Two modes of dative and genitive case assignment

Evidence from two stages of Greek

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11293058
AutoresElena Anagnostopoulou (University of Crete), Christina Sevdali (0000-0002-2271-4640, University of Ulster, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume38
Fascículo4
Páginas987-1051
Data de publicação2020-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoNatural Language and Linguistic Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0167-806X • E-ISSN: 1573-0859
EditoraSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11049-020-09465-z
OpenAlexW3011454365
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas75

In this paper, we compare the properties of dative and genitive objects in Classical vs. Modern Greek. Based on the difference in behavior of dative/genitive objects of ditransitives and monadic transitives in the two periods of Greek which correlates with a range of systematic alternations in the case realization of Modern Greek IO arguments depending on the presence and category (DP vs. PP) of lower theme arguments, we argue that there are two distinct modes of dative and genitive objective case assignment: they are either prepositional or dependent (structural) cases, as also proposed by Baker and Vinokurova (2010), and Baker (2015) on the basis of cross-linguistic evidence. If we adopt this proposal a number of important implications follow both for the syntax of Modern Greek genitive indirect objects and for the understanding of the change from Classical to Standard Modern Greek which must be seen as a development from a grammatical system where dative and genitive were lexical/inherent/prepositional cases to a system where genitive is a dependent case assigned to DPs in the sense of Marantz (1991). Interestingly, the development from Classical Greek (CG) to Modern Greek (MG) affected the availability of dative/genitive-nominative alternations in passivization, in the opposite direction of what might be expected, i.e. such alternations were possible in CG and are no longer possible in MG. Our paper addresses this puzzle and argues that the availability of such alternations is not always a diagnostic tool for detecting whether an indirect object DP bears lexically specified or structural/dependent Case, contra standard practice in the literature

Dative case · Genitive case · Linguistics · Modern Greek · Nominative case · Noun · Syntax · Verb · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation