Dative arguments and abstract Case in Greek Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dimitris Michelioudakis St Catharine’s College University of Cambridge Dative arguments and abstract Case in Greek Dimitris Michelioudakis St Catharine’s College University of Cambridge Abstract This thesis investigates the syntax of so-called ‘dative’ arguments in Greek and the role of their abstract Case feature in their licensing, from a generative/minimalist perspective. The main claim of the thesis is that all dative arguments originate low, i.e. within the maximal projection of the root, in accordance with universal linking principles, and that all apparent variation regarding their realisation and their A-/A’- behaviour can be parameterised in terms of their Case feature and the way it is valued. The secondary claims/premises on which the main claim depends are: (a) a distinction between syntactically inactive and active inherent Case features, coupled with the assumption that dative arguments may also bear structural Case (which might be either distinct or indistinct from the accusative morphologically), (b) the assumption that minimality effects in phi-Agree must be relativised to Case features, (c) a movement analysis of dative shift, (d) a novel view of applicatives as elements that simply attract dative arguments to their specifier for Case-related reasons, rather than introducing/selecting them. In support of these assumptions, this thesis draws on evidence from (a) person restrictions in transitive contexts with datives and beyond, which seem to be best accounted for if the argument affected by the restriction is treated as a (defective) intervener between the dative and an applicative head; (b) the interference of (different types of) datives themselves with agreement relations in various configurations, in Greek as well as cross-linguistically; (c) the diachronic and cross-dialectal behaviour of dative arguments in Greek, which confirms some ii empirical generalisations that necessitate the assumptions listed above, most notably the observation that both (i) the strong Person Case Constraint, and (ii) minimality effects in Agree across datives imply the availability of active Case on indirect object DPs. iii Acknowledgements Although this section is admittedly unusually long, it still does not do justice to this important period of my life, namely my years as a PhD student, and to all the people involved and their actual contribution. First of all, I feel that it is hard to thank enough my supervisors, Ian Roberts and Ioanna Sitaridou. And I guess I must also thank the department for letting me have them both; although exceptional within the Cambridge system, being jointly supervised turned out to be particularly beneficial. Everyone who has been supervised or simply taught by Ian knows what a privilege it is to work with him. The breadth and the depth of his knowledge and linguistic thought is simply unparalleled; equally unparalleled is his willingness to share it. His inspiring and passionate teaching never fails to remind me how fun linguistics is. Our regular meetings and discussions have been an extremely rewarding experience, one of the pleasures of my PhD life that I am going to miss the most. I’m grateful for all his enthusiasm, his genuine interest in my work, the time he spent trying to make sense out of extremely badly written drafts, and his many insights, most of which have made it (more or less recognisably) to this thesis. But I think that I can’t thank enough Ioanna either. I doubt whether I would have made it to the end of my studies, if it had not been for her encouragement and support since my very first weeks in Cambridge. I am grateful to Ioanna for making me broaden my interests and the topic of the thesis itself, by persuading me to include a diachronic and (micro-)comparative perspective. I would not even have come across some of what I believe to be my most convincing evidence, if she had not suggested that I extend my research beyond standard and contemporary Greek, also employing me as her research assistant in her BA-funded project on language contact in Medieval Cyprus. Then, I have to sincerely thank those people who had the patience and the willingness to look at a very significant part of my work and provide valuable feedback: Anna Roussou, Marios Mavrogiorgos, Sabine Iatridou, Theresa Biberauer, as well as Adam Ledgeway and Dora Alexopoulou, who read carefully and commented on my drafts for my 1st- and 2nd- year assessment respectively. Special thanks go to Anna Roussou, for the many hours we discussed most of the main ideas of this thesis and the time she spent reading everything that had been written up by December 2009. I thank her for her suggestions on exposition, but also for making me aware of the need, when comparing analyses/theories/frameworks, to distinguish between real conceptual differences and mere notational variations. But more importantly, I thank her for making my stay at Cambridge MA in the fall of 2009 much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise and for the lots of Chinese food we had