This chapter is devoted to a discussion of case, a
morphosyntactic property of noun phrases. We begin by illustrating the
basic purpose of case, which is to identify a noun phrase's function or
grammatical relation in the sentence (for
instance, whether a noun phrase is a subject or object). We also show
that particular lexical items can impose morphological case requirements
on noun phrases, a phenomenon known as case government. We then
turn to how case is expressed across languages, focusing on various
Indo-European languages (the language family to which English belongs).
Universal Grammar allows case, just like tense, to be expressed either
synthetically (as suffixes on nouns) or analytically (by means of
prepositions or other syntactic heads that take an entire noun phrase as
their argument). As we will see, English allows both ways of expressing
case (just as it allows both ways of expressing tense in watch-ed
and will watch). It is possible to describe both expressions of
case in a unitary way by treating case as a feature on a noun phrase
that is checked by a head. As we will show, case checking is
subject to structural as well as nonstructural licensing conditions.
A first look at case
The basic purpose of case
In order to understand the purpose of case in human language, it is
useful to consider languages in which constituent order is not as fixed
as it is in English. In German, for instance, unlike English, the
subject of an ordinary declarative clause needn't precede the verb, as
shown in (1) and (2) (we discuss the structure of German sentences in
more detail in a later chapter; for now, only the variable constituent
order is of interest). In the examples, boldface
indicates the subject, and italics indicates the object.
| (1) | a. | German | Der Mann sieht den Hund. the man sees the dog 'The man sees the dog.' | |
| b. | Den Hund sieht der Mann. the dog sees the man same as (1a), not the same as (2a) | |||
| (2) | a. | Der Hund sieht den Mann. the dog sees the man 'The dog sees the man.' | ||
| b. | Den Mann sieht der Hund. the man sees the dog same as (2a), not the same as (1a) |
Since German speakers can't reliably identify subjects and objects in terms of their order with respect to the verb, how is it possible for them to keep track of which constituent expresses which grammatical relation? The answer is that grammatical relations are encoded in German in terms of morphological case marking. In particular, the subjects of finite clauses in German appear in a particular form called the nominative case, whereas objects generally appear in the accusative. (3) gives a morphological analysis of the noun phrases in (1) and (2).
| (3) | a. | der Mann, der Hund the.nom man the.nom dog |
Notice that in (3), the distinction between nominative and accusative case is marked once: on the head of the noun phrase (the determiner).
In certain exceptional cases in German, case distinctions are marked on the noun phrases redundantly: on the determiner as well on the noun. This is illustrated in (4). '0' indicates a zero nominative suffix; -(en) is the optional accusative suffix.
| (4) | a. | Nominative | der Bär- 0, der Student-0 the.nom bear-nom, the.nom student nom | |
| b. | Accusative | den Bär-(en), den Student-(en) the.acc bear acc the.acc student acc |
The redundant case marking in (4) is a historical relic from an earlier stage of German where this pattern was more extensive. In certain languages, redundant case marking on the determiner and the noun is the norm. This is illustrated for modern Greek in (5).
| (5) | a. | Modern Greek | O andr-as vlepi to skil-o. the.nom man nom sees the.acc dog acc 'The man sees the dog.' | |
| b. | O skil-os vlepi ton andr-a. the.nom dog nom sees the.acc man acc 'The dog sees the man.' |
Finally, in languages without articles, case can be marked solely on the noun. This is illustrated for Latin in (6).
| (6) | a. | Latin | Av- us can-em videt. grandfather nom dog acc sees 'The grandfather sees the dog.' | |
| b. | Can-is av- um videt. dog nom grandfather acc sees 'The dog sees the grandfather.' |
To summarize the discussion in this section: noun phrases can be
case-marked either on the determiner, or on the noun, or redundantly on
both. But regardless of the particular pattern, case marking has the
same basic purpose: it visibly expresses a noun phrase's function in a
sentence.
Case government
In many languages, a noun phrase's particular morphological case depends
not only on its function in the entire sentence, but also on which
particular lexical item that it stands in relation to. For instance, in
German, the object in a sentence appears in the dative or the
accusative,1 depending on the verb, as
illustrated in (7) and (8).
| (7) | a. | Dative | ok |
{ dem Hund, der Frau } helfen
the.dat dog the.dat woman help
'to help the { dog, woman }'
|
| b. | Accusative | * |
{ den Hund, die Frau } helfen
the.acc dog the.acc woman help
| |
| (8) | a. | Accusative | ok |
{ den Hund, die Frau } unterstützen
the.acc dog the.acc woman support
'to support the { dog, woman }'
|
| b. | Dative | * |
{ dem Hund, der Frau } unterstützen
the.dat dog the.dat woman support
|
In traditional grammar, the verb is said to govern the case of the object. For instance, helfen 'help' governs the dative, unterstützen 'support' governs the accusative, and so on. An attractive hypothesis is that the morphological case that a verb governs correlates with the verb's meaning, the idea being that variation in case government as illustrated in (7) and (8) correlates with (possibly subtle) differences in the semantics of helfen 'help' and unterstützen 'support'. One idea that comes to mind, for instance, is that unterstützen 'support' is a simple transitive verb, whereas helfen reflects the spellout of a VP shell CAUSE someone GET help. Although we will not work out this idea in full in this chapter, we present some related considerations concerning dative and accusative case-marking in VP shells later on in the chapter.
