The Finnish accusative

Long-distance case assignment under agreement

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3989326
AutoresAnne Vainikka (Johns Hopkins University, autor de correspondencia), Pauli Brattico (0000-0002-4963-5301, University of Helsinki)
Año2014
Volumen52
Número1
Fecha de publicación2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling-2013-0057
OpenAlexW2316147677
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas7

One of the two object cases in Finnish, the accusative, has three variants. One of these is a pronoun form similar to the English accusative. The choice between the remaining two forms is based on a number of syntactic properties. Here we show that the correct generalization needs to refer to the agreement features of the noun itself, c-command, and agreement higher in the structure. Moreover, it will be shown that the two accusative forms instantiate long distance case assignment, namely a system in which the case assigner may be situated in a position arbitrarily far from the assignee. Despite the several interacting mechanisms which take part in determining the accusative form in Finnish, we present a simple system of grammatical Case assignment that allows us to account for the three-way accusative realization as a by-product of more general syntactic mechanisms. At the core of our explanation is a notion of last resort: under certain exceptional conditions, higher functional heads, such as C and Agr, participate in direct object Case marking in order to save the derivation from crashing. The results suggest that the system of structural case/Case in UG needs to be broadened in order to capture all of the observed phenomena

Agreement · Combinatorics · Ergative case · Generalization · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Noun · Object (grammar) · Order (exchange) · Pronoun · Realization (probability) · Simple (philosophy) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation