1

Chapter 2. The Variable Relationship of Case and Agreement

Having characterized briefly in chapter 1 the problem of structural case, let us begin by taking

stock of what theoretical resources are on hand for addressing it.

The primary idea in the recent generative literature has been that structural case is

assigned to an NP by a nearby functional category F when Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) relation of

Agree holds between F and NP. Moreover, the properties of Agree are fairly well-defined in the

literature originating with Chomsky (2000, 2001) (see also Baker 2008, Baker 2013a, 2013b for

overviews, among many others). First, F must c-command NP in order to agree with it. Second,

there must be no other NP with the features F is looking for that intervenes between F and the

NP that it agrees with. Third, there must not be a spell out domain (phase) that contains NP but

not F. Fourth, NP must be “active” for agreement by having an unvalued case feature.1 There are

also proposals about how Agree might be parameterized across languages. For example, in Baker

(2008) I argued that some languages require that an NP c-command F for agreement to happen

between them, rather than F c-command NP, and that the activity condition holds of some

languages but not others. One aspect of this cluster of ideas that is less clear is what the range of

agreeing and case assigning functional heads is, and why. But the usual suspects include finite

T/Infl, which assigns nominative case under Agree, and active v/Voice which assigns accusative.

A natural generalization is to say that possessive D assigns genitive case under Agree inside

NPs.2

Overall, then, the outlines of the case-by-Agree picture are fairly well worked out, and I

assume this background here. The question we may ask, then, is how far this picture goes in

accounting for structural case phenomena in languages of the world. Following and expanding

on Baker and Vinokurova (2010) and Baker (2012), I argue that it goes part of the way but not

the whole way. Agreement is one mode of structural case assignment in natural languages, but

there is at least one other mode, namely dependent case assignment. Furthermore, there is reason

to say that sometimes agreement causes case to be assigned and sometimes it reacts to the case

that has already been assigned in this other mode.

2.1 Sometimes case is assigned via agreement

The agreement based case theory we inherit from previous work does work well for some cases

in some languages. For example, it works well for nominative case in Sakha, to continue

discussing that example that blends the familiar and the unfamiliar from chapter 1. In simple

sentences, the subject is nominative, and the finite verb agrees with that subject, as shown in (1).

1 Chomsky also assumes a condition of Match, such that F and NP must be specified as having the same feature

attributes, valued on NP and unvalued on F. However, in Baker 2008, I attempted to eliminate this as distinct condition, and in practice I have little need for it in this work. 2 It is much less clear what functional head could assign structural dative case. One might want to say that this is

assigned by Appl, an applicative head (Pyllkanen 2008), but it is not clear that that gets dative to the right NP: we would naturally expect Appl to assign its dative to the theme NP that it c-commands rather than to the goal NP in its specifier, contrary to the most common situation Perhaps the most plausible thing for a proponent of a purely agreement-based theory of case assignment to say is that dative is always an inherent case, as in Woolford (2006).

2

(1) a. Masha aqa-ta kinige-ni atyylas-ta.

Masha father-3sP.NOM book-ACC buy-PAST.3sS

‘Masha’s father bought the book.’

b. Uol uonna kyys kuorak-ka bar-dy-lar. (NV:263)

boy and girl town-DAT go-PAST-3pS

‘The boy and the girl went to the town.’

There are, however, clause types in which agreement with the subject is disrupted. Sakha

does not have a very direct analog of the IE infinitive, but it does have a series of participle

forms. Relative clauses in Sakha are made by using one of these participle forms in construction

with a head noun. In this construction, the participle cannot agree with the subject, as shown in

(2).

(2) *Masha cej ih-er-e caakky

Masha tea drink-AOR-3sP cup

‘a cup that Masha drinks tea from’

There are two ways to make a grammatical relative clause that are minimally different from (2).

First, there can be agreement on the head noun of the relative clause (not the participle) that

agrees with the subject of the relative clause, as in (3).

(3) Masha cej ih-er caakky-ta

Masha tea drink-AOR cup-3sP

‘a cup that Masha drinks tea from’

When this happens, the subject insider the relative clause is actually not nominative but genitive.

This difference in case is apparent if and only if the subject of the clause is a possessed NP, as in

(4), for morphological reasons (see B&V:xx).

(4) Masha aqa-ty-n atyylas-pyt at-a

Masha father-3sP-GEN buy-PTPL horse-3sP

‘the horse that Masha’s father bought’

Comparing (1) and (4), we see that if a different head agrees with the subject in Sakha (realized

as agreement from a different paradigm, spelled out on a different lexical item), then the case of

the subject is different as well.

The other possibility for a relative clause is that there is no overt agreement on either the

participle or on the head noun, and the subject of the clause is phonologically null, something

like PRO. (5) gives an example of this, to compare with (2).

(5) cej ih-er caakky (B&V:10)

tea drink-AOR-3sP cup

‘a cup that one drinks tea from’

3

On my interpretation, this shows that it is not necessary to have an agreement-bearing functional

head in a relative structure in Sakha. There is no room for one in the reduced relative clause (see

(2)), and there is no need for an agreeing D (determiner) head to be present above the whole NP:

it is there in (3) but not in (4). It is, however, impossible to have an overt NP in nominative case

as the subject of the relative clause in these constructions, in the absence of overt agreement:

(6) *Masha cej ih-er caakky.

Masha tea drink-AOR cup

‘a cup that Masha drinks tea from’

Comparing (6) and (5), we see that when there is no agreement there can be no overt subject in

nominative (or genitive) case.

The very same participles that must appear without agreement in relative clauses can bear

agreement when they are the semantic heads of a simple matrix clause. In this environment, the

subject of the clause can perfectly well have nominative case, as shown this for the aorist

(present) participle in (7).

(7) En aaq-a-qyn (Vinokurova 2005:220)

You read-AOR-2sS

‘You read.’

Here again, we find overt nominative subjects when the verb form bears agreement, but not

otherwise.

A further detail becomes visible when a participle appears together with an auxiliary verb

to form a complex tense. This can take various, depending on the tense of the auxiliary. If the

auxiliary bears the simple past tense –dI-, then it, like all verbs in this tense, must be inflected for

agreement with the subject. In this situation, the participle form may not be inflected for

agreement.

(8) Min bil-er e-ti-m. (*bil-e-bin) (Vinokurova 2005:224)

I know-AOR AUX-PAST-1sS know-AOR-1sS

'I used to know.'

However, when the auxiliary verb is also a participial form, agreement on the auxiliary is

formally optional. Then it is possible for agreement to appear on the main verb, or on the

auxiliary verb, but it is bad for neither verb to agree, or for both verbs to do so.

(9) a. En süüj-büt e-bik-kin

you win-PTPL AUX-PTPL-2sS

b. En süüj-bük-kün e-bit

you win-PTPL-2sS AUX-PTPL

c. *En süüj-büt e-bit

you win-PTPL AUX-PTPL

4

d. *En süüj-bük-kün e-bik-kin

you win-PTPL-2sS AUX-PTPL-2sS

All: ‘The result is that you won.’

I understand this as showing that there are two potentially agreeing heads in Sakha, one between

the main verb and the auxiliary, and the other above the auxiliary. If either of these heads is

present, it assigns nominative case to the subject under agreement, and the sentence is licit. If

neither is present, the subject does not get nominative case, and the sentence is ruled out. But if

both are present, the structure is also ruled out. This can be attributed to the activity condition on

agreement: when one functional head agrees with the subject and assigns it nominative case, the

valued case feature of the subject renders it inactive, unable to enter into an Agree relationship

with the other functional head. Looking over this range of data, we see that there is a perfect

one-to-one correspondence between overt nominative subjects and verb forms that bear

agreement with that subject. (And there is also a one-to-one correspondence between genitive

nominals and noun forms that bear agreement; see (4). See also B&V 2010 for a similar

argument from noun complement constructions, where agreement with the overt subject must

appear on the participial verb or on the head noun, but not both.)3

Another way of seeing the close relationship between nominative case and subject-verb

agreement is looking at clauses that do not have a nominative subject. I mentioned in chapter 1

that the theme argument of a passive verb in Sakha may be nominative or accusative. If the

theme is nominative, the passive verb must agree with it; if it is not nominative, then the passive

verb cannot agree with it, as shown in (10).

(10) a. Sonun-nar aaq-ylyn-ny-lar. (NV:335-336)

news-PL read-PASS-PAST-3pS

‘The news was read.’

b. Sonun-nar-y aaq-ylyn-na.

news-PL-ACC read-PASS-PAST.3sS

‘The news was read.’

Sakha also has a few predicates that have dative subjects, including ‘need’ and ‘not have

enough’. These predicates do not show agreement with the dative subject:

(11) Oqo-lor-go üüt naada-(*lar)

child-PL-DAT milk need-(*3pS)

‘The children need milk.’

3 See Levin and Preminger (to appear) for a thoughtful alternative interpretation. They admit, however, that their

proposal has no clear empirical advantages over B&V’s, and I am not convinced that theirs is more parsimonious

when everything is taken into consideration. For example, to account for the badness of (6) they must

stipulate that a potentially agreeing D is always present above the noun head of a relative, and to

account for (9) they must stipulate that a Sakha clause always has exactly one agreeing

functional head—something that clearly is not true universally. Space prevents a full discussion here, but I think their article makes the analytical choices fairly clear.

5

These predicates can, however, show agreement with their nominative objects.4 (See B&V:xx for

evidence that the dative NP truly is the subject in (12) and (12), c-commanding the theme, and

not vice versa.)

