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The appositive constructions have been described from the grammatical tradition from the perspective of the nominal 'specific' or 'explanatory' adjacency, including structures of lexical composition and/or incidental nature and obviating others that establish properly 'identifying' predications starting from senses such as 'origin' or 'location'. In this work, the grammar of appositive constructions will be reviewed using lexical-syntactic and discursive criteria, as well as their classification, which presents a clear structural link with the nominative, genitive and locative grammatical cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often claimed that conjuncts in coordinate structures must be alike in various ways, in particular, that they should have the same syntactic category and the same grammatical case, if any. This article aims to refute such claims. On the basis of data from Polish, Estonian, and other languages, it demonstrates that there is no universal requirement that conjuncts be alike. Any appearances of such a requirement result from the fact that each conjunct must satisfy all functional constraints on the coordinate structure. The article discusses ways of formalizing such distributive satisfaction of constraints within four major linguistic frameworks: lexical-functional grammar, categorial grammar, head-driven phrase structure grammar, and minimalism.* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need and proper use of the pronouns we, us, our. All the same, the pronoun has its own semantic peculiarities: its surface is by no means smooth, but marked by fissures which support abundant rhetorical growth. In that sense ‘we', together with its objective and possessive cases, is a keyword despite its nondescript appearance.

German-speaking children appear to have a strong N1-bias when interpreting non-canonical OVSsentences. During sentence interpretation, especially unambiguous accusative and dative case markers (den 'the-ACC' and dem 'the-DAT') weaken the N1-bias and help building up sentence interpretation strategies on the basis of morphological cues. Still, the N1-bias prevails beyond the age of five (Brandt et al. 2016, Cristante 2016, Dittmar et al. 2008) and remains until puberty (Lidzba et al. 2013). This paper investigates whether prototypical case-animacy coalitions (denACC + NINANIMATE and demDAT + NANIMATE) strengthen a morphologically based sentence interpretation strategy in German. The experiment discussed in this paper tests for effects of such case-animacy coalitions in mono- and bilingual primary school children. 20 German monolinguals, 12 Dutch-German and 17 Russian-German bilinguals with a mean age of 9;6 were tested in a forced-choice off-line experiment. Results indicate that case-animacy coalitions weaken the N1-bias in OVS-conditions in German monolinguals and Dutch-German bilinguals, while no effects were found for Russian-German bilinguals. Together with an analysis of individual differences, these group-specific effects are discussed in terms of a developmental approach that represents a gradual cue strength adjustment process in mono- and bilingual children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I investigate patterns of preverbal fronting in Toba Batak, a predicate-initial Austronesian language of northern Sumatra. Contrary to the claims of previous work on the language, I show that multiple constituents can be simultaneously fronted, though only in limited configurations. I argue that the distinct heads C and T are present in Toba Batak, with their common division of labor, but extraction patterns are restricted by the limited means of nominal licensing (abstract Case) in the language. In addition, the features of C and T have the option of being bundled together on a single head, inheriting properties of both C and T and probing together for the joint satisfaction of their probes. This study sheds light on the relationship between western Austronesian voice system languages and the clause periphery in other language families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Yoron Ryukyuan, passives are formed through the verbal suffix ‘-ari’. In this article, we observe that the suffix is used to form a construction distinguished from the standard passives in several respects: (i) attachment of ‘-ari’ to a wide range of predicates, (ii) ‘-ari’ obligatorily coexisting with the clause-linking suffix ‘-ti’, (iii) the case-marking pattern identical to that of active sentences, among other properties. Semantically, this construction expresses that the speaker is affected (typically, in an adversative fashion) by the situation denoted by the ‘-ari’-attached predicate. We call this linguistic unit "Affective Construction" (AC), revealing its unique syntactic and semantic properties. Furthermore, we suggest that the development of ‘-ari’ into ‘-ari-ti’ to constitute the AC may be viewed as an instance of grammaticalisation, with remarks on its generality in line with Unidirectionality and on the licensing conditions on the AC which seem to be uncommon cross-linguistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers a reply to three reviews of his book "Case: Its Principles and Parameters" published within the issue. Topics covered include his welcome at the attempts of reviewers at having substantive interchange about matters of general linguistic significance across various theoretical approach, such as the formalist-functionalist divide, and the reason behind his analysis of the core structural cases in terms of syntactic phrase structure using the notion of c-command.