Case government in Latin is illustrated in (9). As in German, each particular verb governs the case of its object, but in Latin, the choice of case ranges over dative, accusative, and ablative.
| (9) | a. | Dative |
{ femin-ae, *femin-am, *femin-a } { sub- venire, suc- currere }
woman dat acc abl under-come under-run
'to help the woman'
| |
| b. | Accusative |
{ femin-am, *femin-ae, *femin-a } ad-iuvare
woman acc dat abl to-support
'to support the woman'
| ||
| c. | Ablative |
{ femin-a, *femin-ae, *femin-am } frui
woman abl dat acc enjoy
'to enjoy the company of the woman'
|
In both German and Latin, prepositions resemble verbs in governing the case of their complement. In German, prepositions govern the accusative, the dative, or (rarely) the genitive; in Latin, they govern the ablative or the accusative.
| (10) | a. | German | durch die Tür, bei der Kirche, während des Krieges through the.acc door by the.dat church during the.gen war 'through the door, by/near the church, during the war' |
Finally, in both German and Latin, certain prepositions can govern more than one case. In such cases, the accusative marks direction, and the other case (dative in German, ablative in Latin) marks location.
| (11) | a. | German |
in { die, *der } Bibliothek schicken; in { der, *die } Bibliothek arbeiten
in the.acc the dat library send in the.dat the.acc library work
'to send into the library, to work in the library'
| |
| Latin |
in { bibliothec-am, *bibliothec-a } mittere; in { bibliothec-a, *bibliothec-am } laborare
in library acc abl send in library abl acc work
'to send into the library, to work in the library'
|
Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European language family (which includes English) which was spoken thousands of years ago, had eight cases, which were expressed synthetically. The nominative marked the subject of finite clauses, the accusative and dative (and perhaps other cases) marked objects (depending on the verb, as just discussed), and the genitive indicated possession. The PIE ablative indicated the source of movement (as in I drove from Chicago), the locative was used for locations (as in I used to live in Chicago), and the instrumental marked instruments or means (as in He cut it with his pocketknife). Finally, the vocative was used to address persons (as in Hey, Tom, come on over here).
The original PIE case system is essentially preserved in Sanskrit, although the distinction between the ablative and the genitive is somewhat obscured because ablative and genitive forms were often homophonous in Sanskrit. Such homophony among two or more case forms is called case syncretism. Among living languages, the PIE system is best preserved in the Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian) and such Slavic languages as Ukrainian and Czech. In these languages, the genitive and the ablative have merged completely, leaving seven cases. In other words, in the history of these languages, case syncretism affected all forms of the genitive and the ablative, not just some of them, and so children learning the language no longer had any evidence anywhere in the language for distinguishing between the two cases. Several other Slavic languages, including Russian, have in addition almost completely lost the vocative, leaving only six cases. In Latin, the PIE ablative, instrumental, and locative merged into a single case, called the ablative, which serves all three functions, leaving six cases. In Ancient Greek, the ablative, instrumental, and locative were lost, leaving five cases. Finally, Germanic languages like German and Old English retained only the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, leaving four cases. The developments just sketched for Indo-European are summarized in (12), where "R" and "---" indicate retention and loss, respectively.
| (12) |
|
(13) shows the complete case paradigms for the Latin nouns avus 'grandfather' and femina 'woman'. These two nouns are each representative of two distinct declensions, or word classes. Latin had a total of five such word classes, each of which was characterized by unique endings for combinations of case and number. For instance, in the declensions to which avus and femina belong, dative singular is marked by the suffixes -o and -ae, respectively. In the remaining three declensions, the same combination happens to be marked by the same suffix -i. Distinguishing three remaining declensions, rather than collapsing them into one, is motivated by other distinctions in the paradigms. For more details, take a look at Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar, available through the Perseus project.
| (13) | Latin | a- declension | o- declension | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'woman' | 'grandfather' | ||||||
| Sg | Pl | Sg | Pl | ||||
| Nominative | femin-a | femin-ae | av-us | av-i | |||
| Genitive | femin-ae | femin-arum | av-i | av-orum | |||
| Dative | femin-ae | femin-is | av-o | av-is | |||
| Accusative | femin-am | femin-as | av-um | av-os | |||
| Vocative | femin-a | femin-ae | av-e | av-i | |||
| Ablative | femin-a | femin-is | av-o | av-is | |||
As (13) shows, Latin exhibited some case syncretism. For instance, the genitive and the dative singular are homophonous for femina 'woman', the dative and ablative singular are homophonous for avus 'grandfather', and the dative and the ablative plural are homophonous for both nouns.