(12) Ucuutal-ga student-nar tiij-bet-ter.

Teacher-DAT student-PL suffice-NEG.AOR-3pS

‘The teacher doesn’t have enough students.’

This shows not only that the relationship between agreeing with the verb and having nominative

case is a close one, but that it is closer than the relationship between agreeing with the verb and

being a subject, since in (12) the subject does not agree with the verb and the object does.

Overall then, the following biconditional relationship holds quite strongly in Sakha:5

(13) Overt NP X has nominative case if and only if exactly one verbal form in the clause

containing X agrees with it.

Moreover, the standard generative theory of case assignment has a natural way of explaining

why (13) is true: it says that an NP has nominative case if and only if it is assigned that case by a

T-like functional head that enters into Agree with it. I conclude that this data from Sakha is at

least as strong as familiar arguments that nominative case is assigned by T under agreement in

Western European languages like English and Icelandic. See also B&V:xx for parallel arguments

that an overt NP in Sakha has genitive case if and only if a D affixed to a noun agrees with it.

In my previous work on Sakha with Nadya Vinokurova, we assumed that it was well-

established that case is assigned under agreement in at least some Indo-European (IE) languages.

Therefore, the question we had in mind was this: for which of the cases in Sakha is there good

evidence that that case is assigned under agreement—a question that calls for only a moderate

burden of proof. Since then Levin and Preminger (to appear) have challenged this background

assumption, and have claimed that the facts of Sakha can be explained just as well in a theory

that does not have case assigned under agreement at all, but uses dependent case together with

case-sensitive agreement, as proposed by Bobaljik (2008) (see section xx below on this). This

leads us (me) to look back at this material to see if it can bear the higher burden of proof that is

needed to justify a device that may not otherwise be needed in universal grammar. I think that

the answer is a tentative yes, given that there are certain details of the account that work better in

the B&V version than in the alternative (see note 3). But I admit that it could be considered a

close call. I also admit that I have not found much new work for the type of case that is assigned

by agreement for the languages I have chosen to focus on here. Although this could look

suspicious, I assume that it is an artifact of the sorts of languages I picked for this study

(languages rich in overt case but not necessarily in agreement) together with my being interested

4 This agreement is perfect if the object is third person plural. It is apparently somewhat marginal

if the object is a first or second person pronoun; see Baker (xx) for discussion. 5 The only apparent exception that I know of is the indefinite theme arguments inside VP, like (xx) in chapter (1),

which appear to be nominative but are not agreed with (even if there is no subject, or the subject is dative). However, given that such theme arguments must be strictly left-adjacent to the verb, B&V and Baker (in press) claim that the object is really pseudo-incorporated into the verb, and hence are caseless, not nominative. Other apparent counter examples are seen to be genitive when the NP in question is possessed—for example, the

objects of certain postpositions (B&V:xx).

6

in a new toy (dependent case) and what it can do. But that conclusion will have to be re-

evaluated if subsequent inquiry really does have a hard time identifying other cases for which the

case-assigned-by-agreement does seem best. Although I do not undertake that here, see Baker

and Atlamaz (2013) for an argument that nominative-absolutive is assigned by agreement in the

Iranian language Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish), because the theory of Agree can explain the

particular brand of split ergativity found in that language.

2.2 Sometimes Case is not assigned by agreement.

Even if we accept the evidence that nominative case is assigned under agreement with T in

Sakha and some other languages of this kind, there are plenty of reasons to think that not all

structural cases are assigned in this way. In this section I consider several of those reasons.

2.2.1 Case in languages with no evidence of agreement

One simple consideration is that there are languages like Japanese and Korean that famously

have overt case marking (nominative, accusative, dative) but have no overt person-number-

gender agreement between the verb and any nearby NP.6 It could be right to say that T agrees

with the subject NP in the syntax of these languages too, but then that agreement is not spelled

out morphologically at PF. If so, then we can say that T assigns nominative to NP under

agreement in these languages too—arguably the standard view. But there is obviously a fair

degree of abstractness to this sort of view. Moreover, there are some well-known proposals (e.g.

Kuroda 1988) that assign great syntactic significance to the fact that Japanese does not have

agreement in the syntax. According to Kuroda, this makes possible multiple subject

constructions, extra specifier positions, scrambling, and so on. Therefore, we should consider the

possibility that the surface morphological facts are telling us the truth about these languages:

that they do not have agreement in the synax, and nominative case comes by another route.

Nor are languages like Japanese and Korean rare crosslinguistically. According to the

World Atlas of Language Structures (Comrie 2005, Sierbica 2005), other languages that have

nominative-accusative case marking but no verbal person agreement include: Burmese, Garo,

Kayardild, Khalkha, Lepcha, Malagasy, Maori, Martuthunira, Meithei, Pomo (Southeastern),

Yaqui, and Igbo. There are also languages that have ergative-absolutive or tripartite case

systems, but no person agreement on the verb. These include Araona, Bribri, Epena Pedee,

Ingush, Ladakhi, Lezgian, Sanuma, Shipibo-Konibo, and Yidiny (also Diyari). There are then

plenty of languages that are fairly pure dependent marking languages in Nichols’s (xxx) sense,

with structural case but no agreement, and we may wish for a better theory of this type, well-

motivated by facts internal to those languages themselves.

2.2.2 Issues with accusative case and object agreement

There are also languages may have some overt agreement, but not enough to support all of its

structural cases. Sakha is an example of this. We have seen that there is a very close

6 It is somewhat controversial whether subject honorification marking in Japanese and Korean is a sort of Agree in

a feature like [+honored] holding between a verbal functional head and the subject (REFS). But even if this is an instance of Agree, then it is a sort of agreement does not relate closely to case, since one can have subject honorification with dative subjects as well as nominative ones in Korean (Koak xxx:xx).

7

correspondence between nominative case and agreement on verbs, but there is no similar

correspondence between accusative case and agreement in this language—since the language

simply does not have (overt) object agreement. Many IE languages are also like this, including

Latin, Greek, German, and Russian. And it is also a common type crosslinguistically; according

to WALS it includes: Armenian (Eastern), Barasano, Brahui, Evenki, Finnish, Fur, Hebrew

(Modern), Iraqw, Kannada (also Tamil), Khasi, Latvian, Nenets, Nubian (Dongolese), Turkish,

Urubú-Kaapor, and Yukaghir (Kolyma). Indeed, languages of this type seem to be as common

as languages which have both overt accusative case and overt object agreement that could assign

it. Similarly, if dative case is a structural case in Sakha in, for example, ditransitive

constructions (see section 1.2.1), then it does not correspond to any overt agreement either.

Once again, the generative linguist can and does say that the agreement associated with a

particular structural case assignment can be covert: present in the syntax but not spelled out by

any morpheme other than Ø at PF. So just as one might say that T agrees with the subject in

Japanese and assigns it nominative, but the agreement paradigm happens to be (Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø,

Ø), so one might say that active Voice/v agrees with the object and assigns it accusative in

Sakha, but the agreement paradigm is (Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø). Although there is not much direct

evidence in favor of this view, there is not much direct evidence against it either, and linguists

whose tastes run toward crosslinguistic uniformity over surface transparency may prefer it.

But the issue becomes more problematic when we consider languages that do have overt

object agreement as well as overt case marking, but where the two do not line up the way that

nominative case and subject agreement do in Sakha. Amharic is a language like (Baker 2012).

Amharic allows object agreement with definite accusative objects, as shown in (14).

(14) Ləmma wɨ ʃ ʃ a -w-ɨ n j-aj-əw-al. (*wɨ ʃ ʃ a-w)

Lemma dog-DEF-ACC 3mS-see-3mO-Aux(3mS) dog-DEF

‘Lemma sees the dog.’ (also WL:186)

This object-sensitive morpheme has the properties one expects of Agree, in that only the higher

of two objects inside VP (the goal) can be agreed with in a ditransitive construction:7

(15) Ləmma Almaz-ɨ n məʦ ’əhaf asaj-at. (#asaj-ə-w)

Lemma Almaz.F-ACC book.M show-3mS-3fO (*show-3mS-3mO)

‘Lemma showed Almaz a book.’ (also WL:185, 191)

Nevertheless, there are important mismatches between case and agreement as well as matches.

For example, the highest NP in the VP triggers object agreement even when it is not accusative.

This happens with goal objects of ditransitive verbs that are in dative case ((16a)), and also with

with the experiencer subjects of psych verbs and possessive verbs that are in nominative case

((16b)). It also happens when the agreed-with NP is inside a PP, and the P is doubled as a suffix

on the verb—a kind of applicative construction particular to Amharic—as shown in (16c).

7 This is an important part of my (2012) argument that the relevant morphemes on the verb are instances of object

agreement, not cliticized pronouns. For a more nuanced view, see Kramer (in press), who argues that the relevant morphemes are cliticized pronouns, but that cliticization needs to be preceded by (covert) Agree. On Kramer’s view, the object suffixes on the verb are an indirect realization of Agree, not a direct one, but the same point that what the verb enters into Agree with can be different from what bears accusative case.

8

(16) a. Ləmma l-Almaz məʦ ’əhaf-u-n sət’t’-at.

Lemma DAT-almaz book-DEF-ACC give-(3mS)-3fO

‘Lemma gave the book to Almaz.’

b. Aster wɨ ʃ ʃ a all-at

Aster dog exist-(3mS)-3fO

‘Aster has a dog.’ (also WL:439-440)

c. Aster bə-mət’rəgiya-w dəʤʤ t’ərrəg-əʧ ʧ -ɨ bb-ət (Amberber 2002:56)

Aster INST-broom-DEF doorway sweep-3fS-with-3mO

‘Aster swept a doorway with the broom.’ (also WL:430)

In short, object agreement can take place with an NP in essentially any case in Amharic. This is

quite different from Sakha, where subject agreement is possible only with nominative NPs.