Abstract: This article argues for a Move‐approach to expletive constructions, according to which expletives satisfy the EPP by moving to a designated position rather than by being simply externally merged into it. In particular, I argue that the expletive and its associate form a constituent underlyingly and that the associate carries partitive Case that needs to be checked in accordance with Chomsky's (2008) probe‐goal system. Further, I propose that expletives carry only unvalued ϕ‐features, unlike ordinary DPs. This makes it possible to accommodate those cases in which expletives appear to be involved in default agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of DDPP in raising constructions --depending on the embedded clause's formal properties-- has been essential for Case Theory and movement. Likewise, the behavior of DDPP, according to agreement facts, has given rise to relevant discussions about the kind of movement involved (A-Movement/A'- Movement). Nevertheless, this distribution is not so clear in certain Spanish dialects which show double-agreement effects. It means that the embedded verb as well as the raising verb (parecer 'to seem') present inflectional number (and person) morphology: Parece-n que lo olvida-n (seem.3PL that it forget.3PL 'They seem to forget him'). The analysis of the data in these varieties allows us to define a number of characteristics which are relevant from a descriptive and a theoretical point of view. Descriptively, it is possible to identify some notable particularities, with respect to the position of the DP, which triggers agreement and the interaction of these constructions with dative experiencers as well (Me parece que... 'It seems to me that...'). From a theoretical point of view, these data have consequences for approaches on agreement, on the relationship between Case and movement, and on the discussion regarding the Experiencer Paradox in Spanish. Additionally, they allow us to identify a new empirical domain in which a DP plural number feature has an active role in the Probe-Goal domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case assignment and argument licensing in process nominals, that is, nouns such as destruction that are morphologically related to verbs are assumed to operate in a verblike manner both within government-and-binding theory and, more recently, within the distributed morphology framework. The data from Russian challenge this approach and reveal that there is an important difference between the verbal and the nominal domains: case assignment in verbs is sensitive to the underlying argument structure, but in nominals to surface structure, that is, the collection of overt arguments. We propose a hierarchy of case-assignment rules that applies in the nominal domain. Moreover, within the nominal domain, case assignment is uniform: the same rules apply to different types of nominals, including prototypical process nominals and relational nouns. The main theoretical advantage of our lexicalist, constraint-based approach is that it can capture similarities between the verbal and the nominal domains, seen in the assignment of inherent and lexical cases, but also in their fundamental differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates differences in encoding the two nominal categories case and definiteness between proper nouns (more precisely anthroponyms) and common nouns, based on a maximally diverse 40-language sample. These differences can be found in a number of unrelated languages, though the majority of languages appear to not distinguish between proper and common nouns. However, this generalization has to be taken with a grain of salt, since the paper illustrates that differences between the two types of nouns can be very subtle and can thus be easily overlooked or left untreated in written grammars. Differences are either manifested in the overall absence of marking of a category on one type of nominal, or in distinct forms and/or conditions for the encoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines object case marking in a Finnish verb structure called the Projected Directive Construction, e.g. Liisa pyysi Matti-a lähte-mä-än 'Liisa asked Matti to leave' (Liisa.NOMINATIVE asked Matti-PARTITIVE leave-INF-ILLATIVE). The PDC is divided into three subtypes. Type A includes verbs such as pyytää 'to request', which take a partitive object regardless of the outcome of the action. Verbs used in type B, such as määrätä 'to order', take an accusative object despite the result of the action. Type C comprises verbs such as suostutella 'to persuade' taking either a partitive or an accusative object, depending on the outcome of the semiotic causation expressed in the clause. The object case marking in the three subtypes reflects the two-faceted nature of the construction: on the one hand, it is a construction used for reporting of speech, on the other, it is a causative construction. It seems that boundedness - as it has traditionally been defined - does not suffice to describe the alternation of the object case in the PDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a uniform motivation for subject case alternations that align with distinctions in tense and aspect and those that align with a distinction between stage- and individual-level predication. We argue that both follow from an economical use of case marking that is made possible by grounding. If the argument function of an event participant can be determined on the basis of information available in the here and now, the use of case marking can be judged redundant and suspended because of economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new analysis of Dutch comparatives and argues that they should be classified into phrasal and clausal comparatives (as e.g. Hankamer (1973) argues for English). Arguments for this classification come from differences in case marking and island effects. Merchant (2009) notes the same island effects in Greek comparatives, and by applying his analysis to Dutch we can explain the differences between the Dutch phrasal and clausal comparatives. Crucial in this analysis is the ellipsis of underlying structure, not only in the reduced clausal comparative, but also in the phrasal comparative, which reflects the similarity in their interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given a set of alternatives, a speaker can explicitly admit ignorance about which of them hold true. The (in)felicity of such admission-of-ignorance moves immediately following disjunctions and conjunctions follows from the semantics of or and and. However, semantics alone turns out to be insufficient in cases when the