In the descendants of Latin, the Romance languages, case continues to be expressed synthetically on pronouns. For instance, the distinction between dative and accusative pronouns is illustrated for French in (14). (Note that unstressed pronouns in French are clitics; unlike full noun phrases, they precede the verb they are construed with.)
| (14) | a. | Je veux leur parler. I want 3.pl.dat talk 'I want to talk to them.' | |
| b. | Je veux les voir. I want 3.pl.acc see 'I want to see them.' |
With full noun phrases, however, the same distinction is expressed analytically by the presence or absence of the case marker à.
| (15) | a. | Je veux parler à vos voisins. I want talk your neighbors 'I want to talk to your neighbors' | |
| b. | Je veux voir vos voisins. I want see your neighbors 'I want to see your neighbors.' |
The case marker à is etymologically related to the spatial preposition à 'to', but is distinct from it. This is demonstrated by the fact that the pro-form for phrases in which à is a spatial preposition is not leur (or lui in the singular), as in (14a), but y, just as it is for other spatial prepositions like dans 'in' or sur 'on'.
| (16) | a. | Nous avons envoyé le vin à Toulouse; mon ami habite à Paris. we have sent the wine to Toulouse my friend lives in Paris 'We sent the wine to Toulouse; my friend lives in Paris.' | |
| b. | Nous y avons envoyé le vin; mon ami y habite. we there have sent the wine my friend there lives 'We sent the wine there; my friend lives there.' | ||
| (17) | a. | Le cadeau se trouve dans mon sac; nous avons mis le cadeau sur la table. the present refl finds in my bag we have put the present on the table 'The present is (literally, finds itself) in the bag; we put the present on the table.' | |
| b. | Le cadeau s' y trouve; nous y avons mis le cadeau. the present refl there finds we there have put the present 'The present is there; we put the present there.' |
As mentioned earlier, Old English had four cases, which are illustrated in (18) for three declensions. As is evident, case syncretism is more extensive in Old English than in Latin.
|
| In case you're wondering: Latin is the ancestor of French, but not of Old English; click here for one recent hypothesis for how Latin and Old English are related. |
| (18) | Old English | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'fox' | 'learning' | 'animal' | |||||||
| Sg | Pl | Sg | Pl | Sg | Pl | ||||
| Nominative | fox | fox-as | lar | lar-a | deor | deor2 | |||
| Genitive | fox-es | fox-a | lar-e | lar-a | deor-es | deor-a | |||
| Dative | fox-e | fox-um | lar-e | lar-um | deor-e | deor-um | |||
| Accusative | fox | fox-as | lar-e | lar-a | deor | deor | |||
In the course of Middle English (1150-1500), the old genitive case suffixes were lost, and their function was taken over by a syntactic head---the possessive determiner 's (in the plural, the possessive is spelled out as a silent determiner that is orthographically represented as an apostrophe). The old synthetic genitive case is illustrated in (19). As in the previous chapter, +t stands for the Middle English character thorn, which represented the voiceless 'th' sound in thin and thorn.
| (19) | +te king-es suster of France (CMPETERB,59.593) the king-gen sister of France 'the king of France's sister' |
Although the change itself is not yet fully understood, it is clear that the modern possessive marker is no longer a synthetic case suffix on a noun (king), but rather analytically case-marks an entire DP (the king of France). This is clear from the fact that it follows postnominal material like the prepositional phrase of France in the translation of (19). The difference between the old synthetic genitive suffix and the analytical possessive determiner that replaced it emerges even more sharply from the contrast in (20), where the possessive determiner obligatorily follows an element that is not even a noun. For clarity, the noun phrase that is case-marked by the possessive determiner is underlined in (20b); the entire sequence in (20b) from the to cat is of course also a noun phrase.
| (20) | a. | * | the guy's that I used to go out with cat |
| b. | the guy that I used to go out with 's cat |
| We ordinarily think of the possessive form of singular noun phrases as containing 's. Under the analysis just given, however, the nominative, possessive, and objective case of a full noun phrase are all homophonous in Modern English, and the determiner 's in the king's is a case marker on a par with the preposition of in of the king. |
Although the possessive is marked analytically on full noun phrases, it continues to be spelled out synthetically on pronouns (recall the similar analytic/synthetic split between full noun phrases and pronouns in French). Much as the combination of a verb like sing and a silent past tense morpheme is spelled out as sang, a pronoun like we (or more precisely, the feature combination first person plural) and a silent possessive morpheme is spelled out as our.
Beginning in late Old English (ca. 1000 C.E.), the distinction between the dative and the accusative weakened, and the distinction was lost completely in the course of Middle English (1150-1500). In what follows, we will refer to the case that resulted from the merger as the objective. The distinction between nominative and objective case continues to be expressed synthetically in modern English on most ordinary pronouns, as illustrated in (21).
| (21) | Nominative | Objective | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 sg | I | me | |||
| 2 sg, pl | you | you | |||
| 3 sg m, f, n | he, she, it | him, her, it | |||
| 1 pl | we | us | |||
| 3 pl | they | them | |||
As the table shows, with the two pronouns you and it,
the distinction between the nominative and the objective has been lost,
and this is also true for full noun phrases. Finally, it is worth
noting that despite the efforts of prescriptive grammarians to keep a
distinction alive between nominative who and objective
whom, the two forms have merged as who. James Thurber has
a
diabolically witty essay on the topic.
Consider the contrast between (22) and (23).
Case features
In this section, we introduce some concepts and syntactic conditions
that enable us to derive the distribution of the various case forms of
noun phrases in English and other languages. We begin by introducing
the notion of case feature.
| (22) | a. | ok | They will help her. |
| b. | ok | She will help them. | |
| (23) | a. | * | Them will help she. |
| b. | * | Her will help they. |
Why are the sentences in (23) ungrammatical? The answer is that noun phrases in English are subject to the requirements in (24).
| (24) | a. | Subjects of finite clauses appear in the nominative. | |
| b. | Objects appear in the objective. |
As is evident, both of the subjects in (23) are objective forms, and both of the objects are nominative forms. Each of the sentences in (23) therefore contradicts the requirements in (24) in two ways.