Amharic also allows accusative case NPs that do not agree with the verb. Indeed, overt

object agreement is not required even with a simple definite accusative object: (17a) is possible

alongside (14). Moreover, object agreement is actually forbidden with quantified objects,

including wh-words, even though accusative marking is required on them ((17b)).

(17) a. Ləmma wɨ ʃ ʃ a-w-ɨ n j-aj-al.

Lemma dog-DEF-ACC 3mS-see-AUX(3mS)

‘Lemma sees the dog.’ (also WL:181, 186)

b. Mann-ɨ n ajj-ɨ ʃ ? (??ajj-ɨ ʃ -əw)

who-ACC see-2fS see-2fS-3mO

‘Who did you (feminine) see?’ (also WL:69)

Moreover, object agreement it is impossible with the second (theme) object in a ditransitive

clause, even though this object may be marked accusative (if it is definite).8

(18) Ləmma Aster- ɨ n hɪ s’an-u-n asaj-at. (#asaj-ə-w)

Lemma Aster-ACC child-DEF-ACC show-(3mS)-3fO (*show-3mS-3mO)

‘Lemma showed Aster the baby.’ (also WL:185, 191)

Here too the relationship between accusative case and object agreement in Amharic is unlike the

relationship between nominative case and subject agreement in Sakha, where a nominative

subject is impossible without a verb that agrees with it in the vicinity (see (6) and (9c)).

Overall, then, there are counterexamples in both directions to a statement like “An NP is

accusative if and only if the verb agrees with it using the object agreement paradigm” in

Amharic. Whereas it might not bother generative linguists to say that agreement happens in

languages where one does not see it, it is more of a stretch to say that agreement happens but the

NP that a functional head agrees with in the syntax is systematically different from the NP that it

appears to agree with at PF. But that is what one would have to say about object agreement in

8 This generalization holds true regardless of whether the goal is accusative, as in (18), or dative, but see Baker

(2012:xx) for a qualification regarding a structure in which lE expresses a P like ‘to’ rather than structural dative case.

9

Amharic if one wanted to maintain that all structural case is assigned by agreement with a

functional head.

Another language in my study that is like Amharic in this respect is Cuzco Quechua.

Object agreement in this language can resister an NP in accusative case, as expected, but it can

also register one in dative case, or in an ‘about’ case. (In contrast, Lefebvre and Muysken

1988:xx show that it cannot agree with the object of a true postposition.)

(19) a. Nuqa-ta-qa riku-wa-n. (L&M:80-81)

I-ACC-TOP see-1sO-3sS

‘Me, he sees.’

b. Nuqa-man-qa qu-wa-n.

I-DAT-TOP give-1sO-3sS

‘He gives to me.’

c. ?Nuqa-manta-qa parla-wa-n.

I-about-TOP talk-1sO-3sS

‘He talks about me.’

In my (2008) study of agreement, I argued that there is a parametric difference between

languages that place a condition on agreement that the agreeing functional head must assign case

to the NP it agrees with and languages that do not have such a requirement. I called this the Case

Dependence of Agreement Parameter (CDAP), and stated it as follows.

(20) F agrees with DP/NP only if F values the case feature of DP/NP or vice versa.

Sakha then is a language in which the CDAP is set positively, and Amharic is a language in

which it is set negatively. Whereas some cases can be taken to be assigned by functional heads in

CDAP:yes languages (including nominative and genitive in Sakha), the source of case on NPs in

CDAP:no languages was left open in Baker (2008). It is logically possible that functional heads

like T and v do still assign case to nearby NPs in these languages, even though they do not agree

with them, and may even agree with something else. But one might also very well suspect that

case in CDAP:no languages may not depend on a functional head at all. That view might avoid

both some abstractness in the analysis and the theoretical flaw of having two distinct locality

relationships between NPs and functional heads, one on agreement and the other something like

government (i.e. a sense Agree where it is independent of visible agreement).

2.2.3 Issues with ergative case marking

Additional mismatches between observed agreement and overt case marking are found in

ergative languages. Recall from section 1.1.2 that ergative languages are those in which a special

case marker is used for the subject of a transitive verb, distinct from the case on the object of a

transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb. (22) shows simple examples from Lezgian,

a language where there is no overt agreement, where the transitive subject in (22b) bears the

ergative suffix –a.

10

(21) a. Farid ata-na-ni? (Haspelmeth 1993:7)

Farid.ABS come-AOR-Q

‘Has Farid come?’

b. Sadiq’-a jad qhwa-na. (Haspelmeth 1993:83)

Sadiq’-ERG water.ABS drink-AOR

‘Sadiq’ drank water.’

One important feature that we want a general theory of structural case assignment to have is that

it should account for ergative languages as well as accusative ones without implausible

theoretical gymnastics, given that some 35% of languages with overt case marking are ergative,

and such languages are found on at least four continents.9

Ergative languages present new opportunities to observe mismatches between case and

agreement simply because not all subjects are case-marked the same in these languages. Thus,

when an ergative language also has garden-variety subject agreement, then the finite verb agrees

in the same way with both ergative and absolutive subjects. This can be seen, for example, in

(22) from the New Guinean language Kewa, a language with ergative case and subject

agreement but no object agreement.

(22) a. ní ada-para píra-wa. (intransitive clause, xxx P. 67)

I house-in sit-1sS

‘I sat in the house.’

b. né-mé irikai tá-wa. (transitive clause, xxxx p. 67)

I-ERG dog hit-1sS

‘I hit the dog.’

We see the same thing in Burushaski, an isolate spoken in the Himalayas. This language

has both subject agreement, which is clearly associated with the tense-marking suffix, and object

agreement, which shows up as a prefix on the verb. (23) shows that the tense suffix agrees

indiscriminately with both ergative subjects and absolutive subjects in this language too.

(23) a. Dasín há-e le hurút-umo (Willson, 1996:19)p.3

girl.ABS house.y-OBL in sit-PAST.3fS

‘The girl sat in the room.’

b. Hilés-e dasin mu-yeéts-imi. (Willson 1996:17)

boy-ERG girl.ABS 3fO-see-PAST.3mS

‘The boy saw the girl.’

In fact, we have a double dissociation between case and agreement here. The subjects in both

(23a) and (23b) agree with T in the same way, even though they have different cases, and the two

absolutive arguments in (23) have the same case (apparently) even though they agree with

different heads—T in (23a) and (presumably) v in (23b). Therefore it is very awkward to say that

9 I do not know of a clear case of an ergative language in Africa.

11

case comes from the functional category by agreement here. If T agrees with both of the subjects

and assigns them case in (23), then where does the difference in the form of the subject come

from? If v assigns absolutive to the object under agreement in (23b), then how does the subject

get the same absolutive case in (23b) in the absence of such agreement? It is not impossible to

cook up analyses of Burushaski in which T and v assign case under agreement in the usual way

to the subject and object, respectively, but case is realized at PF in ways that disguise this. But

there is no good evidence in favor of such a convoluted account. Furthermore, this tactic merely

puts off until PF the question of primary interest here, which is what determines the case forms

of NPs in various roles/positions across languages. Like Amharic, Burushaski is a CDAP:no

language in terms of Baker (2008), hence a language in which case marking cannot readily be

attributed to agreement.10

Indeed, it is not clear that structural ergative case marking can ever be performed by

entering into Agree with a designated functional head. I take it as established in the literature by

now that the transitive subject and the intransitive subject are both the highest NP in their

respective clauses in most ergative languages, if not all, as shown by word order, binding, and

control phenomena in many morphologically ergative languages (Anderson 1976, and many

others since REFSxx).11

Given this, both kinds of subjects will always be the closest NP to a

agreement-bearing functional head that is high in the structure of the clause, such as T. What,

then, within the standard theory of Agree, could cause T to agree with one kind of subject—the

intransitive subject or the transitive subject—but not the other, assigning one of them T’s

characteristic case (either absolutive or ergative, depending on the analysis)? It is not clear that

anything could. There is no difference in terms of c-command, nor in terms of intervention, nor

is it likely that a smaller phase will contain one kind of subject but not the other in general. The

only factor within the standard theory of Agree that could draw a distinction is Chomsky’s

activity condition (possibly parameterized, as in the CDAP), which says that an NP must have an

unvalued case feature to be eligible for agreement. Therefore, if some subjects have already been

assigned ergative case, this could prevent T from agreeing with those subjects and assigning

them nominative/absolutive case. This is, indeed, a common view, particularly for a language

like Urdu, in which the finite verb agrees with a nominative subject but not with an ergative one,

as shown in (24).

(24) a. Nadya naha-yi. (Butt and King p. 72)

Nadya.F.NOM bathe-PERF.F.SG

‘Nadya bathed.’

b. Ram=ne gaRi cala-yi hE.

10

Indeed, the object agreement bearing head v also agrees with NPs that bear different cases, since it can agree with a dative goal in a ditransitive construction with a verb like give (Willson xx:xx). So case-agreement mismatches are rampant in this language. In Baker (2008) I used this fact as part of an argument that the CDAP is set for languages as a whole, and cannot be set differently for different heads in the same language. 11

One qualification to this is that ergative and nominative subjects have different scope properties in Hindi, according to Pranand and Nevins 2006xx. But even on their analysis ergative subjects are not in a different range of syntactic positions from nominative ones; rather, the difference is that nominative subjects can reconstruct into their theta-positions at LF and ergative ones cannot. That difference should not affect how Agree applies. I have nothing new to say in this work about the much-discussed Dyirbal language (Dixon 1972), which is the closest thing known to a language with truly ergative syntax as well as morphology. Whatever the analysis, this language seems to be an outlier among the morphologically ergative languages.