disjunction/conjunction and the admission-of-ignorance move are separated by additional conversational moves of acceptance, objection, or removal of an existing assertion. I argue that these patterns follow if admission-of-ignorance are associated to a speech act operator admit whose input is restricted to propositions that the current speaker is publicly committed to at the current conversational stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports an eye-tracking study on the native and non-native processing of case in Spanish. Twenty-four native and 27 first language (L1) German non-native speakers of Spanish were tested on their sensitivity to case marking violations involving structural case with objects of ditransitive verbs and to violations of inherent case for objects of transitive verbs (differential object marking; DOM). Both groups distinguished between grammatical and ungrammatical case marking for all sentence types in off-line acceptability judgments. In reading, however, the non-native speakers, unlike the native speakers, were sensitive only to violations of structural case marking with ditransitive verbs and the erroneous realization of DOM with inanimate objects. In contrast, they did not show processing slowdowns for the omission of DOM with animate objects. We interpret the asymmetry in non-native processing as reflecting sensitivity of the parser to grammatical feature hierarchies in that the parser licenses default case markings, yet flags feature clashes occasioned by the suppliance of erroneous inflectional forms with inherent case marking. We discuss the findings in the context of current approaches to second language (L2) acquisition and processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the ban on Ā-movement of the external argument of a transitive verb that holds in many morphologically ergative languages. We argue that the prohibition against movement of the ergative subject should not be derived from restrictions on the movement of the ergative DP. Rather, we suggest that movement of the ergative argument is per se unproblematic, but if it applies, it applies too early and thereby creates problems for its absolutive co-argument, which does not receive structural case. In morphologically accusative languages, no such movement asymmetry arises because arguments move too late to trigger the fatal consequences that moving ergatives cause. We present a co-argument-based analysis that implies a strictly derivational syntax in which the order of operations plays an important role in deriving properties of the grammar. The analysis also involves an instance of syntactic opacity that (all things being equal) cannot be captured by representational means, thus lending support to a derivational approach to syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his paper ‘Parameterizing Case: evidence from Bantu’, Diercks (2012) proposes a parameterized theory of abstract Case, where some languages do have Case, and others do not. Bantu languages, according to him, do not have uninterpretable Case features in their feature inventories. This paper shows, first, that the Bantu languages Makhuwa and Matengo are interesting counterexamples, concluding that – although Case may be parameterized – microvariation within the Bantu language family shows that it is not correct to characterize the whole language family as Caseless. Secondly, the question is addressed what kind of evidence is needed for postulating a system of abstract Case in a particular language, concluding that Makhuwa and Matengo, unlike the languages Diercks (2012) analyses, plausibly give sufficiently rich and unambiguous evidence for postulating an abstract nominal licensing system, for the language learner as well as for the linguist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent cognitive linguistic work, motion metaphors of time (MOVING EGO vs. MOVING TIME) have been analyzed against the system of temporal frames of reference (e.g., EGO-CENTERED vs. FIELD-BASED). This work studies spatial and temporal functions of Finnish projective adpositions, with a special emphasis on the coding of the sagittal axis (‘in front of / ahead’ vs. ‘behind / after’), which is prominent in motion metaphors of time. The Finnish projective adpositions carry local case endings which have the function of distinguishing stationariness from motion (by Figure and Ground): in the spatial domain, one case form is used for situations where Figure, Ground, or both, are stationary, and another one for situations where both Figure and Ground are moving in the same direction. This opposition plays a central role in the grammatical coding of motion metaphors of time: in MOVING EGO metaphors, Ego moves along a stationary timeline, facing the future, as in ‘We have hard times ahead of us’. In MOVING TIME metaphors, temporal entities either move with respect to a stationary EGO, as in ‘Christmas is coming’ (EGO-CENTERED MOVING TIME), or move from later towards earlier in a sequence, as in ‘New Year's Eve follows Christmas’ (FIELD-BASED MOVING TIME). Thus one of the participants is stationary in the EGO-CENTERED frame of reference (MOVING EGO and EGO-CENTERED MOVING TIME), while both are moving in the FIELD-BASED frame of reference (FIELD-BASED MOVING TIME). Finnish distinguishes these frames of reference grammatically by using different forms of its sagittal (‘front’ vs. ‘back’) adpositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a puzzling correlation between two seemingly disparate phenomena: the crosslinguistic distribution of reflexive possessives and definiteness marking. As observed in Reuland 2007, 2011 and supported here by additional crosslinguistic evidence, reflexive possessives are available only in languages that either lack definiteness marking or encode definiteness postnominally. Languages that have prenominal (article-like) definiteness marking, on the other hand, systematically lack reflexive possessives. I argue that such facts support a particular approach to reflexive binding-specifically, one that has the following properties: (i) binding domains are stated in terms of phases, (ii) in addition to CPs and vPs, DPs are phases, and (iii) DP is not universal. I closely examine another robust crosslinguistic correlation regarding definiteness marking-Bošković's (2008) Left Branch Extraction generalization-and show how it directly follows from the key assumptions of the analysis. I situate my proposals within a broader context of the phase theory, arguing that the syntactic representation of (in)definiteness is the crucial factor in determining the phasehood status of nominal categories. I extend my analysis