.

scholarly journals The structural nature of non-structural case: On passivization and case in Lithuanian

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Einar Freyr Sigurðsson ◽  
Milena Sereikaite ◽  
Marcel Pitteroff
Keyword(s):  
Structural Conversion ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Structure Building ◽  
Dative Case ◽  
Structural Nature ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Structural Case ◽  
Inherent Case ◽  
The Voice

Dative case on indirect objects (IO) in Lithuanian is preserved under passivization, which is not the case with dative direct objects (DO) of monotransitive verbs, suggesting that the two datives are not alike. Although DAT-to-NOM conversion is taken as an indicator of structural case, we show that DO datives behave differently from DOs bearing structural accusative in that the former exhibit inherent case properties as well (see also Anderson 2015). We develop an account for the contrast between the two datives by using two types of derivational mechanisms: structure-building features, triggering Merge, and probe features, triggering Agree (Heck & Müller 2007; Müller 2010). This study demonstrates that structural vs. non-structural conversion can be dependent on not only how case is assigned but also on the Voice system of a language (in line with Alexiadou et al. 2014). We argue that the DO dative in Lithuanian is in fact non-structural. Even though the result of DAT-to-NOM conversion is structural nominative case, the derivation is different from that of structural ACC-to-NOM conversion.

scholarly journals Restrictions on genitive subjects in Kazakh relative clauses

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Eszter Ótott-Kovács
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Genitive Case

This article investigates two RC subject case marking strategies in Kazakh based on novel data coming from the author's fieldwork. The two strategies are the nom-subject strategy, where the RC subject is nominative and there is no agreement marking with it, and the gen-subject strategy, where the RC subject is genitive and the agreement with it is marked, seemingly non-locally, on the noun phrase modified by the RC. The paper's goal is to offer new empirical data on the characteristics and restrictions on the gen-subject strategy: the gen-DP is RC external and the same restrictions apply to it as to possessors, for this reason the paper argues that the gen-DP is situated (and gets case) in the possessor position and it is not assigned genitive case within the RC. Thus, the seemingly non-local Agree relation can be accounted if the gen-DP is in clause-external possessor position.

scholarly journals The Syntax of Arabic Vocatives

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Al-Bataineh
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Case Alternation ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Case Marking

This paper examines the syntactic structure of Arabic vocatives, focusing on Case-marking of vocatives. The assignment of accusative and nominative Case can be accounted for in the light of Hill (2017) and Larson (2014)’s proposals. Hill (2017) provides the basic structure of the vocative phrase, and Larson (2014) proposes the internal structure of DP. The combination of these proposals explains the derivation of Arabic vocatives and their Case alternation. This paper argues that indefinite vocatives are assigned accusative Case only if they are merged with an overt D -n, otherwise a nominative Case surfaces on the noun by default. Proper names have the same analysis since the presence of the indefinite article-n is a prerequisite for accusative Case assignment. Concerning vocatives as heads of Construct States, N-to-D movement takes place in order to assign [+def] feature to D and is assigned accusative Case once D raises to the light d. Regarding vocatives in demonstrative phrases, D-to-d movement is blocked because of the intervening constituent Dem, indicating that this operation is subject to the adjacency condition. The same analysis is applicable to definite vocatives occurring with the particle ʡayyuha.

scholarly journals Korean and Spanish psych-verbs: Interaction of case, theta-roles, linearization, and event structure in HPSG

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Machicao y Priemer ◽  
Paola Fritz-Huechante
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Semantic Relations ◽  
Role Assignment ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Psych Verbs ◽  
Theta Role ◽  
Inheritance Hierarchy ◽  
Lexical Rules ◽  
Type Hierarchy

In this paper, we argue that by making a more detailed distinction of theta-roles, while at the same time investigating the correlation of case marking, theta-role assignment, and eventuality types, we can describe different psych-verb subclasses and explain their alignment patterns in Spanish and Korean. We propose a neo-Davidsonian treatment of psych-verbs in HPSG that allows us to account for the underspecification of theta-roles which are modeled in an inheritance hierarchy for semantic relations. By assuming linking properties modeled lexically, we can constrain the properties for psych-verbs which shows the mapping of semantic arguments (i.e. experiencer, stimulus-causer, subject matter and target) to the elements in the argument structure. The type hierarchy and lexical rules proposed here capture the alternation in case marking not only of the experiencer (as traditionally assumed in the literature), but also of the stimulus. This analysis leads us to a new fourfold classification of psych-verbs for both languages.

Can input explain children's me-for-I errors?

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 1091-1114 ◽  
Author(s):  
MINNA KIRJAVAINEN ◽  
ANNA THEAKSTON ◽  
ELENA LIEVEN
Keyword(s):  
Nominative Case ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Children's Speech

ABSTRACTEnglish-speaking children make pronoun case errors producing utterances where accusative pronouns are used in nominative contexts (me do it). We investigate whether complex utterances in the input (Let me do it) might explain the origin of these errors. Longitudinal naturalistic data from seventeen English-speaking two- to four-year-olds was searched for 1psg accusative-for-nominative case errors and for all 1psg preverbal pronominal contexts. Their caregivers' data was also searched for 1psg preverbal pronominal contexts. The data show that the children's proportional use of me-for-I errors correlated with their caregivers' proportional use of me in 1psg preverbal contexts. Furthermore, the verbs that children produced in me-error utterances appeared in complex sentences containing me in the input more often than verbs that did not appear in me-for-I errors in the children's speech. These findings are discussed in the context of current explanations for children's case marking errors.

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