12

Ram.M=ERG car.F.SG.NOM drive-PERF.F.SG be.PRES.3.SG

‘Ram has driven a car.’

Certain languages from the Caucasus region also shown this pattern of agreement only with

absolutive NPs, including Tsez and Ingush. But on this view, the agreement theory of case

assignment is at most a partial account of an ergative case pattern. Case assignment by

agreement might explain why intransitive subjects and transitive objects both get absolutive case

from (say) T, but it cannot explain how ergative case gets on the transitive subject in the first

place; rather, it presupposes that the subject is already ergative before Agree happens.12

It

seems, then, that structural ergative case might never be assigned by way of agreement.13

2.2.4 Robustness of case across different clausal domains

One additional way to investigate whether an agreement-based theory of case assignment is

complete is to look at special constructions in which the functional head that is supposed to

assign a given structural case appears to be missing. Then we can see if this does in fact affect

the availability of the structural case in question.

Sometimes it does. For example, nonfinite clauses in English, which either lack T or

have a different kind of T, also lack nominative subjects. The subject of such clauses could be

accusative, as in (25b,c), or genitive ((25c)) or phonologically null (PRO), but not an overt

nominative.

(25) a. He will find some money in the park.

b. PRO/for him/*he to find some money would be a lucky break.

c. PRO/Him/His/*he finding some money in the park was a big help to her budget.

This is consistent with saying that finite T is responsible for nominative case on the subject in

English, even though there is no overt agreement between T and the subject in future tense

clauses like (25a) (or in past tense clauses). We saw something similar in Sakha in (2)-(6), where

the subject of a non-agreeing participial clause can be genitive or null, but not overtly

12

Hence Woolford (2006) and many others (e.g. Legate 2008) assume that ergative case is an inherent case, assigned to agents by the v that theta marks them, not structural case. I discuss this possibility briefly below. Note that this reasoning starts from the assumption that the primary agreeing head is high in the clause, above the base position of the subject. That is a very common scenario across languages, but it may not be the only one. For example, it is possible that the only agreement bearing head could be v (or Voice) in some language, rather than T. An agreeing head in that position might then undergo Cyclic Agree in the sense of Rezac (2003) and Bejar and Rezac (2009): it agrees downward with an object if there is one, otherwise it agrees (slightly) upward with a subject in Spec vP. This produces an absolutive pattern of agreement without presupposing any case on the major arguments, and that sort of agreement could be the vehicle for assigning absolutive case in some languages. Indeed, this is the analysis of nominative-absolutive case in split ergative Kurmanji defended in Baker and Atlamaz (2013). However, even these assumptions only work for absolutive; they do not give us the assignment of a distinctive ergative case by way of agreement with a functional head. (Crucially, Kurmanji does not have a distinctive ergative case: rather, its so-called ergative subjects really bear a generalized oblique case, not different from the default case used on arguments in many other positions. See B&A for details.) 13

A possible further prediction here is that ergative languages will always be CDAP=no languages, whereas CDAP=yes languages can only be neutral or accusative in their alignment. See Baker (in press) for possible typological support for this prediction. Those preliminary results may need to be revised somewhat in light of the slightly wider range of possibilities that are recognized here, however.

13

nominative. Cuzco Quechua also seems to have a relationship between the type of T, the

agreement related to that T, and the case of the subject, according to Lefebvre and Muysken

1988:118-122. Finite main clauses in Quechua have agreement with the subject and subject is in

nominal case; nominalized clauses with –sqa or –na have a different kind of agreement with the

subject, identical to possessor agreement, and the subject is typically in genitive case;14

nominalized clauses with –y and –q have no agreement with the subject and the subject cannot be

overt with nominative or genitive case, but must be an empty category (PRO).15

That suggests

that nominative case comes from agreement with T and genitive case from agreement with a

possessive determiner in Quechua, as in Sakha. See also Baker and Atlamaz (2013) for evidence

that nominative-absolutive case cannot be assigned in infinitival constructions in Kurmanji.

But languages of the world also provide plenty of instances in which the lack of certain

functional categories leaves the case patterns in a nonfinite or reduced clause entirely unaffected.

For example, Burushaski has infinitives lack subject agreement. Despite this, infinitival clauses

in Burushaski can still have overt subjects, and when they do the subject of the intransitive

sentence is absolutive and the subject of the transitive sentence is ergative, just as in finite

clauses, as seen in (26).

(26) a. Jáa [ún ní-as-e] r rái é-t-c-abaa.

1s-ERG 2s/ABS go-INF-OBL to want 3sy-do-NONPAST-1s/PRES

‘I want you to go.’ (willson, p. 30)

b. Gús-e [hir-e in mu-del-as-e] r rái

Woman-ERG man-ERG 3sh/ABS 3sf-hit-INF-OBL to want

a-é-t-c-ubo.

NEG-3sy-do-NONPAST-3sf/PRES

‘The woman doesn’t want the man to hit her.’ (Willson, p. 31)

This calls into question any theory in which either ergative or absolutive case depends on finite T

being present. Rather, it reinforces the conclusion drawn above from (23) that case marking is

independent of agreement in Burushaski.

Many ergative languages seem to be like this. Shipibo is another. It has

nonfinite/nominalized verbs that lack the aspect distinction (perfective versus imperfective) that

is characteristic of matrix clauses in this language. Nevertheless, the case marking of arguments

in clauses headed by such a verb is the same as in finite clauses, as shown in (27).

(27) a. E-a-ra keen-ai [mi-a tee-ti-nin].

I-ABS-PRT want-IMPF you-ABS work-NOML-OBL

‘I want you to work.’ (see also PV:439, 488)

b. E-a-ra keen-ai [mi-n piti meni-ti-nin].

I-ABS-PRT want-IMPF you-ERG food.ABS give-NOML-OBL

‘I want you to give (me) food.’

14

Nominative subjects are also a marginal/dispreferred option in these clauses. 15

This statement ignores internally headed relative clauses with a subject head and –q marking on the verb; it, refers only to –q clauses that are subcategorized by a matrix verb.

14

Indeed, if the conjecture above is correct that an ergative-absolutive case system is never entirely

the result of agreement with functional categories, then we might expect those cases to survive

unchanged in reduced and nonfinite clauses in all ergative languages (all things being equal).16

Although nominative case in a nominative-accusative languages can be affected by the

absence of a finite T, as in Sakha and Quechua, this does not happen in all languages. Tamil, for

example, is a Dravidian language with a nominative-accusative case system, superficially

comparable to Sakha and Quechua. However, McFadden and Sundaresan (2009) show that

nonfinite clauses that lack agreement can perfectly well have nominative subjects in Tamil; (28)

is an example.

(28) Champa-vukku [Sudha oru samosa-vai saappiɖ -a] veɳ ɖ -um

Champa-DAT Sudha.NOM a samosa-ACC eat-INF want-3sNS

‘Champa wants Sudha to eat a samosa.’

This suggests nominative case has a different source than coming from T by agreement in Tamil.

This type of reasoning can also be used to investigate the nature of accusative case on

objects in some languages. Infinitives and gerunds typically do not have finite T, but the Voice

head remains intact; for example, the object agreement survives in (26b) in Burushaski, even

though subject agreement does not. But more radical forms of nominalization presumably lack

all the clausal functional heads, consisting only of a VP (a verb and its internal arguments) as the

complement of a nominalizing head. This analysis is plausible for derived event nominals and

agentive nominals in English, for example.

(29) a. The destruction of the city

b. the destroyer of the city

Now if constructions like these do not have the active v/Voice head, and accusative case comes

from an NP entering into Agree with that head (overtly or covertly), then we expect accusative

complements to be impossible in such constructions. And indeed they are in English: one cannot

have *the destruction him or *the destroyer the city. That is possible evidence that accusative

case in English depends on this particular functional category, which is present in finite clauses,

infinitives, and gerunds, but absent in other kinds of nominalization.

But Baker and Vinokurova (2010) show that the facts go the other way in Sakha agentive

nominals. Simple example of this with verbs used intransitively are:

(30) a. oonnjoo-ccu ‘play-er’ (NV:123)

b. üören-eecci ‘study-er’

16 An interesting case is nonfinite clauses in Warlpiri. According to Legate (2008:62-63), these

can have absolutive objects, but not absolutive subjects. Rather, intransitive subjects in nonfinite

clauses must be in dative case (=genitive, the case regularly found in nominal constituents).

Nonfinite clauses in Warlpiri can, however, have ergative case subjects (see also Simpson

1991:106-107). This difference is consistent with the claim that absolutive case can possibly

come from agreement with a functional head, but ergative case cannot.

15

These agent-denoting nominals are markedly different from event-denoting nominals in Sakha in

that they cannot have aspectual suffixes ((31a)) or voice markers ((31b)), nor can they contain

adverbs ((31c)).

