The Space of Case Sander Lestrade Printing: Ipskamp drukkers Cover design: Lotte Holman ISBN 978-90-9025746-4 NUR 616 Copyright c 2010 by Sander Lestrade. All rights reserved. The Space of Case Een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Letteren Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann, volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 4 november 2010 om 13.30 uur precies door Samuel Alexander Maximiliaan Lestrade geboren op 12 december 1981 te ’s-Hertogenbosch Promotor: Mw. prof. dr. Helen de Hoop Copromotor: Dr. Joost Zwarts (Universiteit Utrecht) Manuscriptcommissie: Mw. prof. dr. Ans van Kemenade Mw. prof. dr. Miriam Butt (Universit¨at Konstanz) Prof. dr. Stephen Levinson “The ability to create language systems through categorization, analogy, [. ] semantic generalization, and pragmatic inferenc- ing derives from the innate neurocognitive capacities of human beings. These are largely domain-general capacities that happen to be used to create language.” (Bybee, 2008, 110) “This is not to say that every aspect of syntax should be ex- plainable in semantic terms. [...] The point of the Grammati- cal Constraint is only to attempt to minimize the differences of syntactic and semantic structure.” (Jackendoff, 1983, 14; emphasis in original) “The whole point of having a case system, or any morphological system for that matter, is to provide brief signals for broad categories that will be sufficient for communication most of the time.” (Blake, 1994, 169) “All else being equal, cross-linguistic agreement in semantic cat- egorization suggests relative uniformity in the way people read- ily conceptualize the domain, while disagreement suggests that the domain is more open to alternative conceptualizations, and so more in need of language-specific learning.” (Gentner & Bowerman, 2009, 468) “It’s the Economy, stupid.” (Bill Clinton, campaign slogan 1992; emphasis SL) Acknowledgments Considering the importance of starting and end points in my research, it’s ironic that I don’t know where to start or end in thanking people. I will try to keep it as professional as possible, but the borders are fuzzy, as always, in Linguistics, or at least in my thinking. For on the one hand, if I discuss my broad assumptions and methodology with Dirk in Caf´eJos, it helps me to see things more clearly (and maybe there has been some comparable use in explaining the difference between Lingo and Linguistics to my voetzaal friends too). On the other hand, a considerable part of my working day consisted of doing coffee-related things with Geertje, which did not always translate into great linguistic insights directly. This is where I start: I am grateful to all the members of the Centre for Language Studies in Nijmegen for making it such a friendly and stimulating place to work, and I thank Arto Anttila, Hans-Martin G¨artner, and Seppo Kittil¨a, and the people of Stan- ford University, the Zentrum f¨ur Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in Berlin, and the University of Helsinki for the pleasant and fruitful research stays. I would not have begun my research career in the first place if I did not have such a great time as a student assistant of Helen’s PIONIER project Case cross-linguistically. Thank you Helen de Hoop, Monique Lamers, Yang Ning, Andrej Malchukov, Joost Zwarts, and Peter de Swart, for show- ing me how nice (interdisciplinary) research can be. During my project, I have been fortunate to be surrounded by the members of Helen’s various other projects. Thanks Helen, Geertje van Bergen, Lotte Hogeweg, Mar- tine Zwets, Monique, Peia Prawiro-Atmodjo, Ad Foolen, Emar Maier, Jor- rig Vogels, Kees de Schepper, Luuc van der Horst, Olaf Hoenselaar, Peter, Richard van Gerrevink, Steven Westelaken, and Wessel Stoop, for all the reading groups (especially the one discussing my thesis), colloquium series, dinners, lunches, discussions, workshops, etc. Work would have been very boring without you. Parts of my Ph.D. research could not have been done without the enthusiastic help of Paula Wolski, Kees, Robbert van Sluijs, Chapter 0. Acknowledgments and Wessel. Many thanks for your data mining, annotating, and transla- tion help. Also, many thanks to Richard and Jodi Hodge for their editorial help in the final stage. Of course, I also wish to express my gratitude to the members of my reading committee, Ans van Kemenade, Miriam Butt, and Stephen Levinson, for their constructive comments on my manuscript. I feel honored by the approval of such experts. Finally, thanks to Geertje, Lotte, Margot van den Berg, and Rik van Gijn (and, incidentally, Pieter Muysken) for the pleasure of having shared a coffee machine for the past 3,5 years. I wish I had mastered the English