to the clausal domain and discuss it in the context of languages that allow reflexives in the subject position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the variable alignment properties of experiencer constructions in Indo-Aryan (IA) languages in the light of the available historical data from Vedic Sanskrit onwards. The first aim of the article is to shed light on the possible historical sources, emergence and expansion of constructions with non-canonically marked arguments in Old IA in general. The second aim is to gain a better understanding of the variation in case marking and agreement patterns that can be attested in New IA experiencer constructions, given that the interplay among morphological cases, semantic roles and additional semantic motivations poses many unsolved questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we examine the effects of prompts and recasts on the acquisition of two new and different grammar structures in a task-based learning environment. Sixty-four 14-year-old 9th grade students (low intermediate) learning German as a foreign language were randomly assigned to three conditions: two experimental groups (one receiving prompts, the other recasts) and a control group. The study involves two subsequent interventions: The first targeted a complex structure, dative case after a preposition; the second a simple structure, comparatives. Pretests, immediate posttests, and delayed posttests included written and oral accuracy as well as oral fluency. Statistical comparisons on both written and oral posttests showed that prompts and recasts were effective, when compared to the control group, with prompts being superior to recasts. Furthermore, the effect of recasts depended on the structure: Recasts were more effective for the comparative than for the dative on written accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents and discusses evidence that genitive and dative objects regularly become nominative in Ancient Greek passives of monotransitives and ditransitives. This is a typologically and theoretically significant state of affairs for two reasons, (i) As is well known, nonaccusative objects are, in many languages, not allowed to enter into Case alternations, a fact that has been accounted for in the government-binding/principles-and-parameters literature on the basis of the assumption that nonaccusative objects--prototypically datives--bear inherent, lexical, or quirky Case. By this reasoning, Ancient Greek genitives and datives must be concluded to have structural Case, (ii) Even in languages where dative-nominative (DAT-NOM) alternations do obtain, they are often limited to ditransitives, a fact that can been taken to suggest that dative qualifies as structural Case only in ditransitives. A language like Ancient Greek, which allows genitive and dative objects to become nominative in all passives (monotransitives and ditransitives), shows that it is, in principle, possible to have a linguistic system where genitive and dative qualify as structural Cases in both monotransitives and ditransitives. Case theories must be designed in such a way as to allow for this option. We argue for an analysis of Case alternations that combines the view that alternating datives and genitives enter the formal operation Agree with a morphological case approach to the distribution of overt case morphology. We furthermore compare Ancient Greek DAT-NOM and genitive-nominative (GEN-NOM) alternations in passives to Icelandic DAT-NOM and GEN-NOM alternations in middles, pointing to a number of interesting differences in the two types of alternations that depend on (i) the types of nonaccusative arguments entering Agree, (ii) the verbal head (Voice or v) entering Agree with nonaccusative objects, and (iii) the rules of dependent case assignment in connection to the role of nominative in the two languages.* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of the use of the grammatical term "absolutive" in the 19th and 20th century. Topics discussed include the origin of the term in ancient Latin grammar and the usage of the terms "absolutivus" and "absolutus" in late Latin grammar; the introduction of "absolutivus" into modern grammatical nomenclature in the early 19th century; and the use of the term "absolutive" in Hebrew philology and Semitic linguistics.

This article discusses three variable coding properties of Spanish objects: flagging ( a-marking vs. ø-marking), indexing (clitic doubling vs. no doubling), and clitic case form (accusative lo vs. dative le). These properties are essential for the formal identification of grammatical relations. They are triggered by similar parameters that partly overlap and partly show distinct distributions, yet they also challenge the boundaries between direct objects [DO] and indirect objects [IO] and raise the question whether the typological alignment of Spanish (di)transitive clauses is indirective or secundative. The study draws on quantitative and qualitative corpus data on formal, semantic, and discourse properties of core participants in Spanish clauses, relating these properties to the distribution of variable coding. It is concluded that a-marking, clitic doubling, and leísmo are less frequently employed than unmarked objects, no doubling, and accusative case for clitics, that Spanish DO and IO must be taken as extreme points of a more general Object syntactic function, and that, in general, all variable object coding follows an indirective alignment type. Consequently, animate and topical objects are considered as formally and functionally marked atypical objects both in monotransitive and ditransitive clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critically reviewing the recent analysis of the distinction between the so-called 'absolute' and 'annexed' 'states' in Kabyle (Berber) by (M&F), it is shown that it does not fare better than the existing treatments in its account of the empirical facts, mainly due to the assumption of monosemy. It is further argued that M&F's rejection of 'case' as a valid notion for the description of the Kabyle data rests on simplistic and ill-informed views on the nature of case, and that adoption of a case analysis allows one to compare the Berber data to a wide range of languages with similar peculiarities in the distribution of dependent marking. Finally, M&F's claim that their analysis of Kabyle has pointed out a 'previously unrecognized typological category' is refuted, showing that it stems from an unwarranted mixing of language-particular descriptive categories and crosslinguistic comparative concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antipassive constructions