(31) a. *Suruj-baxt(aa)-aaccy kel-le (no aspectual suffix)

write-ACCEL-AG.NOML come-PAST.3sS

‘A quick writer came.’

b. *tal-yll-aaccy (no voice morphology)

choose-PASS-AG.NOML

‘the one who is chosen’

c. djie-ni (*bütünnüü/*xat) kyraaskal-aaccy (no adverb)

house-ACC (*completely/*again) paint-AG.NOML

‘the painter of the house (*completely) (*again)’

From this we concluded that agentive nominals do not have any functional structure between the

VP and the nominal head: no AspectP, no AdvP, and crucially no VoiceP. Nevertheless, agentive

nominals in Sakha can have accusative objects, as seen in (31c) and (32).

(32) Terilte-ni salaj-aaccy kel-le.

company-ACC manage-AGNOML come-PAST.3sS

‘The manager of the company came.’

We concluded that structural accusative case is not assigned by Voice in Sakha, or by any other

verbal functional head, because all those heads seem to be missing here.

Notice that this kind of argument, when it is available, counts against even theories that

are willing to make widespread use of covert agreement. Finite T clearly cannot assign

absolutive or nominative case and active Voice cannot assign accusative case under Agree in a

particular structure, overt agreement or no, if those heads are not even present in the structure.

So if we have reason to think that these heads are absent, but a nominative, absolutive, or

accusative NP is still there, the source of that case must be different.

I conclude from these converging considerations that agreement provides a good theory

of some cases in some languages, but it does not provide a good theory of all cases in all

languages. There must be some other source of structural case that languages of the world make

use of.

2.3 The alternative: Dependent case

2.3.1 The leading idea

With this conclusion in mind, it is high time to invoke another idea, the idea that case can be

assigned by a rule of dependent case assignment in the sense of Marantz (1991). In this work,

Marantz distinguished the four kinds of case listed in (33).

(33) Case realization disjunctive hierarchy: (p. 24)

16

a. Lexically governed case [i.e., case determined by the lexical properties of a particular

item, such as quirky case assigning verbs in Icelandic, or adpositions in many languages

–MCB].

b. ‘Dependent’ case (accusative case and ergative case)

c. Unmarked case [e.g., nominative or absolutive case assigned to any NP in a clause;

genitive case assigned to any NP inside an NP/DP –MCB]

d. Default case [assigned to any NP whatsoever not otherwise marked for case –MCB]

Lexically governed case in (33a) is (roughly) a subtype of what I called inherent case above.17

Like Marantz, I assume that this sort of case is already present when the action begins with

respect to structural case marking. Marantz’s other three types of case fall into the domain I

consider structural case, and are directly relevant.

Type (33b) in particular is the most distinctive part of Marantz’s proposal, and the one

that I explore in detail in the remainder of this work. Marantz develops the notion as follows:

(34) Dependent case is assigned by V+I to a position governed by V+I when a distinct

position governed by V+I is:

a. not ‘marked’ (does not have lexically governed case)

b. distinct from the chain being assigned dependent case.

Dependent case assigned up to subject: ergative

Dependent case assigned down to object: accusative

In Baker and Vinokurova (2010), we unpacked and updated the essential idea as (35a) for

accusative case.18

(35b) gives the corresponding statement for ergative case.

(35) a. If there are two distinct NPs in the same spell out domain such that NP1

c-commands NP2, then value the case feature of NP2 as accusative unless

NP1 has already been marked for case.

b. If there are two distinct NPs in the same spell out domain such that NP1

c-commands NP2, then value the case feature of NP1 as ergative unless

NP2 has already been marked for case.

The differences between (34) and (35) are the following. First, (35) makes explicit what

Marantz met by “assignment up” and “assignment down”; it involves the position of the NPs

relative to each other, defined in terms of c-command. A standard version of c-command is given

in (36).

(36) X c-commands Y if X does not contain Y and the first node that properly contains X does

contain Y.

17

But see Woolford (2006) for a refinement, distinguishing true lexical case from inherent case,

two distinguishable types of nonstructural case. Lexical case is idiosyncratic to particular lexical

items, whereas inherent case is predictable given the type of thematic role that is assigned. 18

I have removed from (35a) B&V’s stipulation that the two NPs involved must be arguments, and I have replaced “phase” with “spell out domain”. The reasons for these changes are discussed in chapter 5 and chapter xx respectively.

17

This condition will we discussed in more detail in chapter 3, along with an amendment to the

definition of c-command. Second, (35) replaces Marantz’s condition that the two NPs in question

be “governed by the [same] V+I” with the condition that they be in the same spell out domain,

taking this very general clause-like locality domain from Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) phase theory.

That is a fairly straightforward updating, and there will be much discussion of this restriction on

dependent case assignment in chapters 4 and 6. Third, (35) states what participates in dependent

case assignment not as abstract “positions” in a phrase structure, but as the nominals (DPs or

NPs) that occupy those positions . The overall question of what exactly features a phrase must

have in order to receive or trigger dependent case on another phrase is the topic of chapter 5.

One additional difference between Marantz’s original formulation and mine is that

Marantz takes dependent case assignment to happen in the PF component, after the syntactic

derivation is complete. This was one of the more radical parts of Marantz’s proposal, and what

he was most interested in working out; see also McFadden 2004 and Bobaljik 2008 for

developments of this line, among others. However, the issues of how case is assigned—whether

by a rule of dependent case assignment or not—and of when case is assigned—in the syntax

proper or at PF—are logically distinct, as discussed in Baker and Vinokurova (2010). Certainly

once it is made explicit that c-command relationships are the basis for dependent case

assignment, it is clear that dependent case marking happens at a level that is fundamentally

syntactic in the sense that phrase structure constituency is represented there. Marantz’s PF

version of dependent case assignment also faces some challenges from the fact that certain sorts

of movement (e.g. scrambling) have syntactic properties but seem to happen after dependent case

has been assigned, as pointed out by Legate (2008).

My view about the timing of case assignment in this work is that the case feature of an

NP is fixed by (35) at Spell out, where this is conceived as the dynamic interface between the

syntax and PF. (This is a change from Baker and Vinokurova 2010.) The specific motivations

for and implications of this claim are the focus of chapter 6. This view also provides a partial

answer to linguists who have expressed to me some disbelief in dependent case marking because

of its rule-like statement, and because it seems rather different in kind from anything else we

know of in grammar. Not so, I suggest: rather, the principles of dependent case assignment have

the same more or less familiar status as Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA).

Since Chomsky 1995:xx, this is commonly taken to be a principle for mapping syntactic phrase

structure onto linear order at PF. Just as the LCA inspects c-command pairs to determine what

the linear order should be, so the principles of case assignment inspect those same pairs to

determine what case inflection should be, word order and case inflection being two of the

primary ways that a one dimensional PF can preserve information from a multidimensional

mental representation of a sentence. This conception of the place of case marking in the theory of

syntax makes conceptual sense to me, and we will (eventually) see some advantages it has for

certain details in chapter 6.

2.3.2 Initial attractions of dependent case

There are several immediate advantages to the notion of dependent case assignment, making it

strong where the agreement theory of case is weak. First, it is not contingent on the presence of

any particular functional category to assign the case. The leading idea is that this type of case is

fundamentally a relationship between two nominals within the same local domain, not a relation

18

between an NP and a nearby functional head.19

So dependent case on this view is logically

independent of agreement: independent of whether agreement exists at all in a particular

language, and independent of which NP a given functional head may agree with. 20

Similarly,

dependent case assignment doesn’t necessarily depend on there being a particular functional

head in the local environment, on whether there is a finite T in a nonfinite clause, for example, or

whether there is actove Voice in an agent nominalization. Hence, it can handle structural cases

that are unaffected by differences in the functional heads in the structure, like Burushaski,

Shipibo, Tamil, and Sakha.

(Note, however, that functional heads still play an indirect role in structural case

assignment. For example, whether a functional head is a phase head or not will clearly important

given (35). Furthermore, different functional heads can help determine which particular case is

assigned in a given configuration, even if they do not assign that case directly. For example,

genitive is the unmarked case in the domain of a D head but nominative the unmarked case in in

the domain of a T head according to Marantz’s (33c). These matters are taken up in chapter 4.)

Another very attractive feature of dependent case assignment is that it handles ergative

and accusative languages with equal ease, and with a pleasing symmetry. It has a clear advantage

in this respect over agreement-based theories of case, which have always had to scramble in one

way or another to get ergative patterns. (See xx for a review of some of the proposals.) An

important theme of this work is exploring the many fine-grained symmetries between ergative

and accusative that this perspective leads us to expect. I will also have to explain away one or

two apparent asymmetries that come to light.

Although Marantz does not mention it, a third attraction of the dependent case idea is that

it extends immediately to tripartite languages like Nez Perce, where different case markers are

used for intransitive subjects, for transitive subjects and for transitive objects. Simple examples

are in (37), repeated from section 1.2.2.

(37) a. Hi-páay-na háama. (Rude, 1986:126)

3S-arrive-ASP man

‘The man arrived.’

b. Háama-nm hi-néec-‘wi-ye wewúkiye-ne. (Rude 1986:127)

man-ERG 3S-pO-shoot-ASP elk-ACC

‘The man shot the elk(pl).’

Tripartite languages are simply ones in which both (35a) and (35b) apply simultaneously, neither

one bleeding the other.

The fourth typological possibility is that neither (35a) or (35b) applies in a given

language. This is an easy way to get a so-called neutral case language, in which no distinct case

markers are used for any of the primary grammatical functions in the clause. This class of

languages includes Chinese and other South East Asian languages, Swahili and many other Niger

19

In fact, Marantz’s (34) does maintain the terminology that the dependent case is in some sense

assigned by the verb+I complex, whereas mine does not. It is not clear that anything crucial was

intended by this feature of Marantz’s formulation, however. 20

Indeed, one of the conclusions that Marantz draws is that his theory can account for instances

of “split ergativity” in a languages like Georgian, similar to the Burushaski facts in (23) above.