language enough to thank my dream team of supervisors Helen and Joost appropriately and explain the role they have played in the establishment of this book and my development as a researcher in general. Every time I discussed my ideas with Joost, I felt humble – although it’s closer to the truth to say that I felt very stupid. I can only hope that I will approach his broad perspective and well-considered ideas one day. Thanks for reducing most of my fantastic ideas to their feasible counterparts, or at least for making me think them over again. Now of course, it is much safer to stay inside a well-constructed house built of well-founded walls, but I also want to play outside, bruise my knees and tear my clothes. Fortunately, there was Helen, who talked me onto the highest slides and who made every wound look like a success or at least the fault of someone else. Helen’s supervision goes way beyond what is neces- sary to finish a project successfully. Her feedback, trust, support and advice are unimaginable. In addition to simply always being there, she motivated me to apply for grants, teach courses, sit on committees, go abroad, present at conferences, and submit as many papers as possible – learning about the many reasons why reviewers rejected most of my manuscripts turned out to be quite instructive. She gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted, while at the same time keeping an eye on the master plan, making sure that I finished in time. Dank! This is where I end. When all case marking is dropped and all function words removed, content words, the ones that are really meaningful, remain. Thanks for such a nice life to my verb friends and family, but above all, to my nouns Elletje Holman, Vriendje Moos, and our baby (to appear). I hope you never grammaticalize. viii Contents Acknowledgments vii AbbreviationsandConventions xi Abstract xv 1 Introduction 1 1.1 TheSpaceofCase ....................... 1 1.2 BasicAssumptions ....................... 6 2 About Case 9 2.1 Introduction........................... 9 2.2 TheFormofCase ....................... 10 2.3 TheMeaningofCase...................... 19 2.4 TheStructuralUseofCase . 29 2.4.1 OnSubjectandObject . 30 2.4.2 StructuralCase. 36 2.4.3 TheReachofTransitivity . 42 2.5 TheBidirectionalUseofCase . 45 2.6 TheCaseContinuum...................... 53 2.7 Conclusion ........................... 62 3 The Case of Space 65 3.1 Introduction........................... 66 3.2 AboutSpace .......................... 67 3.3 Directionality .......................... 74 3.3.1 FromJackendoff .................... 75 3.3.2 ViaKrifka........................ 77 3.3.3 ToaNewAnalysisofDirectionality . 87 Contents 3.4 TestingSomeHypotheses . 93 3.4.1 TheSemanticMapofDirectionality . 93 3.4.2 SpatialCaseSystems. 105 3.4.3 The Division of Labor between Spatial Constructions 108 3.4.4 The Division of Labor within Spatial Constructions 118 3.4.5 The Case Paradigm of Adpositions . 126 3.5 Conclusion ........................... 134 4 TheOptionalUseof(Spatial)Case 135 4.1 Introduction........................... 135 4.2 SpatialDifferentialCaseMarking . 140 4.3 StructuralDifferentialCaseMarking . 146 4.3.1 Markedness, Identification and Distinguishability . 146 4.3.2 Recoverability . 155 4.4 A General Account of Differential Case Marking . 158 4.5 SpecialTypesofStructuralDCM . 164 4.5.1 DCMbyTense ..................... 164 4.5.2 DCMbyStructuralPosition . 172 4.6 Conclusion ........................... 176 5 TheStructuralUseofSpatialCase 177 5.1 Introduction........................... 177 5.2 TheExtendedUseofSpatialCase . 178 5.3 The Suspension of Structural Expectations . 182 5.3.1 DisabledAgents . 183 5.3.2 DemotedAgents . 193 5.4 ParadigmaticSelection . 196 5.5 StructuralDirectionality . 199 5.6 Conclusion ........................... 203 6 Conclusion 205 Bibliography 209 Appendix 235 Samenvatting(SummaryinDutch) 251 x Abbreviations and Conventions Conventions Italics are used to refer to language forms and for emphasis. ‘Single quotes’ are used to refer to meanings. “Double quotes” are used for quotations, ALL CAPS are used for generalized, or rather, idealized meanings that do not really exist. For example, the semantics of Dutch op ‘on’ differs from English on ‘on’, but both are instances of ON, whatever the latter may de- note exactly. For readability, some of these concepts are Capitalized only. These are mostly semantic roles and directionality distinctions. Small caps are used for linguistic categories in glosses and optimality theoretic constraints. The speaker is referred to by she and the hearer by he. The distinction between a language specific case and a set of cases by the same name from different languages should be clear from context. With