are commonly associated with languages with a predominantly ergative alignment. In this article, we show that antipassive constructions can also occur in predominantly accusative languages such as Cilubà, a Bantu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is expressed by the verbal suffix -angan-, deriving an intransitive clause from a transitive one by omitting the object noun phrase. This suffix functions canonically as a reciprocal marker and is also used to express sociativity/reciprocity and iterativity. An analysis of the suffix' polysemy is provided on three levels: We argue that (i) plurality of relations is the underlying concept that semantically accounts for its different meanings, (ii) that its use in an antipassive clause is syntactically derived from its use as a canonical reciprocal marker by the demotion and omission of the second participant, and (iii) that the suffix is diachronically bimorphemic and originally consisted of two suffixes that still exist in Cilubà today, with the sum of its individual meanings not straightforwardly reflecting the synchronic polysemy of -angan-. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a large corpus of dative constructions in Hebrew, we propose that dative-marked pronominals manifest a facilitated path from adjunct to argument. Since datives tend to be pronominal, adding them onto existing argument structures avoids a clash with the Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) Quantity constraint against more than one lexical noun phrase per clause. Supporting a more fluid adjunct/argument distinction, our first claim is that different Hebrew datives are grammaticized as arguments to different degrees. We then demonstrate a correlation between the degree of grammaticization of the dative as an argument and pronoun/lexical ratios. We show that incipient grammaticization phases involve virtually exclusive use of pronominal datives, but deeper grammaticization phases allow increased use of lexical nouns, within the constraints of PAS. Thus, it is pronouns that blaze the path from adjunct to argument status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent accounts of existential sentences ( ES) within the government-and-binding/Minimalist Program tradition (Chomsky 2000, 2001; Deal 2009) claim that nominative Case valuation and ϕ-agreement take place in ES (directly or indirectly) between T and the associate DP, essentially the same as between T and 'subject' in non- ES. However, the surface facts of Case and ϕ-agreement in ES run contrary to such claims (e.g., There is only me in that picture/* There am only I in that picture; There is/?*are a boy and a girl at the door). Furthermore, such accounts leave unexplained the short-movement phenomenon (including Milsark's [1974] 'Leftmost be Condition') found in ES (e.g., There is someone being arrested/ * There is being someone arrested or There is a train arriving/*There is arriving a train). Following claims of Richards & Biberauer (2005) and Deal (2009) that merger of there in ES is low, I explore the possibility that 'short movement' in ES, as well as the ban on multiple instances of there, is accounted for via Extended Projection Principle features of the relevant verbalizing functional heads that are articulated into their Agree and Merge components. Furthermore, an analysis of Case and ϕ-agreement is presented that accounts directly for the broad range of ϕ-agreement forms (including 'frozen' forms and first-conjunct agreement), the necessarily accusative Case form of pronominal associates allowable ES, and the ban on ϕ-agreement with pronominal associates in ES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that hitherto unstudied constructions of long split focalization (LSF) in Hungarian provide evidence for a double derivation analysis, in that they can involve either a movement derivation or a base-generation one. These derivations correlate with different patterns of verbal definiteness agreement and case marking. The evidence for the double derivation analysis comes from two sources. First, there is systematic speaker variation in the acceptance of movement derivations: whereas all speakers accept base-generation sentences, only a subgroup of them accepts movement sentences. Second, island phenomena support the analysis: we find that base-generation sentences show no sensitivity to islands, whereas movement ones do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that split ergativity based on nominal type is a morphological phenomenon, not a syntactic one. We use three tests to identify the source of this type of split ergativity as morphological syncretism: (i) case agreement, (ii) syntactic ergativity, (iii) coordination. We illustrate the complex patterns of attested splits, demonstrating that analyses positing a single dichotomy (e.g. between first and second person pronouns versus all other nominals) are insufficient. A morphological syncretism analysis is provided whereby ergative case is deleted in featurally-marked contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the case split on the possessor in Udmurt. Traditionally, the choice between ablative and genitive possessor case is said to be driven by the grammatical function (GF) of the XP containing the possessor. We argue that the case split is not driven by GFs; rather, it is determined by the case value of the XP that contains the possessor. Importantly, there is no evidence which points to a possessor raising analysis in Udmurt. Instead, we present an analysis according to which the possessor always bears genitive but may be assigned another structural case by an external head. Due to a morphological constraint, stacked case features fuse into a single feature set in the postsyntactic morphological component. If accusative and genitive stack on the possessor, only the default semantic case marker, i.e., the ablative marker, can realize the resulting feature set. In any other context the genitive marker is chosen. We thus claim that there is no abstract ablative on the possessor; instead, the morphological ablative marker realizes a combination of two abstract structural cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution from Latin into Romance is marked by the loss of case in nominal declensions. In most Romance varieties, however, pronouns, specifically in the 1st/2nd person singular, keep case differentiations. In some varieties 1st/2nd singular pronouns present a three-way case split, essentially the same reconstructed for proto-Romance (De Dardel and Gaeng 1992, Zamboni 1998). We document and analyze the current situation of Romance in the first part of the article (section 1). In the second part of the article we argue that the Dative Shifted distribution of loro in modern Italian, accounted for by means of the category of weak pronoun in Cardinaletti and Starke (1999), is best construed as a survival of oblique case in the 3rd person system (section 2). This casts doubts on the weak pronoun category, as applied to Old Italian as well (Egerland and Cardinaletti 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers labile verbs, i.e., verbs that use the same morphology for the causative and the anticausative reading, and how this lability pattern has evolved and spread in relation to case alignment and, specifically, to the lack of case distinctions between the nominative and the accusative with neuter DPs. In the first part of the study, we examine the voice distinctions in the history of the Greek language, showing that the use of the same voice morphology (i.e., active) for causative and anticausative readings increases in Hellenistic Greek and spreads progressively until Early Modern Greek, as indicated by empirical evidence in dialectal texts. The second part of the study attributes this pattern to the lack of the nominative-accusative case distinction in neuter nouns that in turn can be interpreted as either objects of a transitive (causative) verb or subjects of an intransitive verb (anticausative). In this aspect, neuter nouns demonstrate a type of split ergativity in the Greek labile alternations which thus require a split ergativity analysis based on DP features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present empirical evidence showing that Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish is determined by structural conditions related to Case and agreement. We also argue that semantic concepts such as specificity, definiteness, animacy, or topicality, tightly connected to the presence or absence of A, must be parasitic on the syntactic configurations where DOM is licensed. We also present some consequences of our analysis for the general theory of agreement. We argue that the same structural relation is involved in all cases of DOM, as well as in Dative Clitic Constructions, where the presence of the particle A preceding clitic-doubled datives is syntactically unified with DOM phenomena. The accusative/dative distinction traditionally attributed to the Spanish pronominal system does not correspond, in synchronic terms, to different case relations, but distinguishes between agreeing and nonagreeing arguments. Similarly, the distribution of DOM corresponds to a Casechecked/Caseless difference. We extend the analysis to account for well-knownrestrictions on the co-appearance of two DOM arguments, which are analyzed as the consequence of a competition between two arguments for a single target. To finish, the analysis of some additional DOM phenomena in Spanish also leads us to conclude that Case and agreement must be independently maintained as two separated checking relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the interplay of aspect and quantity in the Finnish system of object-marking the opposition between the partitive object and the (morphologically heterogeneous) total object plays a central role. The received view holds that the partitive object indicates incompleteness of the event in one way or another: it is used if the event does not take place at all (negation); if the aspect is unbounded; or if the quantity of the object referent is open (unbounded). The total object is used in affirmative sentences that indicate bounded aspect together with a closed quantity affected in full. Recent grammars have crystallized the three conditions of the partitive into a hierarchy of decreasing strength: negation > aspect > quantity: negation triggers the partitive irrespective of both aspect and quantity, and unbounded aspect triggers it irrespective of quantity. The article elaborates the hierarchy and argues that the aspectual function of the partitive is in fact not monolithic but consists of three different sub functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. This paper examines how Japanese-speaking children interpret implicit variables and the anaphor zibun'self' when both are concerned with referential and quantificational subjects and antecedents in conjoined stripping structures with a case marker. In previous studies on the availability of sloppy readings in child Japanese, it has been unclear whether the attested sloppy reading really stems from LF copying of linguistic antecedents. Those studies employed null object and soo-su'do so' constructions; however, there is debate about whether these constructions are instances of surface or deep anaphora. To show whether Japanese-speaking children have unambiguous accessibility to bound-variable or sloppy interpretations in the grammar of Japanese, I did three experiments using a stripping construction with a case marker, which is considered to involve LF copying of linguistic antecedents (Fukaya & Hoji 1999). It has been shown that Japanese-speaking children are able to associate implicit variables and zibun as a bound variable with referential and quantificational antecedents and that sloppy readings are available in child Japanese. This study provides evidence that, in both child and adult grammars, the Japanese stripping construction with a case marker involves LF copying of an antecedent IP and is therefore an instance of surface anaphora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. A remarkable fact about dative case in Norwegian dative dialects is that it bears all the marks of being a non-structural (lexical, inherent) case as to the nature of its in situ generation, but still it is not preserved under A-movement, which makes it a structural case according to the favoured diagnostic tests in generative grammar. We discuss the relevant data and argue that dative case in Norwegian should be classified as what we call a weak non-structural case. Furthermore, we hypothesize that accusative and dative are more alike than previously thought, both being non-structural cases, and in a development of Woolford (2006) we propose that all cases that are licensed inside vP should be counted as lexical or inherent non-structural cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Ancient Greek grammar, specifically noting aspects of paradigm and morphology, using the work "On Prosody in General," by Herodian. It comments on the "word-and-paradigm" approach in Ancient Greek grammatical theory and considers its impact on the nominative singular, cases, and numerals. Other topics explored include Pseudo-Arcadius' Epitome, inflection, and grammatical numbers.