Now compare the examples in (22) and (23) with those in (25).
| (25) | a. | You will help her. | |
| b. | She will help you. |
As we saw in (21), they and she exhibit distinct forms for the nominative and objective, whereas you doesn't. But because case syncretism between the nominative and the objective is not complete in English (in other words, because most of the pronouns have distinct forms for the two cases), we will treat you as a nominative form in (25a), equivalent to they and she, but as an objective form in (25b), equivalent to them and her. For the same reason, we treat the noun phrase my big brother as a nominative form in (26a) and as an objective form in (26b).
| (26) | a. | My big brother will help her. | |
| b. | She will help my big brother. |
In order to disambiguate instances of case syncretism like you and my big brother, it is useful to associate each noun phrase in a language with a case feature. Each case feature in turn has a value that is selected from among all the various case forms in that language (regardless of whether the case forms are expressed synthetically or analytically). In English, for instance, a case feature can assume the value "nominative", "possessive," or "objective". In Russian, a case feature has a choice among six values (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, instrumental). If we need to represent a noun phrase's case feature, we can do so by means of labels as in (27) and (28).
| (27) | a. | [DP-nom They ] will help [DP-obj her. ] | |
| b. | [DP-nom You ] will help [DP-obj her. ] | ||
| c. | [DP-nom My big brother ] will help [DP-obj her. ] | ||
| (28) | a. | [DP-nom She ] will help [DP-obj them. ] | |
| b. | [DP-nom She ] will help [DP-obj you. ] | ||
| c. | [DP-nom She ] will help [DP-obj my big brother. ] |
Earlier, we said that the purpose of case is to encode a noun phrase's function in the sentence. In order to make the notion of function more precise, we can think of each noun phrase in a sentence as being licensed by (= linked to) some syntactic head. A common way of putting this is to say that the case feature on a noun phrase needs to be checked against a corresponding case feature on the case-licensing head. In English, case-licensers must be either verbs or prepositions, but there are languages that allow adjectives and nouns to be case-licensers as well. If the case features on the two participants in a checking relationship don't match up (say, one is nominative and the other is accusative) or if they don't stand in a one-to-one relationship (say, the case feature on a head ends up checking case features on more than one noun phrase), then the sentence is ungrammatical. On the other hand, if every case feature in a sentence stands in a proper relationship with a matching partner, then all is well with the sentence as far as case theory is concerned. A question that immediately comes to a syntactician's mind is whether case checking is subject to structural constraints. If so, we are of course interested in providing as general a formulation of those constraints as possible.
There is reason to believe that there is more than one type of case
checking. We can distinguish between case licensing, which
holds between a noun phrase and a head external to the noun phrase (say,
a verb or preposition), and case agreement, which holds within
a noun phrase (say, between a determiner and a noun). In the current
version of this book, we will discuss only case licensing. In this
section, we motivate various conditions (primarily structural, but also
nonstructural) on the relationship between the two participants in a
case-licensing relation. In the first half of the section, we present
three structural configurations in which case licensing is possible: the
specifier-head configuration, the head-specifier
configuration, and the head-complement configuration.
Beginning in the 1990's, attempts have been made to simplify the theory
of case licensing by identifying a single case-licensing configuration.
For instance, it has been proposed that complements of verbs are not
directly licensed in the head-complement configuration, but that the
complement moves to the specifier of a silent head, and that case is
uniformly licensed in the specifier-head configuration. Our own
discussion will remain somewhat agnostic on this point. However, we
will show that all three of the configurations mentioned above are
almost identical from a topological point of view. In the second half
of the section, we discuss three further nonstructural conditions on
case licensing: biuniqueness, exocentricity, and
matching.
Spec-head licensing
|
| In what follows, it's important to distinguish carefully between finite
clauses on the one hand and finite
verbs on the other. In English, finite clauses are clauses that
can stand on their own. The clauses in (i)-(iii) are finite; the ones
in (iv) are not.
Finite verbs are ones that aren't participles or infinitives (see Verbs for details). A finite clause always contains some finite Infl element, either a finite tense morpheme (i, ii) or a modal (iii). A finite tense morpheme in turn is always associated with a finite verb (i) or a finite auxiliary (ii). A modal, on the other hand, is always associated with an infinitive. From this it follows that if a clause contains a finite verb or a finite auxiliary, the clause itself is finite. But if a clause contains a nonfinite verb, it needn't itself be nonfinite. If it contains a modal, it is finite (iii); only if it doesn't is it nonfinite (iv). |
We begin by considering how case is licensed on the subjects of sentences. Since subjects of sentences start out life as specifiers of verbs, one's first impulse might be to propose that nominative case is checked by V. Although we will end up rejecting this approach, let us pursue it for the moment in order to show why it is unsatisfactory. The proposal is that what checks the nominative case of He (or more precisely, its trace in Spec(VP)) is the finite verb understands in (29a) and the bare (nonfinite) form understand in (29b). This putative checking relationship (which we are assuming for the sake of argument, but will reject) is indicated by the red boxes. (We further assume that DPs whose case feature is checked are free to move on to other positions in the sentence.)
| (29) | a. | 
| b. | 
| |||
| Finite clause, finite verb form | Finite clause, nonfinite verb form | ||||||
Now if verbs were able to check nominative case, regardless of whether they are finite or nonfinite, we would expect the nonfinite verb in the lower IP in (30) to be able to check nominative case on the lower he, on a par with the nonfinite verb in (29b).3
| (30) | * | 
| |
| Intended meaning: He claims that he understands Hegel. | |||
However, (30) is completely ungrammatical. We therefore reject the idea that nominative case is checked by V, concluding instead that it is checked by finite I. The contrast between (29) and (30) then follows directly since I is finite in (29) ([pres], does), but not in (30) (to).
Notice, by the way, that the ungrammaticality of (30) isn't due to semantic anomaly, since the intended meaning is both expressible and semantically well-formed, as indicated by the gloss to (30). Neither is the ungrammaticality of (30) due to the split infinitive, since (31) is as ungrammatical as (30).
| (31) | * | 
|
One might attempt to rescue the idea that nominative case is checked by finite V by replacing (32a) with (32b).
| (32) | a. | Nominative case is checked by finite I. | |
| b. | Nominative case is licensed by finite V where possible (that is, in clauses that contain a finite V), and by finite I otherwise. |
Although there is no empirical argument against (32b), we reject it
because it violates conceptual economy. Our reasoning is as follows. A
finite V in a clause implies a finite I (in the form of a silent tense
morpheme). The converse is not true, however. Although a finite I in a
clause is consistent with a finite V, as just stated, it is also
consistent with a nonfinite V (the finite I might be a modal). Clauses
with finite I thus form a proper superset of clauses with finite V.
This means that (32a) and (32b) are empirically equivalent. However,
the statement in (32b) is unnecessarily more cumbersome and therefore
less preferable.
The upshot of the discussion so far is
that the head that checks nominative case in English is finite I, and
that the licensing configuration for checking nominative case in English
is the specifier-head configuration. This is shown in (33)
(which supersedes (29)).4 The term
'specifier' is generally abbreviated to 'spec' (read as 'speck').
| (33) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
Nominative case is not the only case to be licensed in the spec-head configuration in English. So is possessive case. Here, the case-checking head is the possessive determiner ('s or its silent plural variant), as discussed earlier.
|
| In possessive constructions like (i), there are two noun phrases: a
lower one (the possessor) and a higher one (the entire noun phrase that
contains both the possessor and the thing possessed).
It is important to keep in mind that each of the two noun phrases has a case feature of its own that needs to be checked. The lower DP has a possessive case feature. The higher DP generally has a nominative or an objective case feature, but it might itself bear a possessive case feature if it is part of an even larger possessive construction, as it is in (ii). |
(34) illustrates the spec-head configuration in its general form. The nodes that bear the case features that need to be checked are the head X and its specifier YP. The path between the two nodes is indicated in red; we return to some properties of this path in connection with the two remaining case-licensing configurations that we discuss (head-spec, head-complement).
| (34) | 
|
| (35) | a. | He expected her to dislike him. | |
| b. | He expected that she would dislike him. |
In both sentences, what is expected is a state of affairs
| (36) | 
|
An additional reason for treating the noun phrase following
expect as the subject of a complement clause rather than as an
object in the matrix clause concerns sentences containing expletive
there. Recall from
| (37) | a. | He expected [IP there to be a fly in his soup ] . | |
| b. | He expected that [IP there would be a fly in his soup ] . |
On the other hand, if we were to treat the postverbal DP as an object, we would have to complicate our statement of how expletive there is licensed. Moreover, even if we succeeded in formulating a descriptively adequate licensing condition, we would still forfeit the structural parallel between (37a) and (37b).
Having motivated the structure in (35), let's now return to our main concern: how objective case is licensed on the embedded subjects in (35a) and (37a). Consider the schemas in (38).
| (38) | a. |
| b. | 
| |||
| Spec-head licensing | Head-spec licensing | ||||||
Notice that the head-spec configuration in (38b) is the mirror image of the spec-head configuration in (38a), already familiar from (34), in the following sense. In both cases, the case-licensing configuration can be characterized as in (39).
| (39) | A case-licensing configuration is defined as follows: | ||
| a. | a head X | ||
| b. | the nonterminal node closest to X (i.e., the intermediate projection X') | ||
| c. | a node closest to X' that is distinct from X | ||
| d. | the specifier of the node in (c) |
The difference between spec-head and head-spec licensing simply
concerns the direction that the path takes in (39c) (imagine placing a
mirror along the X-X' axis in (38a), and you'd get (38b), and vice versa).
Spec-head licensing chooses the mother of the head's intermediate
projection; head-spec licensing chooses the daughter.
Given (39), we can say that objective case is
checked on the complement subject in an ECM construction by the matrix
verb in the head-spec configuration.
|
| It is standard to refer to the construction in (35a) and (37a) as the Exceptional Case-Marking (ECM) construction. Given the analysis that we have just presented, the term is a bit of a misnomer. If the construction is indeed exceptional, it is not for structural reasons, but because of the crosslinguistic rarity of heads that take IP complements and are also able to check objective case. Because the term is prevalent in the literature, we will continue to use 'ECM construction' to refer to the construction in question and 'ECM verb' to refer to any verb with the two properties just mentioned (takes IP complement, able to check objective case). |
ECM constructions are not the only ones where case is checked in a
head-spec configuration. The same configuration is also relevant for
the constructions discussed in
| (40) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
In languages with a dative-accusative distinction, case checking in
VP shells and small clauses is a bit more involved than in English, and
we therefore defer discussion of these constructions in these languages
until the end of the chapter.