19

Congo languages, and Chamorro, among many others. The dependent case idea thus gives us a

very natural first-order typology of the kinds of case systems found in languages of the world.

All this is not necessarily to say that the dependent case theory can do it all. The

dependent case theory is also weak where agreement case theory is strong. It does not do so well

with nominative case, whenever that is not a freely available default case, as in Sakha and

Kurmanji. It does not explain the close relationship between agreement and case in CDAP:yes

languages. By itself it does not explain why nominative-accusative case systems are somewhat

more common throughout the world than ergative-absolutive systems (Comrie 2005). That

statistical asymmetry might follow better if universal grammar provides two ways of getting a

nominative-accusative language, via agreement case or via dependent case, but only one way of

getting an ergative language (dependent case). Therefore, I maintain that both modes of case

assignment exist side by side in the human language faculty, and which types are utilized in

which languages is a matter of parametrization. This is the view that Baker and Vinokurova

(2010) defend internal to Sakha, but writ large.

2.3.3 Comparison with some related ideas

Before continuing my main line of development, I pause to compare briefly dependent case

assignment with some related notions about case found in the literature. This is far from an

exhaustive scholarly treatment, but it should help situate the idea better, and bring out in another

way some of its characteristic properties.

Marantz’s notion of dependent case assignment is related to the “Case in tiers” approach

of Yip et al. (1987) (see also Zaenen et al. (1985)), which has been pursued since in a valuable

series of articles by Joan Maling (some of whose results I use, e.g. for structural case on adverbs

in Korean and Finnish). In particular, Icelandic provides a central motivation for both theories,

especially the fact that when the subject of a dyadic clause has nominative case, then the object

has accusative case, but when the subject has quirky dative case the object must be nominative.

For Yip et al., this pointed to a kind of autosegmental linking from a case tier to a quasi-

independent grammatical function tier, such that nominative links to the highest available

argument, accusative links to the next available argument, and so on. On this view, if the subject

is quirky dative, then it is not available for linking, and nominative automatically shifts to the

object; accusative case is then left unused, just as in intransitive clauses. Marantz’s version is

similar in that the presence of a subject without quirky case triggers dependent accusative case

on the object, but the presence a subject with quirky case does not (see (34a)). My biggest reason

for starting from Marantz’s version rather than Yip et al.’s is because Marantz’s version extends

readily to tripartite languages, as discussed in connection with (37) from Nez Perce. The Case in

Tiers approach gives no immediate leverage on these languages, since there is no single highest

ranked case that appears across all clause types in these languages.This is a comparatively big

deal for my broad typological interests, since tripartite languages are more common than has

traditionally been thought, once we assimilate Legate’s (2008) insight that languages with NP-

based split ergativity are essentially tripartite languages (see section 1.2.2 for discussion).21

21

I also find the Case in Tiers approach to ergative languages (pp. 219-220) somewhat under-developed, and it

makes an important false prediction: that ditransitive constructions in ergative languages that do not use a dative

case should show an ERG-ERG-ABS pattern (p. 224). In fact, they show an ERG-ABS-ABS pattern in Shipibo and

Burushaski. It takes some elaboration in order for the dependent case theory to get the right result here too; see

chapter 6 for data and extensive discussion.

20

When it comes to ergative case in particular, in both ergative and tripartite languages,

another alternative view is simply that ergative case is an inherent case, not a structural case at

all. Indeed, this has become the most influential view in the current literature on ergativity: see

Woolford (1997, 2006), Aldridge (2004, 2008, 2012), Legate (2006, 2008, 2012), Nash (1996),

Anand and Nevins (2006), Massam (2006), Laka (2006), and Mahajan (2012), among others. On

this view, ergative case is attributed to the lexical properties of the agentive v head that theta-

marks the subject, not to the subject’s surface-structural position or to agreement with non-theta-

marking functional heads. Indeed, this view has advantages for non-strict ergative languages like

Basque (e.g., Preminger 2012), Hindi, and Georgian (Butt and King 2003, Mahajan 2012, etc.), and I am willing to accept it myself for those languages. However, it does not seem right for

strict ergative languages like Shipibo, Burushaski, Chukchi, and the other languages I have

chosen. The key difference between the two types arises in intransitive clauses with verbs of the

ergative (agentive) class. Without further qualifications, the inherent case view expects ergative

case on the subjects of these clauses as well, since they are also theta-marked by an agentive v,

although the subjects of unaccusatives are not.22

This properly derives a so-called active or split-

S pattern, not a true ergative pattern, and this is indeed found (under certain conditions) in

Basque, Hindi, and Georgian. But in Shipibo, the subjects of both verb classes are consistently

absolutive in simple clauses, as shown in (38).

(38) a. Joni-bo-ra teet-ai.

person-PL-PRT work-IMPF

‘The people are working.’

b. Kokoti-ra joshin-ke.

fruit-PRT ripen-PRF

‘The fruit ripened.’

Furthermore, the subjects of both verb classes are ergative in applicative constructions, where the

verb bears the applied affix –xon and a second NP expresses a person affected by the event.

(39) a. Joni-baon-ra Rosa tee-xon-ai. (also PV:689-680)

they-PL.ERG-PRT Rosa work-APPL-IMPF

‘They work for Rosa.’

b. Bimi-n-ra Rosa joshin-xon-ke. (also PV:691, 694)

fruit-ERG-PRT Rosa ripen-APPL-PRF

‘The fruit ripened for Rosa.’

See also Marantz 1991:26 for a remark on a conceptual difference between his view and the Case in Tiers

approach, concerning exceptional case marking clauses, which can have accusative objects even though nominative

case is not (evidentally) assigned to the subject (compare Yip et al. 1987:241-243). 22 Some researchers, including Woolford (2006:119-120), Massam (2006), and Legate (2012:182) do acknowledge in passing that one needs a transitivity condition as well as a thematic condition on ergative (and dative) case assignment by v in many languages, but the true nature of this condition is not investigated. I take this to be a failure to attend to the important role of dependent case assignment within an overall case theory.

21

This shows that what thematic role an NP has—agent or theme—and what head it gets its theta

role from—v or V—are not primary determinants of its case in Shipibo. This in turn implies that

ergative case is not an inherent case in Shipibo. In contrast, the dependent case hypothesis has

obvious potential to explain these data: the clauses in (38) have only one NP, so (35b) does not

apply and the one NP has default (absolutive) case; the clauses in (39) have two NPs, so (35b)

does apply to give one of them ergative case. Examples like (39b) are particularly damning for

the ergative-as-inherent view; see Baker (in press) for further elaboration of this argument.

Burushaski, Greenlandic, and Chukchi are like Shipibo in this respect, except that they may not

have productive morphological applicatives. So the ergative-as-inherent case view may have a

role to play in some languages, but it cannot be taken as the primary theory of strict ergative and

tripartite langauges, any more than an agreement-based theory can be.

Finally, the notion of dependent case assignment can be seen as a formal version of what

Comrie (1978, 1981) and many functionalists after him have described as the discriminatory

function of morphological case, as opposed to its characterizing function (for recent remarks,

see xxx). What this body of work calls the characterizing function of case is essentially to single

the semantic or grammatical role of an NP explicitly and directly. In many instances if not all,

characterizing cases correspond to what generativists call inherent or semantic cases; see chapter

1 for discussion. In contrast, my view of dependent case corresponds quite closely to Comrie’s

conception of cases for which the discriminatory function is dominant. Comrie’s idea is simply

that case is particularly useful for communication in transitive clauses, to distinguish

morphologically the NP that is the subject-agent (“A”) of the clause from the NP that is the

object-patient (“P”). However, it is not so important which of the two is singled out for special

marking and which left unmarked, like the subject of an intransitive verb (“S”). That is why

ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative are the two common case systems in the

languages of the world, according to Comrie. Dependent case marking is essentially a working

out of the same intuition. However, Comrie is not super-explicit about exactly what counts as an

A or P in a particular clause, treating these categories intuitively, as “primitives”. Much can be

done, then, to work out just exactly how this idea plays out in the details of Sakha, Shipibo, and

other languages, with the generative ideal of not presupposing linguistic common sense, but

trying to give as full and explicit an account of it as possible. If much of what follows, then, is a

sharpening and fleshing out of Marantz’s idea of dependent case, it is equally a sharpening and

fleshing out of Comrie’s notion of discriminatory uses of case. It is a virtue of the generative

view that it pushes us toward precision in such matters, in my view.

However, I acknowledge that Comrie’s functionalist conception also has something to

contribute toward understanding why the syntactic cases get spelled out more frequently in some

ways than in others, statistical patterns that have no direct explanation in terms of my formal

Marantzian system. First, Comrie explains why it is comparatively rare for languages to have

full-blown tripartite morphology, as compared to ordinary ergative and accusative languages

(although it is not, perhaps, as rare as Comrie thought at the time). Fully tripartite languages are

rare because there is less urgent communicative need to distinguish either argument of a

transitive verb from the sole argument of an intransitive verb, given that these grammatical

functions never appear in the same clause, where the risk of confusion is greatest. Therefore, it is

useful for a language to mark A differently from P inside the same clause, but not as useful to

mark S differently from both A and P across clauses, so languages can cut corners on having

ergative, accusative, and nominative, all three with different endings. Similarly, my formal

system could allow a language in which the subject and object of a transitive verb bear the same

22

case ending and the subject of an intransitive verb has a different ending. This could happen if

(for example) both (35a) and (35b) happen in the same language, the language spells out default

nominative case in one way, and then all other cases are spelled out with the same elsewhere

marker. Indeed, there are a few languages that do work pretty much like this, including the Mus

dialect of Kurmanji Kurdish (in past tense only).23

(40) a. Tu hat-i. (check)

you.NOM come.PAST-2sS

‘You came.’

b. T-e pirtûk-ê xwand. (GündoGdu 2011:70)

you-OBL book-OBL read.PAST(3sS)

“You read the book.”