together! I am equally grateful to Sabine Iatridou, who I had regular meetings with during my stay at MIT. The way Sabine tests and challenges every proposal and every argument, in an exhaustive way, to make sure that no logical gaps or fallacies are hiding in it is a really great lesson. During my stay at MIT, I also benefitted a lot from discussions with Noam Chomsky and David Pesetsky, as well as seminars with Michel DeGraff and Ken Wexler. iv Also, I cannot overemphasise how grateful I am to my teachers at the University of Athens, most notably Professor Dimitra Theophanopoulou-Kontou. Professor Theophanopoulou has always been extremely supportive and encouraging, since my undergraduate years; I thank her for her infallible advice, and her help (well beyond the call of duty) with a number of issues throughout these years, particularly when I was preparing my applications for graduate studies; even the topic of this thesis is essentially a continuation of the questions I came up with when doing my BA dissertation under her supervision. I also owe much of my interest in theoretical linguistics to people such as Professor Despoina Cheila-Markopoulou, my first syntax teacher, and Professor Amalia Moser. For extensive discussions on various issues relating to this thesis (but also for their friendship), I thank Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Stavroula Tsiplakou, and Phoevos Panagiotidis. I am also grateful to the following people who willingly shared their work with me: Io Manolessou, Elena Anagnostopoulou (to whose work this thesis obvious owes a lot), Javier Ormazabal, Nikos Lavidas and Neil Myler. I will also attempt a list of the numerous people that have provided useful comments and feedback (or sometimes it was simply fun talking to) at the various conferences/workshops/seminars where parts of this work has been presented. Running the risk to omit people whose comments have been really significant, some of those people are: Luigi Rizzi, Rafaella Folli, Heidi Harley, Richie Kayne, Elena Anagnostopoulou, Vina Tsakali, Artemis Alexiadou, Chris Reintges, Tony Kroch, Rita Manzini, Federico Damonte, Ricardo Bermudez-Otero, Mark Janse, Cinzia Campanini, Susana Huidobro, Ruth Kempson, Angeliki Ralli, Artemis Alexiadou, Yota Samioti, Marika Lekkakou, George Tsoulas, Norah Boneh, Silvio Cruschina, Irene Philippaki-Warburton, Paul Kiparsky, Cristina Guardiano, Teresa Guasti, David Adger, Daniel Harbour, Peter Ludlow, Michelle Sheehan and Joe Emonds. Some of them have also served as my informants, especially in relation to some Romance data. I am also very glad to have met people like Lila Daskalaki, my linguistic mentor/‘mum’, Marios Mavrogiorgos, Thodoris Markopoulos, who has also provided me with valuable feedback on Medieval Cypriot, and Christina Sevdali, to name but a few of the Greek linguists that created a tradition of Greek linguistics in Cambridge. Finding it impossible to classify them (or prioritise them in any way), I would also like to mention a number of colleagues/friends from this period of my life: Rodanthi Christofaki, to whom I am obliged for far too many things to list now, Anna Piata (it was thanks to people like you that I managed to survive, given my notorious lack of [or at least slow] adaptability in foreign countries), Theoni Neokleous, Hae Sung Jeon, Helen Engemann, Thanasis Giannaris (+the Athens syntax reading group: Sila Kleidi, Angeliki Tsokoglou, Marina Vasiliou, Vasilis Spyropoulos, Elisavet Nouchoutidou, Ourania Sinopoulou), Yi-An Lin, Alastair Appleton, George Walkden, Eleni Lampaki, Foteini Lika and Stratos Myrogiannis, Constantinos Xenofontos, Andreas Markou, Filio Constantinou, Charalambos Themistokleous, Marios Andreou, Georg Hoehn, Nikos Koutsoukos, and probably many others that I am forgetting. Some friends deserve a special mention: Ioanna Tselenti, Maria Pavlakou, Panagiotis Makropoulos and Christina Kostakou. Special thanks go to Eleni Kapogianni, for her tremendous v help during the last, extremely stressful, days of this PhD (among others, I owe her at least half of the bibliography; but still all omissions and errors are entirely my fault). The fact that the following people will never read these acknowledgements (well, for various, more or less obvious, reasons) does not mean that they do not deserve special thanks for helping me keep my sanity during some of the hardest days of this PhD: Manos Hadjidakis, Dmitri Shostakovich, W.A. Mozart, J.S. Bach, Serge Prokofiev, Carl Vine, Gyorgy Ligeti, Keith Jarrett, Sviatoslav Richter, Alfred Schnittke, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, Tuxedomoon, and Gustav Mahler. My graduate studies were funded by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (2006-2009), and jointly by the Alexader Onassis and the A. Leventis Foundation (2009-2011); their financial support is hereby gratefully acknowledged. I also wish to thank my college, St Catharine’s, for various travel grants; also, the Sherlock Library in Catz was an ideal, quiet (sometimes too quite) place to work on a PhD thesis, and it really was the place where most of this thesis was written.