In concluding our discussion of the
head-spec configuration, let us briefly return to nominative case
checking in English. In the previous section, we argued that nominative
case is licensed in Spec(IP) by the spec-head configuration. If this is
so, then subject movement in English can be derived from considerations
of case checking. In other words, the subject must move from Spec(VP)
to Spec(IP) because nominative case can't be checked in its original
position. However, the availability of head-spec licensing opens up the
alternative that nominative case is checked in the head-spec
configuration. The case-checking head continues to be finite I, for the
reasons discussed earlier. If this possibility is correct, then subject
movement in English must be derived from considerations other than case
theory, such as predication. Given
the word order facts of English, it is very difficult to determine which
of the two possibilities just outlined is correct. Currently, many
generative syntacticians take the (somewhat odd) position that
nominative case is checked in the spec-head configuration, but that
subject movement is motivated by considerations of predication.
Head-comp licensing
A third and final case licensing configuration arises in connection with
simple transitive sentences like (41).
| (41) | a. | He expected her. | |
| b. | 
|
Here, objective case on her is checked by the verb expected in the head-complement configuration, schematically indicated in its general form in (42).
| (42) | 
|
Notice that the head-complement configuration is a subconfiguration of the head-spec configuration just discussed. This means that a general structural constraint on case licensing, subsuming all three configurations discussed so far, can be formulated as in (43).
| (43) | Structural licensing condition: The nodes bearing the case features in a case-checking relationship as well as the nodes on the path connecting them must be members of a licensing configuration of the form in (39). |
The head in a case-licensing relationship always corresponds to the
node specified in (39a). The noun phrase corresponds to either (39c)
(head-comp licensing) or (39d) (spec-head licensing, head-spec licensing).
First, consider (44), where we treat their as the spellout of
they and possessive 's.
Nonstructural conditions
In what follows, we further illustrate the structural licensing
condition on case checking in (43), introducing three additional,
nonstructural conditions on case-licensing: biuniqueness,
exocentricity, and matching.
| (44) | a. | He expected their approval. | |
| b. | 
|
In (44), objective case on the higher boxed DP is checked by the verb expected, being licensed by the head-comp relation between them. Possessive case on the lower DP is checked by the possessive morpheme 's, being licensed by the spec-head relation between them. So far, so good.
However, a question that arises in connection with the structure in (44) is what rules out (45) (with the same intended meaning as (44)), where the objective case feature on expected checks the objective case feature on them in the head-spec licensing configuration.
| (45) | * | He expected them approval. | |
| b. | 
|
The answer is as follows. Assume the case-checking relationship between expected and the lower boxed DP them. This leaves the higher DP with a case feature that must be checked. In principle, expected might check the case feature on the higher DP in the head-complement configuration, but then a single case feature (the one on expected) would then be checking more than one case feature in the rest of the sentence. Conversely, any case feature on the silent determiner would not get to participate in case-checking. Because (45) is ungrammatical, we conclude that case-checking is subject to a condition as in (46).
| (46) | Biuniqueness condition: Case features on heads and noun phrases stand in a one-to-one relationship. |
Is there any head other than expected that the higher DP in (45) could enter into a case-licensing relationship with? The only head that is close enough is the higher DP's own head, the silent determiner. In particular, just as the head-spec configuration is the mirror image of the spec-head configuration, so the relation between the higher DP and its head would correspond to the mirror image of the head-complement relationship.5 However, assuming a case-licensing relationship between a phrase and its own head is not sensible given that the purpose of case is to signal the relationship between a noun phrase and the rest of the sentence. In other words, we will impose a further condition on case licensing along the lines of (47).
| (47) | Exocentricity condition: Case licensing is a relationship between a head and an 'outside' noun phrase (that is, a noun phrase distinct from any projections of the case-checking head). |
For completeness, let us note that (45) is impossible even if we were to assume that the silent D bears no case feature. This is because D heads that do not bear case features (like a or the in English) don't license specifiers. In other words, there are no elementary trees of the form in (48), which would be needed to derive the higher DP in (45b).
| (48) | 
|
An important joint consequence of the biuniqueness and exocentricity conditions is given in (49).
| (49) | Minimality condition on case licensing When a case-checking head has the possibility in principle of entering into a case-licensing relation with either of two noun phrases, it is the minimal configuration (the one involving the shorter path) that is the grammatical one. |
The third and final nonstructural condition on case licensing is one already mentioned informally at the very beginning of our discussion of case licensing. For ease of reference, we now give it a name.
| (50) | Matching condition: A case feature on a head and the corresponding case feature on a noun phrase must match in value. |
In the remainder of this section, we illustrate the interplay of the various conditions that we have proposed, both structural and nonstructural, with reference to the German examples in (51). The verb kennen 'know' governs the accusative, and the preposition mit 'with' governs the dative. (Unbelievable as it may seem, German speakers, including children learning the language, really do pay attention to the tiny difference between dem and den, and have been doing so for centuries!)