The present article proposes a non-parametric approach to ergativity. It is argued that ergativity does not depend on a parametric choice, but on morphological properties of certain constructions found in a wide and varied array of languages. It is claimed (i) that the notion of ergativity should include not only canonical ergative patterns, but also, as a part of the same phenomenon, oblique subject constructions (i.e. dative experiencers and so-called quirky subjects), and (ii) that ergativity can be understood as the consequence of a defective accusative case assignment in transitive constructions. In this sense, I propose to consider ergativity in general as a special kind of deponency, that is, as transitive unaccusativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents the first-ever processing experiment on relativization in Avar, an ergative language with prenominal relatives. The results show no processing difference between the ergative subject gap and the absolutive object gap. The absolutive subject gap, however, is processed much faster. We propose a principled explanation for this result. On the one hand, Avar has a subject preference (cf. the Accessibility Hierarchy, ), which would make the processing of the ergative and the absolutive subject gap easier than the processing of the absolutive object gap. On the other hand, the ergative DP in a relative clause serves as a strong cue that allows the parser to project the remainder of the clause, including the absolutive object DP (cf. ); such morphological cueing favors the absolutive object gap. Thus, two processing preferences, the one for subject relatives and the other for morphologically cued clauses, cancel each other out in terms of processing difficulty. As a result, reading time results for the ergative subject and absolutive object relative clauses are very similar. The overall processing results are significantly different from what is found in accusative languages, where subject preference and morphological cueing reinforce each other, leading to a strong transitive subject advantage. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Children acquiring Basque begin producing absolutive agreement earlier in development than ergative inflection (). In this paper, I compare the acquisition of absolutive and ergative to dative agreement, which is also inflected on the auxiliary in Basque, in order to evaluate factors which may influence the order of emergence of inflectional morphemes, including input frequency, the position of the affix on the verb and feature complexity. Data from 20 bilingual and 11 monolingual children between 2;00 and 3;06 years old showed a consistent pattern; children acquired absolutive agreement first, then ergative, and dative inflection last of all. This sequence replicates the implicational hierarchy of cases found in many languages (). I argue that the complexity of inflectional features of the agreement morphemes best predicts this developmental order, along with the assumption that children acquire the inflectional forms earliest which encode the fewest positive values for features. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Basque unergatives have long been held as evidence that unergative verbs have implicit objects. Recently, it has been shown that the presence of absolutive agreement-morphology in Basque is not a reliable indicator of a successful agreement relation with a nominal target. Building on this, I present two new arguments (and one old one) that Basque unergatives lack an implicit object. Since the subject of these verbs is nonetheless ergative-marked, these facts furnish an argument against a case-competition account of ergative case in Basque (i.e., against ergative being a dependent case). At first glance, this seems to favor an account of ergative as inherent case. However, previous work on Basque provides evidence against such an account; this evidence comes from raising-to-ergative constructions, and the existence of ergative-marked arguments that are unambiguously Themes. These facts therefore point to the need for a new theory of ergative case that is compatible (at the very least) with: (i) the existence of ergative noun-phrases without a case-competitor; (ii) the assignment of ergative case in non-thematic positions; and (iii) a lexically determined distinction between unergatives and unaccusatives. I conclude by discussing what such a theory of ergative case might look like. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper argues that ergative ‘case’ is not a case morpheme, but a morphologically dependent theta-assigning adposition. The proposal explains agreement variation within ergative languages (e.g., ergative agreement, as in Circassian, accusative agreement, as in Warlpiri, and the absence of agreement with the ergative subject, as in Hindi). Specifically, we propose that ergative agreement arises when the verb agrees with the adpositional features and the φ-features of the ergative subject, while accusative agreement arises when the verb agrees solely with the φ-features of the subject. Ergative subject fails to trigger agreement when the ergative adposition acts as an agreement blocker. Whether or not the ergative adposition blocks agreement depends on the manner in which it combines with the embedded NP, a parameter along which ergative language vary. In addition to accounting for agreement variation in ergative languages, our proposal also accounts for the numerous parallels between ergative subjects and nominal possessors. The second part of the paper explores the roots of these parallels. 