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CASE AND AGREEMENT The Really Big Picture SOURCES BHATT, RAJESH. 2005. LONG DISTANCE AGREEMENT IN HINDI-URDU. NATURAL LANGUAGE & Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery LINGUISTIC THEORY 23:757–807. 2 BLAKE, BARRY J. 2001. CASE: 2ND EDITION. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS: CAMBRIDGE. Our Roadmap BUTT, MIRIAM. 2006. THEORIES OF CASE. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS: CAMBRIDGE. CORBETT, GREVILLE. 2006. AGREEMENT. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS: CAMBRIDGE. (not necessarily in this order) HRISTOV, BOZHIL P. 2013. PRONOMINAL CASE ASSIGNMENT IN ENGLISH. JOURNAL OF • A broad overview of case and the LINGUISTICS 49:567-611. KRATZER, ANGELIKA. 1996. SEVERING THE EXTERNAL ARGUMENT FROM ITS VERB. IN ROORYCK, complexities in even a case-simple JOHAN, AND LAURIE ZARING, EDS. PHRASE STRUCTURE AND THE LEXICON, 109-137. NEW YORK: language such as English SPRINGER. KRATZER, ANGELIKA. 2002. TELICITY AND THE MEANING OF OBJECTIVE CASE. MS. UNIVERSITY OF • The complicated and elusive MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST. relationship between case and MCFADDEN, THOMAS. 2006. DEFAULT CASE AND THE STATUS OF COMPOUND CATEGORIES IN meaning DISTRIBUTED MORPHOLOGY. IN PROCEEDINGS OF THE 30TH ANNUAL PENN LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM. AVAILABLE AT HTTP://LING.AUF.NET/LINGBUZZ/000323. • Nominative-Accusative systems PYLKKÄNEN, LIINA. 2008. INTRODUCING ARGUMENTS. MIT PRESS: CAMBRIDGE, MA. • Ergative-Absolutive systems SAMEK-LODOVICI, VIERI. 2003. AGREEMENT IMPOVERISHMENT UNDER SUBJECT INVERSION – A CROSS-LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS. IN G. FANSELOW, AND C. FÉRY, EDS., • How case and agreement RESOLVING CONFLICTS IN GRAMMAR. LINGUISTISCHE BERICHTE SONDERHEFT 11:49-82. *generally*interact in both kinds of SIGURÐSSON, HALLDÓR ÁRMANN. 1991. "ICELANDIC CASE-MARKED PRO AND THE LICENSING systems OF LEXICAL ARGUMENTS." NATURAL LANGUAGE & LINGUISTIC THEORY 9(2): 327-63. SIGURÐSSON, HALLDÓR ÁRMANN. 1996. ICELANDIC FINITE VERB AGREEMENT. WORKING PAPERS IN • Empirical issues related to agreement SCANDINAVIAN SYNTAX 57, 1–46. SIGURÐSSON, HALLDÓR ÁRMANN. 2006. AGREE IN SYNTAX. AGREEMENT IN SIGNS. IN BOECKX, CEDRIC, ED. AGREEMENT SYSTEMS, 201-237. JOHN BENJAMINS: AMSTERDAM. TALLERMAN, MAGGIE. 2005. UNDERSTANDING SYNTAX. LONDON: HODDER EDUCATION CASE 101 IT’S GONNA GET A LOT MORE COMPLICATED! • Very generally… 4 “Case is a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads.” [Blake 2001:1] Turkish is spoken by Mehmet adam-a elma-lar – ı ver-di about 72 million ppl. Mehmet.nom man-dat apple-plural-acc give-past.3sg (ethnologue.com) ‘Mehmet gave the apples to the man.’ [Blake 2001:1] • Here, the ”head” is the verb and the cases indicate the relationship that each noun has to the verb. • We’ll see that the terminology and the relationships between different words get murkier. • The nominative noun is the subject. • There’s no overt marking. We’ll come back to the idea of “abstract” case. • The accusative noun is the direct object. • The dative noun is the indirect object. Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery 5 • Of course, this is an over- THE BASIC DIVISION simplification. BETWEEN CASE SYSTEMS •There are many more cases in the world’s languages. Languages that have case marking are generally classified as •Dative, Locative, having a nominative-accusative pattern or an ergative- Genitive, Partitive, absolutive pattern. Vocative, etc. •AND, both nom-acc and Nominative Accusative erg-abs systems tend to be much more complicated than this categorization suggests. A= subject of transitive S=subject of intransitive O=object of transitive •In particular, ergative languages tend to not be “purely” ergative. They show Ergative Absolutive some other pattern in some contexts. Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery LATIN: ANOTHER LANGUAGE WITH 6 This is the declension for NOMINATIVE SUBJECTS AND feminine nouns. There’s a different declension for ACCUSATIVE DIRECT OBJECTS porta ‘door’ masculine nouns. sg pl In general… nominative porta portae nominative=subject genitive portae portarum genitive=possessive dative portae portis dative=indirect object accusative portam portas accusative=direct object ablative porta portis ablative=expresses source, location, and instrument vocative porta portis • e.g. – seen by the consul; in Italy; by (Butt 2006:3) hand Important: Each form in the paradigm does not vocative=person/thing being have to be unique. Syncretism is when languages addressed use the same morphological form to indicate different information. • e.g. – John, are you ready? Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery : The person(s) speaking 7 : The person(s) being addressed SO little CASE IN : The person(s)/thing(s) being spoken about ENGLISH: singular: One person/thing Number PRONOUNS plural: More than one person/thing Pronouns in English masculine: Male gendered thing or person display these pieces Gender feminine: Female gendered thing or person of information neutral (neuter): Some animals, inanimate things, or a non- specific gender for a person subject: The doer of the action - Nominative Role in object of the verb: The person/thing that the action is being done to - Accusative Sentence object of the preposition: The noun that follows a preposition - Accusative (or Dative, which has the same form) Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Usseryowner/possessor: The person/thing that possesses someone/something else - Genitive 8 PERSONAL PRONOUNS Subject Object Possessive IN ENGLISH (Nominative) (Accusative) (Genitive) 1st person -singular I me my/mine She likes us. / *Her likes we. -plural we us our/ours She went to the store with him/*he. 2nd person That is her book./That book of hers is on the -singular you you your/yours table./*That is hers book. -plural you you your/yours •The prepositional genitive is odd with non- humans and inanimates. 3rd person •The dog had lost its bone. •?That bone of its was in the backyard. -singular he, she, it him, her, it his, her/hers, its Ø We’ll see later that even English isn’t so -plural they them their/theirs straightforward. Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery 9 CASE MARKING AND WORD ORDER •The very general observation is that languages with lots of case marking – e.g. Latin, German – have freer word order and that languages with little/no case marking have more fixed word order – e.g. English, Mandarin. Tallerman 2005:155 •BUT, Icelandic has lots of case and fairly fixed order and Bulgarian has little case and somewhat free order. Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery 10 DOES CASE MAP TO MEANING? Again, it’s complicated… GRAMMATICAL VS SEMANTIC ROLES11 • Agent • Grammatical Roles: subject, The performer of an action. direct object, indirect object, • Experiencer object of preposition Non-volitional participants of an action. • Theme/Patient The person or thing that an action/activity is done to. • Basic Semantic/Thematic • Source Roles (for now) The starting point for a movement or a transfer of possession. • These are also called theta • Goal roles in the literature. The end point for a movement or a transfer of possession. • Location The place where an action occurs. • Instrument The thing used to accomplish an action. • Benefactor The person or thing that benefits from someone else’s actions. Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery SOME THEMATIC ROLES ARE REQUIRED AND OTHERS ARE 12 OPTIONAL (i) Most first-year college students buy expensive textbooks. agent theme/patient (ii) Eric admires his basketball coach. experiencer theme/patient (iii)Julia traveled (from Beijing to Moscow). agent source goal (iv)The butcher cut slabs of beef (in the walk-in fridge) (with a sharp knife). agent theme/patient location instrument (v)The aspiring underling wrote the report (for her supervisor). agent theme/patient benefactor (meaning that the supervisor was supposed to write the report but the underling wrote it in order to earn brownie points) Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery 13 • Applicatives: “extra” objects of a verb that generally The ice melted. indicate possession, • Intransitive causation, or a kind of John melted the ice. benefactive relationship. • Transitive John melted me some ice. • Languages can encode • Ditransitive?? thematic roles in different ways. *Mary laughed Sue. (Mary made Sue laugh.) Examples from: Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. *Mary spoke Sue. Introducing arguments. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. (examples 1 and 4) (Mary spoke for Sue.) Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery SEMANTIC ROLES ON VERBS14 •Venda is spoken by about 1.3 million people in South Africa and Zimbabwe. a) Mahada o-nok-a. snow 3sg.past-melt-fv appl = applicative ‘The snow melted. fv = final vowel v Our first taste of agreement on verbs. b) Mukasa o-nok-is-a mahada. v 3sg = 3rd person singular. Mukasa 3sg.past-melt-cause-fv snow ‘Mukasa melted the snow.’ v The verb is agreeing with the subject in each c) Mukasa o-nok-is-el-a Katonga mahada. sentence. Mukasa 3sg.past-melt-cause-appl-fv Katonga snow ‘Mukasa melted Katonga the snow.’ v AND, the verb shows semantic roles. (Mukasa melted the snow for Katonga.) • Examples from: Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. Introducing arguments. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. (EX 2) Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery 15 d) Mukasa o-se-is-a Katonga. Mukasa 3sg.past-laugh-cause-fv Katonga MORE WAYS IN WHICH VENDA ‘Mukasa made Katonga laugh.’ MORPHOLOGICALLY ENCODES THEMATIC ROLES e) Mukasa o-amb-el-a Katonga. Mukasa 3sg.past-speak-appl-fv Katonga ‘Mukasa spoke for Katonga.’ Examples from: Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. Introducing arguments. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. (example 3) Ling 222 ~ Fall 2016 ~ C.Ussery BACK TO NOUNS AND CASE 16 If the world were simple… Agent/Experiencer → Subject → Nominative “Seeer”=Agent= Patient/Theme → Direct Object → Accusative Nominative (i)Der Hund sah den Vogel. the.nom dog.nom saw the.acc bird.acc ‘The dog saw the bird.’ SEE (ii) Den Vogel sah der Hund the.acc bird.acc saw the.nom dog.nom ‘The dog saw the bird.’ (Tallerman 2005:112) “Seeee”=Patient/ • The bird has more emphasis with this word order. Theme= Accusative • Topicalization in English. • In German, the determiner shows the case, not the noun.
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