| (51) | a. | den Mann mit dem Hut kennen the.acc man with the.dat hat know 'to know the man with the hat' | |
| b. | * | dem Mann mit den Hut kennen the.dat man with the.acc hat know | |
| c. | * | den Mann mit den Hut kennen the.acc man with the.acc hat know | |
| d. | * | dem Mann mit dem Hut kennen the.dat man with the.dat hat know |
The schematic structure for all four verb phrases is given in (52)
(recall from
| (52) | 
|
In (51a), kennen checks accusative case with the higher DP, and mit checks dative case with the lower DP, each in the head-comp licensing configuration. In other words, each head checks the case feature of the DP closest to it.
(51b) is ruled out because it violates the matching condition in (50). Specifically, even though kennen and the higher DP would stand in a legitimate licensing configuration (head-comp), the accusative case feature of kennen doesn't match the dative case feature on the higher DP. Moreover, the accusative case feature of kennen is unable to check the matching accusative case feature on the lower DP, because the verb and the lower DP are too far apart (a checking relationship between these two nodes would violate the structural licensing condition in (43)). Analogous considerations hold for mit and its potential checking relationships with the lower and higher DPs, respectively.
(51c) is ruled out as follows. Case checking on the higher DP is
unproblematic; accusative case is checked by kennen in the
head-comp configuration. However, case cannot be checked on the lower
DP. Checking accusative case with mit in the head-comp
configuration would violate the matching condition (dative and
accusative don't match), and checking accusative case on the lower DP
with kennen would violate both the structural licensing condition
and the biuniqueness condition on case checking. (51d) is ruled out for
analogous reasons.
(53) gives a double-complement sentence in German.6
The dative-accusative distinction
In this section, as promised, we return to the issue of case checking in
languages that, unlike English, distinguish dative and accusative case.
| (53) | dass ich den Roman an den Jungen schicke that I.nom the.acc novel to the.acc boy send 'that I am sending the novel to the boy' |
(54) gives the structure for (53); for completeness, we give the structures both before and after GO moves to CAUSE.
| (54) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
From (53), we conclude that CAUSE checks accusative case, and we would therefore expect the recipient in the double-object counterpart of (53) to appear in the accusative case as well. But (55) shows that the recipient must instead appear in the dative case.
| (55) | a. | dass ich dem Jungen den Roman schicke that I.nom the.dat boy the.acc novel send 'that I am sending the boy the novel' | |
| b. | * | dass ich den Jungen den Roman schicke that I.nom the.acc boy the.acc novel send |
The structure for (55) is shown in (56); once again, we give both pre- and post-movement structures.
| (56) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
The ungrammaticality of (55b) is reminiscent of the double o
constraint of Japanese mentioned in
| (57) | Hanako-ga Taroo-ni ringo-o tabe-sase-ta koto
nom dat apple acc eat caus past that
'that Hanako made Taroo eat an apple'
| ||
| * | Hanako-ga Taroo-o ringo-o tabe-sase-ta koto
nom acc apple acc eat caus past that
|
However, the situation in the two languages is not completely identical; indeed, the case marking facts for the German counterpart of (57) are exactly the reverse of those in Japanese.
| (58) | a. | dass der Stefan den Manfred einen Apfel essen ließ that the.nom the.acc an.acc apple eat made 'that Stefan made Manfred eat an apple' | |
| b. | * | dass der Stefan dem Manfred einen Apfel essen ließ that the.nom the.dat an.acc apple eat made |
The challenge facing us is how to make sense of three separate and apparently contradictory case-marking facts:
So far, we have been assuming that when a head and a noun phrase occur in some case-licensing configuration, this state of affairs both licenses the noun phrase's occurrence in its particular syntactic position (spec or comp position) and determines the particular case that appears on the noun phrase (nominative, accusative, etc.). Let us now weaken this latter assumption somewhat. In particular, we will allow the case that appears on a noun phrase to be only partially determined by the case features of the head that licenses its position in the structure; the case can also reflect further details of the structure, including the case features of other heads. In (53) and (54), case licensing proceeds as before. GO takes a PP complement and has no case feature. Not surprisingly, therefore, when GO adjoins to CAUSE, there is no effect on the accusative feature of CAUSE, which we will assume gets shared by the V node formed by adjunction (the V that dominates both GO and CAUSE in (54b)). In (55) and (56), on the other hand, GET has an accusative feature of its own. What we propose is that once GET adjoins to CAUSE, the presence of the case feature on GET is able to change the value of the case feature on CAUSE from accusative to dative. This dative feature then percolates up to the V node formed by adjunction (the V dominating both GET and CAUSE in (56b)). Because small clauses are structurally analogous to VP shells, moving the lower verb tabe- 'eat' to the higher causative -sase- in the Japanese causative has the same effect, changing the accusative case feature on -sase- to dative. This still leaves us with the case-marking contrast between (57) and (58). What could it be due to? Recall that in the previous chapter, we motivated verb movement in the Japanese causative on the grounds that the causative morpheme -sase- is a bound morpheme. The German verb lassen 'let', on the other hand, is not a bound morpheme and there is no reason to assume that the lower verb moves to it. We can therefore derive the contrast between (57) and (58) by permitting case features to be changed in the way that we have just proposed only in connection with the movement of a case-checking head. This is schematically illustrated in (59) (headedness irrelevant).
| (59) | a. | 
| b. | 
| |||
| No verb movement | Verb movement | ||||||
| Double accusative case marking | Dative-accusative case marking | ||||||
1. A very small number of German verbs governs a third case, the genitive. We don't discuss these verbs here, because they are felt to be archaic.