1 [1] The following abbreviations are used: “3sg.subj/obj”=“3rg singular subject or object”; the period “.” separates the different meaning components of a single morpheme, for example “je” is glossed as “3sg.subj” to indicate that the same morpheme means both 3rd singular and subject; the dash “-” separates different morphemes; “m”/“f” refer to masculine and feminine respectively; numbers as in “3” in Chichewa example (17) refers to classes of nouns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Morphological ergativity is attested in all Neo-Aramaic dialects of the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) group, which comprises over a hundred different dialects spoken by Jewish and Christian communities originating in the border areas of Turkey/Iraq/Iran. Historically, Aramaic (Semitic) is nominative-accusative, and ergativity developed through contact with ergative Iranian languages, especially Kurdish, which is spoken by the Muslim population of the region. Ergativity developed in the perfective aspect only, and is marked by verb-agreement rather than Case. We divide NENA dialects into three types according to their degree of ergativity, reflected by differences in the distribution of the ergative marking of intransitive verbs. In dialects exhibiting the highest degree of ergativity, which we call Split-S, the ergative marker is restricted to transitive and unergative verbs, and is not found with unaccusative verbs. In a second type of dialect, which we call Dynamic-Stative, the ergative marker is also optionally found with unaccusative verbs. Dialects exhibiting the lowest degree of ergativity, Extended-Ergative, mark all intransitive subjects as ergative. This is surprising from the perspective of theories of ergativity, since it contradicts Marantz''s Generalization, and suggests that ergative Case is not inherent but structural, and, specifically, that it is assigned by v and not by T. We show that the parametric variation between the different dialects reduces to the distribution of v. v is obligatory in Extended-Erg dialects, and assigns ergative Case to its argument if it has one, or to the internal argument otherwise. In Dynamic-Stative dialects, the presence of v is optional. In Split-S dialects – v is obligatorily missing; this is nevertheless compatible with verbs having an external argument, since ergative languages allow the merge of the external argument as an adjunct. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper discusses the unaccusative case pattern of ergative transitive predicates in Hindi, and attempts to derive it from a split between the workings of V and the head that introduces the subject. I adopt a system in which object case requires the joint work of v and V (). Following work by , I explore the idea that the ergative marker in Hindi is a P, which I view as a type of Voice head that combines with the v that introduces and case-marks the ergative subject with inherent Case. This overall approach bears directly on Mahajan''s contention that ergative case-marking and the aspectual auxiliary have are two sides of the same phenomenon. Within a compositional analysis, have is be +P (). Drawing from these works, I sketch an approach to the have-be alternation that links the aspectual component of have to features encoded on v. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper I examine two types of splits in the otherwise ergative-absolutive person marking system of Chol Mayan. First, Chol shows what is known as a “split-S” system: subjects of unergatives pattern as transitive subjects (ergative), while subjects of unaccusatives pattern as transitive objects (absolutive) (). This pattern is obscured in the non-perfective aspects, where we find an aspect-based split (see ): both transitive and intransitive subjects receive the same morphological marking. Specifically, in the non-perfective aspects, all intransitive subjects pattern with transitive subjects. I argue below, extending proposal for Basque, that the appearance of these splits results from differences in syntactic structure, rather than from different rules of Case assignment or agreement. I show that these different structures fall out from independent facts about the language; neither split represents a departure from Chol''s ergative system. While the analysis focuses on Chol, I propose that a biclausal analysis of split ergativity may account for splits in a number of unrelated languages. Finally, I examine other language with splits that lend themselves to this type of analysis, and suggest a grammatical basis for the universal tendency for languages with aspectual splits to always retain the ergative pattern in the perfective aspect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Yurakaré (unclassified, central Bolivia) marks core arguments on the verb by means of pronominal affixes. Subjects are suffixed, objects are prefixed. There are six types of head-marked objects in Yurakaré, each with its own morphosyntactic and semantic properties. Distributional patterns suggest that the six objects can be divided into two larger groups reminiscent of the typologically recognized direct vs. indirect object distinction. This paper looks at the interaction of this complex system of participant marking and verbal semantics. By investigating the participant-marking patterns of nine verb classes (four representing a gradual decrease of patienthood of the P participant, five a gradual decrease of agentivity of the A participant), I come to the conclusion that grammatical roles in Yurakaré can be defined semantically, and case frames are to a high degree determined by verbal semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the argument-coding system of Mosetenan, a small language family spoken in the Bolivian Amazon. While there is no case marking on nouns, all coding of arguments is found in the cross-reference ending of verbs. Intransitive verbs are marked for the gender of their subjects, except for the first-person plural inclusive, which has a marker, -ja', that does not indicate the gender of the subject. Transitive cross-referencing is more complicated. It is a layered system that combines the grammatical relation of the participant (S, A, or O) with the person (1, 2, 3) and number (singular and plural). Again, the forms of first-person plural inclusive subjects are unique. The second most important forms are third-person objects, which appear before any of the speech-act participants (SAP). I analyze the Mosetenan system, discussing how language contact can shape the general outline of an argument-coding system by the introduction of a new category such as an inclusive/exclusive distinction in the first-person plural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]