So universal grammar should not rule this pattern out entirely. But it is extremely rare on all

accounts, and Comrie (1978, 1981) explains why in functionalist terms. This case system fails to

make the useful distinction between A and P in the same clause and insists on making the less

useful distinction between (say) A and S across clauses. Therefore, it is rare, although not

nonexistent. I am happy, then, to have my formal system generate such a language (indirectly,

using PF syncretism), and assume Comrie’s account of why few languages actually exploit this

particular grammatical possibility.24

2.4 Is accusative case ever assigned by agreement?

Overall, then, I am proposing a mixed case system, where case can be assigned either by

agreement with functional categories or by dependent case algorithms as in (35). But so far the

main case that we have seen that can fairly clearly be assigned either way is nominative, by

agreement with T in Sakha and Quechua—and presumably also English and some other IE

languages. This is an alternative to nominative being assigned as a default case, as it apparently

is in Tamil (see (28), (54)). There are also some more tentative suggestions that genitive is

assigned by agreement with D in Sakha, and that some instances of absolutive might be assigned

under agreement (e.g. I past tense in Adiyaman Kurmanji (Baker and Atlamaz 2013) and to

intransitive subjects in Warlpiri (note 16)). I have also argued in section 2.2.3 that ergative can

perhaps never be assigned purely by agreement with a functional head. What then about

accusative case? In principle, this could be assigned could be assigned in either of two ways. It

could be assigned as a low dependent case, parallel to the only way of assigning structural

23

I don’t think the analysis sketched above quite right for Muş Kurmanji given details of its split ergativity and how agreement works (see Baker and Atlamaz (2013:xx)), but it is close enough to be a legitimate illustration of the issue. 24 The linking theories of Wunderlich (1997) and Kiparsky (1987, 1997, 2001) are also built on

an intuition similar to that of Marantz (1991), in that they classify arguments/nominals as [

higher/highest role] and [ lower/lowest role] based on their relative positions in argument

structure and/or in syntax. These feature values then determine in part what case morphemes the

nominals are compatible with. Unfortunately, I am not well-versed enough in these theories to

identify with confidence what the crucial points of comparison are.

23

ergative case. Or it could be assigned by a low functional head like v under agreement, just as

nominative is assigned by a high functional head like T under agreement, as in the recent

Chomskian tradition. Both of these analyses are possible as far as top-down theoretical

considerations are concerned. The question, then, is whether both are attested empirically.

I have argued briefly above, and in more detail in B&V and Baker (2012) that accusative

is dependent case in Sakha and Amharic, given the weaknesses of the agreement case theory.

Similar results seem to hold for the other the other accusative languages in my core sample:

Tamil, Cuzco Quechua, Korean and Finnish. Either these languages do not have any object

agreement at all (morphologically) (Sakha, Tamil, Finnish, Korean), or they have object

agreement, but it does not correlate very well with accusative case marking (Amharic, Quechua).

So if anything is unattested here, it seems to be accusative case that is clearly assigned under

agreement.

This may, however, be a coincidence related to the fact that not so many languages have

both overt object agreement and overt accusative case, perhaps for the simple functional reason

that languages usually only bother with so much morphological complexity. As a result, the pool

of languages we can look at to see if there are any that have overt accusative case that is closely

correlated with overt object agreement is relatively small. Thus, WALS lists only 13 out of 188

languages as having both person agreement with the P argument and accusative case marking:

Cahuilla, Comanche, Greek, Guaraní, Hungarian, Kanuri, Koasati, Kunama, Mangarrayi,

Miwok, Persian, Quechua, and Spanish. Note that this includes some languages in which the

marker on the verb is probably a clitic, rather than true agreement, like Spanish and Greek. We

might then expect to have to look proactively to find a good case of a language of the crucial

kind.

The possible instance of a language that may have overt accusative case that is assigned

by overt agreement that I have been able to find is Australian language Mangarrayi (data from

Merlan 1982). In this language, accusative case and object agreement do line up with each other

quite well—much closer than they do in Amharic, for example. (43) gives basic examples of

transitive clauses with both overt object agreement and accusative case marking,.

(41) a. Ŋawuyan-yiri+wa-ni jarbiñ-gayanŋan. (Merlan 1982, p. 61)

1sS/3pO-see-PC young.man-ACC.PL

‘I saw the young men.’

b. Ŋali-na ŋala-bugbug wuran-jirag malam-gara-ŋan (p. 91)

F.NOM-DIS F.NOM-old.person 3sS/3dO-eat man-DU-ACC

‘That old woman ate the two men.’

Indeed, agreement with an accusative object seems to be required in Mangarrayi, even if the

object is indefinite or quantified, as shown in (42).25

(42) a. Ŋayaŋayag wuyanba-bu-ni-wa. (p. 96)

25

Object agreement is morphologically Ø in (42b) because the question word is third singular,

but Merlan glosses the agreement as transitive, and I assume that she is right about this. A plural

form of the question word exists (Ŋiñja-ya-n-ŋan) and that would presumably trigger visible

object agreement on the verb.

24

Some 3pS/3pO-kill-PC-SUF

‘They killed some (people).’

b. Ŋiñjaŋ-gi-na ŋan-gadugu ña-wu-na? (p. 119)

Who-SG-ACC F.ACC-woman 2sS/3sO-give-PP

‘Who did you give it?’

Mangarrayi is quite different from Amharic in this respect: in Amharic, object agreement is

optional with definite accusative objects, and it is impossible with indefinite and quantified

objects, even though some of these must be marked accusative overtly (see (17) and Baker

(2012:xx).

Triadic verbs are also relevant. Mangarrayi has two kinds: verbs like ‘teach’ which have

a goal argument in accusative case, and verbs like ‘bring’ which have a goal argument in dative

case. The verb agrees with an accusative goal but not with a dative goal, as seen in (4).

(43) a. Bu? Ñan-wu-na ñan-bayi (Ø-ŋani). (ACC goal) Show 3sS/2sO-AUX-PP 2s.ACC-FOC N.abs-language

‘He showed/taught YOU (language).’ (p. 103, 65)

b. Wula-niri-j ŋanju (Ø-mawuj). (DAT goal)

3pS/3sO-bring-PP me.DAT N.Abs-vegetable.food

‘They brought me vegetable food.’ (p. 65, 66)

Again, Mangarrayi is different from Amharic in this, since object agreement in Amharic can register

dative goals as well as accusative goals (see (16a) and Baker 2012:xx). A similar contrast is seen within

Mangarrayi with psych verbs like ‘fear’ and ‘be afraid’. Some of these select accusative complements

and some select dative complements; the accusative complements go along with object agreement, and

the dative ones do not.

(44) a. Ga-ŋawuyan-giŋ+mi. (ACC complement, agreement) 3-1sS/3pO-fear

‘I fear them’ (note: the accusative argument is pro-dropped)

b. Ja-Ø-yiyi-ji-n ŋanya. (DAT complement, no agreement)

3-3sS-be.afraid-MP-PRES 1pin.DAT

‘He is afraid of us.’

One superficial similarity between Mangarrayi and Amharic is that both languages have

experiencer verbs that seem to be one-place monadic verbs, where the sole argument of that verb triggers

object agreement rather than subject agreement. (45) gives examples:

(45) a. Larg ga-ŋan-daya. Mangarrayi (p. 60) Be.cold 3-1sO-AUX

‘I’m cold.’

b. Aster bərrəd-at (Amberber 2002:22)

Aster.NOM be.cold-(3mS)-3fO

‘Aster is cold.’

25

But a crucial difference appears when the argument of the Mangarrayi predicate is overt, rather than pro-

dropped. Then it is evident that the experiencer argument must bear accusative case in Mangarrayi,

whereas in Amharic it commonly nominative (as in (45b)).26

(46) Ø-malam larg ja-Ø-daya. M.ACC-man be.cold 3-3sO-AUX

‘The man is cold.’

Finally, there is no sign of a verb showing object agreement with the object of a P in Mangarrayi,

as is possible in Amharic when the P is doubled on the verb in an applicative like construction (see (17c)).

Thus all of the environments in which Amharic tolerates object agreement with an NP that is not

accusative do not have object agreement in Mangarrayi, and some of the NPs that have accusative case

but do not trigger agreement in Amharic do trigger agreement in Mangarrayi. Overall, it seems to me that

there are enough systematic contrasts to support positing a parametric difference between the languages:

accusative case is an Agree-assigned case in Mangarrayi, but a dependent case in Amharic.

There is one known complication. This arises in the type of triadic construction in which the goal

is accusative and the verb agrees with the goal, as seen in (43a) above. With these verbs, the second

(theme) object is also accusative, even though the verb cannot agree with it, but only with the subject and

the goal argument. In most examples, the theme object is neuter, so accusative case is zero-marked, like

the nominative, as in (43a) and (47a). As a result, we cannot be sure if this is default case or true

accusative. But (49b) has a feminine theme object, and here the accusative marking is explicit.

(47) a. wuyanba-wu-na [pro.3pl] Ø-garag Ø-nanan.