2. Note how the -s-less plural of deer, which is exceptional in modern English, goes back to Old English, where it was simply the ordinary plural form for the declension to which deor 'animal' belonged.
3. The structure in (30) is analogous to that of its grammatical counterpart, He claims to understand Hegel. Details of the structure (for instance, the presence of the CP) are motivated in the next chapter.
4. The spec-head configuration is also frequently, though somewhat misleadingly, referred to as spec-head agreement. The reason for this is that subjects and verbs of sentences, which are in the spec-head configuration in the VP, agree in number (the man runs/*run; the men run/*runs). The reason that the term is misleading is that agreement relations don't necessarily imply a spec-head configuration. For instance, determiners agree in number with the head of their NP complement (that woman/*women; those women/*woman), but the D and the N aren't in a spec-head configuration.
5. The relation between the silent determiner and the higher boxed DP in (44) is a mirror image of the head-comp relation in the following sense. The path between the silent determiner and its NP complement involves a first segment from D to D' and a downward turn at D' to give the second segment from D' to NP. Now imagine taking an upward turn at D'. The resulting second path segment ends at the higher boxed DP.
6. We use subordinate clauses because
German main clauses involve a complication, already mentioned in
7. Such verb movement is ruled out with verbs of perception.
| (i) | * | J'ai vu manger les enfants (les pommes). I have seen eat the children the apples 'I saw the children eat (the apples).' |
| (1) | a. | * | He claims to he understand Hegel. |
| b. | * | He claims he to understand Hegel. |
A. Using the grammar tool in case theory, build a ternary-branching structure for (1) (= (37a)) along the lines that was mentioned, but rejected, in the text.
| (1) | He expected there to be a fly in his soup. |
B. Given the ternary-branching structure, how would the licensing condition on expletive there have to be reformulated?
A. Using the grammar tool in case theory, build structures for the sentences in (1).
|
| For the purposes of this exercise, disregard tense lowering.
Originally only a preposition, for in modern English is also a complementizer. Assume that the complementizer retains the case-licensing ability of the preposition. |
| (1) | a. | I waited for her. | |
| b. | I waited for there to be a sale. | ||
| c. | It would be convenient for the parents for daycare to be available. | ||
| d. | It would be convenient for daycare to be available for the children. | ||
| e. | I suspect the class to be difficult. |
B. How is case checked on each of the DPs in (1)? Your answer should include which case is checked, by what head, and in what configuration. Feel free to collapse the description of similar cases (!) of case checking.
As (1) illustrates, there are no ECM adjectives or nouns in English. Is this a statistical accident, or is there a deeper reason?
| (1) | a. | * | I was expectant there to be a problem. | |
| b. | * | the expectation there to be a problem |
| (1) | a. | Gwelai Emrys ddraig. see.conditional Emrys.nom dragon.obj 'Emrys would see a dragon.' | |
| b. | Disgwyliodd Emrys i Megan fynd i Fangor. expected Emrys.nom to Megan.obj go.infinitive to Bangor.obj 'Emrys expected Megan to go to Bangor.' |
B. How is case checked on each of the noun phrases in (1)? (As in English, nominative case cannot be checked in nonfinite clauses in Welsh.) Your answer should include which case is checked, by which head, and in which licensing configuration.
C. Proto-Indo-European (the ancestor of Welsh) is reconstructed as having had rich agreement, and so it presumably had verb raising. The Celtic languages, which are descendants of Proto-Indo-European and to which Welsh belongs, have lost agreement, yet they still exhibit verb raising. Why didn't the loss of agreement lead to the loss of verb raising in Celtic as it did in Mainland Scandinavian?
|
| (1b) and (2a) are not identical. |
| (1) | a. | I disapprove of Kim's impulsive hiring of incompetents. | |
| b. | I disapprove of Kim's impulsively hiring incompetents. | ||
| (2) | a. | I disapprove of Kim impulsively hiring incompetents. | |
| b. | I'm concerned about there not being time. | ||
| c. | I watched them running down the street. |
B. Why are the sentences in (3) ungrammatical? Build trees if necessary, but where possible you can explain your answer with reference to trees that you have built for (A).
| (3) | a. | * | I disapprove of Kim's impulsive hiring incompetents. |
| b. | * | I disapprove of Kim impulsive hiring of incompetents. |
C. Some speakers accept the gerunds in (4), though not the one in (5). Explain how case is checked on the subject of the gerunds in (4), providing the usual details, and also explain what rules out (5).
| (4) | a. | Kim impulsively hiring incompetents is unfortunate. | |
| b. | There not being time is unfortunate. | ||
| c. | Them running down the street is unfortunate. | ||
| (5) | * | Kim impulsive hiring of incompetents is unfortunate. |
D. Can the analysis that you propose in (C) be extended to cover the facts in both (B) and (C)? Why or why not?
