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Burzio ’ s Generalization , Markedness , and Constraints on Nominative Objects
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Woolford, Ellen |
| Copyright Year | 2001 |
| Abstract | Recent research on Burzio's Generalization converges on a surprising conclusion: what blocks accusative Case in unaccusative constructions has nothing to do with the Case or theta assigning abilities of unaccusative verbs; rather an overriding principle requires sentences to have a nominative Case. But there is little consensus as to how to formulate the relevant principle, and most proposals fail to predict a large range of counterexamples in the form of sentences with no nominative. It is argued here that the relevant principle is markedness: when there is a choice of licensed Cases for a DP, the grammar selects the less marked Case. There are exceptions because markedness is violable and overriding principles may require a more marked Case. Markedness accounts for the lack of accusative Case on unaccusative subjects, and also for the presence of nominative objects in dative or ergative subject constructions. However, nominative checking on objects is sometimes blocked: in Icelandic, it is blocked when the subject has lexical accusative Case, and in Faroese, it is blocked in all active constructions. The claim is that such blocking is due to constraints on Case checking domains. The ideal Case checking domain contains no DP whose Case is not checked by the head of that domain. However, some languages tolerate deviations from this ideal, with an additional partially checked Case being worse than a completely mismatched Case. This work is relevant to the general issue, important in syntax and phonology, of whether it is an intervening potential source, target, or both that matters in situations where like blocks like. This paper shows that Case checking can be blocked by a closer potential target (DP), just as movement and binding can be (Rizzi 1990). Since a closer potential source (head) can also block Case checking, we can conclude that both are relevant. --------------*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the DGfS meetings in Marburg, Germany in March 2000, at the Workshop on Case organized by Ellen Brandner and Heike Zinsmeister. I would like to thank Artemis Alexiadou, Josef Bayer, Ellen Brandner, Miriam Butt, Hubert Haider, Kyle Johnson, Jóhannes G. Jónsson, John McCarthy, Gereon Müller, Halldór Sigurðsson, Carson Schütze, Sten Vikner, and Dieter Wunderlich, and two anonymous LI reviewers for many interesting questions and helpful comments Despite the influential idea of Belletti (1988) that unaccusative subjects get partitive Case, it is now generally agreed that they actually get nominative Case (e.g. Burzio 1986, 1994, 1995, Sigurðsson 1989, 1992, Brandner 1993, 1995, Chomsky 1995, Haider 1995, Abraham 1996, Mahajan 2000). There have been many proposals for exactly how nominative can be assigned to or checked on an object (see Harbert and Toribio 1991 for one survey of proposals). Within the Minimalist Program, this is possible because Infl c-commands the object, with the Spec-head relation now subsumed under c-command (Chomsky 1998). |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/457-0801/457-0801-WOOLFORD-0-0.PDF |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
