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The present paper aims to uncover the processes governing the rise of canonical case-markings. Experiencer verbs with the ᴅᴀᴛExp–ɴᴏᴍStim case frame must necessarily first acquire canonical case marking on their second argument in order to enable the acquisition of the nominative by their first argument. The present paper concentrates, thus, on the...
Citations
... In some languages, a body part may be in complementary distribution with other experiencer objects, e.g., English and Koromu, while in other languages experiencers of pain sensations are (overtly) expressed with pronouns or lexical nouns, e.g., Èʋe. In the former type, the stimulus for the pain sensation is a non-body part (external agent) but in the latter, the body part is the stimulus of the pain sensation (see Seržant 2013). This study shows that Akan pain predicates generally follow the pattern in (3), but there are instances where the non-body part experiencer may be gapped in the construction, resulting in the pattern in (2) and (4a). ...
The chapters in this book focus on aspects of the semantics of verbs in Akan. The subject matter reflects some of the changing trends in Akan linguistic research.
... (2 It is only Standard Lithuanian and Finnish that also allow for the direct-object marking: accusative in Lithuanian and partitive in Finnish. The DAT-Verb-Acc structure replaces the older DAT-Verb-Nom in Lithuanian (discussed in detail by Seržant 2013). Otherwise, the structures are identical across these languages. ...
... (2 It is only Standard Lithuanian and Finnish that also allow for the direct-object marking: accusative in Lithuanian and partitive in Finnish. The DAT-Verb-Acc structure replaces the older DAT-Verb-Nom in Lithuanian (discussed in detail by Seržant 2013). Otherwise, the structures are identical across these languages. ...
The paper presents an attempt at demonstrating how the evidence in favour of lan-guage contact can be provided for typologically frequently recurrent patterns. In particular, the paper aims to demonstrate that dative experiencer predicates in the Eastern Circum-Baltic area (and originally probably also including its Western part, namely, Scandinavian languages) constitute an important isogloss of the ar-ea. The main argument lies in the complexity of the correspondence. Thus, not on-ly do the patterns themselves correlate across the languages, but also the respec-tive syntactic properties of the dative experiencers show similarities. Thus, these arguments pass or fail the same subjecthood tests across the languages of concern. Additionally, several predicates represent material borrowings or morphological calques from contact languages.
... .Seržant (2013a) assumes the accusative to be an object because of its regularly being replaced with the genitive under negation, begging the question of whether this is a sufficient criterion for objecthood. © 2014. ...
... One can come across a nom-vs. acc-alternation of the single argument of meteorological verbs as in (62) We cannot be sure which alternative is the diachronically earlier one, in particular if the chronological order between nom-and acc-marking corresponds to the nom>acc-order stated for Lithuanian 'pain/ache'-verbs by Seržant (2013a). ...
... This group comprises 65% of acc-coded verbs with non-canonically marked HRA in Lithuanian. Following Seržant (2013a), this group may be characterized by the conceptualization of painful physiological experience through highlighting such states as the endpoints of causal chains (in the sense of Croft 1998). From this cognitive perspective, the accusative marks, as it were, the person affected as the target of an unspecified (or lexically incorporated) stimulus. ...
... Note, finally, that the verbs which underlie this pattern of meaning extension denote not too specialized kinds of physical activity. Moreover, they are -with few exceptions -not causatives with inherent boundaries; they, thus, do not denote prototypical situations of semantic transitivity (in the sense of Hopper & Thompson 1980), pace Seržant (2013a). ...
We analyze genitive of negation (GN) in Lithuanian. When the verb is negated, GN is realized on an object that would otherwise be realized as accusative. We demonstrate that Lithuanian GN is a syntactic (in line with Arkadiev 2016) and morphological phenomenon in contrast to Russian GN, whose realization is influenced by semantic factors (e.g. Kagan 2013). It differs from Russian (Pesetsky 1982) in that (i) it is always assigned to a DP which would otherwise bear structural accusative regardless of its semantic properties, and (ii) it cannot affect a structural nominative DP regardless of whether it is an external or internal argument. Lithuanian GN, in this respect, is similar to Polish GN (e.g. Przepiórkowski 2000, Witkoś 2008). We offer a three-layered approach to case, arguing that GN is a reflection of structural object case, assigned in syntax, then translated to morphological genitive case at PF and, finally, realized at Vocabulary Insertion (Halle & Marantz 1993). Thus, structural object case has two morphological realizations: as genitive under negation or as accusative in the absence of negation. Lithuanian also exhibits long-distance GN (Arkadiev 2016), showing that case boundaries can cross non-finite clauses without an overt CP element, suggesting these are not phases.
This thesis concerns case-marking phenomena in Icelandic and Faroese. I argue that the best approach to case distinguishes the levels of abstract, morphosyntactic and morphological case, and permits mismatches between levels in some grammars (Linking Theory, Kiparsky 1997, 2001); these mismatches are best handled by an Optimality Theoretic output harmonisation on the mapping from argument structure to morphosyntax (Prince and Smolensky 1993 et seq.). Such a theory provides a cogent account of predicates with non-nominative subjects in Insular Scandinavian, which present an interesting puzzle: in Icelandic, dative-subject verbs occur with nominative objects that trigger number agreement, whereas in Faroese the object in such sentences is marked accusative and occurs with default third person singular agreement. To date this difference has been poorly understood, and calls for in-depth analysis. The central hypothesis explored in this thesis is that the patterns observed are not language-specific idiosyncrasies, but the outcome of constraint interactions of a typical kind: namely, a pressure to index a nominative argument in the clause by number agreement, and a pressure to express structural accusative case on the object. I argue that similar constraint conflicts are responsible for the loss of lexical case in phenomena such as nominative substitution and case non-preservation, and correctly predict the availability of the passive in dative-subject predicates. I include a substantial amount of new data from surveys conducted on the Faroe Islands and Iceland, which are consistent with my hypothesis, and shed new light on the case systems of these languages beyond simple monotransitives. Moreover, I propose a Competing Grammars Model of intra-linguistic variation (cf. Kroch 1989 et seq.), which finds empirical support in corpora, and offers a plausible framework for explaining the diachronic trajectory of these languages. Finally, the model of grammar proposed here is also cross-linguistically tractable, generating realistic typologies of case-related phenomena, and can easily be extended to other language families.