3pS/3pO-give-PP (them) N.ABS-much N.ABS-money

‘They gave them plenty of money.’ (p. 64)

b. ŋan-jiwi-j ŋan-gadugu-ŋanju. (p. 65)

3sS/1sO-take.away F.ACC-woman-mine

‘He took my wife from me.’

This is the one case in which the tight correspondence between accusative case and object

agreement breaks down in this language. In descriptive terms, it is clear why this is: the verb also

needs to agree with the goal argument. We might plausibly then remove the anomaly by saying

that active v in Mangarrayi can undergo multiple Agree in the sense of Hiraiwa (xx), such that it

agrees with both of the object NPs within its c-command domain, assigning both of them

accusative case under Agree. The fact that only agreement with the goal object appears

morphologically could then be handled as a PF spell-out phenomenon, where only one set of

agreement features can be realized at PF on a single head.27

(But see also the next section for

another possible account.)28

26

Accusative case on the experiencer is also possible in Amharic for some speakers (Amberber 2002:22), although

this was dispreferred by my consultant. 27

Note also that third person singular object agreement is null anyway, so it is only a plural or dual

number feature that one could expect to show up registering the theme. It is thus no surprise that

we do not see overt agreement with the accusative theme in (47b) and similar examples. 28

Theory-internal considerations might lead me to infer other languages where accusative case is assigned by agreement with v, even though there is no overt accusative case . If Baker (2008) is right that the CDAP is a macroparameter, set for languages as wholes, then languages with CDAP:yes and object agreement must be

26

2.5 Case sensitive agreement

2.5.1 Another way that agreement case relate to case

In section 2.2.3, I argued that there are theoretical reasons to think that structural ergative case

can never be assigned by a functional head under agreement. The reason, in a nutshell, is that we

do not know why such a case-assigning functional head should agree only with a transitive

subject, and not with an intransitive one. No plausible reason comes to mind, given three basic

assumptions: (i) that subjects of transitive clauses are in essentially the same position as the

subjects of intransitive clauses (at least if the verb is unergative-agentive), (ii) that the

agreement-bearing functional head is the same in both transitive and intransitive clauses, and (iii)

that the syntactic configuration largely determines what NP(s) a functional head can agree with.

Since the configuration between head and nominal is by hypothesis the same, the possibility of

agreeing should also be the same. The agreement might be made impossible by the activity

condition—but only if the NP in question had already received case, so case assignment would

have to precede agreement for this to work, not be the result of agreement. Therefore there is

very little room, if any, to get ergative case out of simple agreement.29

But despite this theoretical conclusion, there are in fact two languages in my sample in

which agreement and ergative case do seem to be in a close, one-to-one relationship after all—

superficially the same kind of relationship that nominative case has to subject agreement in

Sakha and that accusative case has to object agreement in Mangarrayi. These are Coast

Tsimshian and Semelai, where there is agreement with the subject if and only if the subject is

ergative. In (48a) from Coast Tsimshian, the subject of the intransitive verb is absolutive

(indicated by -as encliticized onto the preceding verb) and there is no agreement on the verb; in

(48b) the subject of the transitive verb is ergative (indicated by -dit encliticized to the preceeding

verb) and there is third person agreement –t on the present progressive marker yagwa.

(48) a. Yagwa baa-[a]s Meli (Dunn p. 60) PROG run-ABS.PN Mary ‘Mary is running.’

b. Yagwa-t t’uus-dit Dzon-it Meli. (p. 67)

Pres-3sE push-ERG.PN John-ACC.PN Mary John is pushing Mary.

languages in which v assigns case (presumably accusative) to the object it agrees with; otherwise the agreement would be barred. However, I have no special access to any relevant language, so I do not pursue the matter here. 29

At this point, I can think of only one way that this might happen. There might be a language with an agreeing Voice head that undergoes cyclic agree, so that it agrees downward with an object if there is one, and upward with the subject if there is not, assigning the NP it agrees with absolutive case, as in Baker and Atlamaz’s (2013) analysis of Adiyaman Kurmanji. Then it is conceivable that T could be a second agreement-bearing head, which assigns ergative. It could agree with and case-mark the transitive subject, which does not already have case, but not with an intransitive subject, which got absolutive case from Voice (assuming the language is a CDAP:yes language). I do not know if this possibility is attested or not, but anyway it is not a plausible account of Coast Tsimshian or Semelai as described below, given that those languages have no (overt) agreement with absolutives.

27

Similarly, in (49a) from Semelai the intransitive subject bears no overt case marker and is not

overtly agreed with, whereas in (49b) the transitive subject bears the ergative particle la= and the

verb does agree with it overtly (here ki=).

(49) a. glɔk kmpən. (p. 137) laugh wife ‘The wife was laughing.’

b. ki=goŋ la=knlək=hn bantal. P. 259

3sA-bring A-husband-3POSS pillow

Her husband brought the pillow.

The close connection between case and agreement in both these languages is underlined

by the fact that they are are split ergative languages, in which the subject is ergative in some

tense-aspects but not others. In those tense-aspects in which the subject is not ergative, the verb

does not agree with it either. This happens when the tense is past-perfective nah in Coast

Tsimshian ((50a)), and in so-called “habitual-generic” sentences in Semelai ((50b)).

(50) A. Nah t’uus-as Dzon-s Meli. past push-ABS.PN John-ABS.PN Mary ‘John pushed Mary.’

b. pɔdɔŋ ca smaɁ p. 254 tiger eat people Tigers eat people.

This looks like precisely the kind of data that would support a claim that some functional head F

assigns ergative to the NP that it agrees with. Indeed, that F seems to be T in Coast Tsimshian,

since the tense-aspect particle remains as a separate word from the verb on the surface, and

agreement shows up as a suffix on that word. It is tempting, then, to say that yagwa agrees with

the transitive subject in Coast Tsimshian and thereby assigns it ergative case, whereas nah does

not, and similarly for episodic as opposed to habitual in Semelai. We have to wonder, then, if our

theory of Agree is too restrictive, such that it should allow for an ergative pattern in some way.

But I think that is not the right conclusion, because of a further detail about Coast

Tsimshian in particular. Whether the subject of a Coast Tsimshian clause is ergative or not

depends not only on what the Tense/Aspect particle is, but also on where the object is. If the

object is a pronoun, it cliticizes to the verb, and therefore appears before the subject, given that

the language has T-V-S-X word order. In that situation, the subject is ergative even when the

tense is nah, as shown in (51).

(51) Na-t ‘niidz-n-t Dzon. (Niidz-n-dat Niidz-n-t) Past-3sE see-2Obj-ERG.PN John ‘John saw you.’ (Dunn 1995:63)

I argue in section 4.xx that this is strong support for a dependent theory of ergative case in Coast

Tsimshian, since case marking on the subject depends on where the object is—in particular, on

whether it is in the same spell out domain as the subject or not (see (35b)). Therefore, we have

28

independent evidence in favor of a dependent case analysis of ergative case assignment in Coast

Tsimshian—the very language in which an agreement theory of ergative at first looks the most

promising. This suggests that the theory is right to rule out the possibility of ergative ever being

simply assigned by a functional head under agreement.

And the same may well be true of Semelai, although I know less about the details of its

clause structure (and will not return to it below). Thus it is notable that the word order is

different in (49b) and (50b), as well as the case and agreement: in the ergative clause, the word

order is VSO and in the nonergative clause it is SVO. This is a general grammatical property of

these two clause types, according to xxx (xx). It is plausible to think, then, that the subject and

the verb are in the same local domain (below the final position of the verb) in the episodic

clause, but they are in different domains in the habitual clause, the subject occupying a higher

position in those clauses. If so, then a dependent theory of ergative is called for in this language

too.

So both of these languages give us independent reasons to adopt a dependent theory of

ergative case, so as to capture the sensitivity of case marking to the relative positions of the

subject and the object within the clause. This conditioning factor has nothing directly to do with

the relationship between an agreeing category F and the subject. However, the same factors—

some of them quite quirky and language-specific (cliticization, verb movement, subject raising)

that determine whether the subject is ergative or not also determine whether the subject is agreed

with or not. Taking this together with the conclusion that agreement cannot be the cause of

ergative case marking leads us to the view that ergative case marking is dependent case, but the

subject being ergative causes agreement to happen. In other words, we need to make T agreeing

with the subject contingent on the subject already having a particular case, as stated in (52).

(52) T agrees with NP in Coast Tsimshian and Semelai only if NP has ergative case.

This is a new kind of relationship between case and agreement to integrate into our thinking.

Agreement can be the vehicle for assigning case to NP (Sakha nominative), or it can be

independent of case assignment (Amharic, Burushaski), or it can be dependent on the results of

case assignment (Coast Tsimshian). Therefore I continue to maintain that agreement can never

be the cause of ergative case assignment, but now we learn that it can be caused by an NP having

ergative case on other grounds. I will refer to this new type as case-sensitive agreement.

2.5.2 Integrating case-agreement into the system

The type of relationship between case and agreement posited in (52) recalls Bobaljik’s (2008)

view that case marking determines agreement in languages of the world, not vice versa.30

So I

am now adopting the germ of his idea into my overall approach, although not the details.

The details are different in two important respects. First, Bobaljik (2008) actually rules

out the specific possibility stated in (55), where an agreeing item agrees with an NP bearing a

more marked case (ergative) but not with an NP bearing a less marked case (absolutive). He

30

Indeed, this is a very traditional view in the analysis of some languages, including Hindi and

Tsez, where it is said that the verb agrees with an NP only if the NP is unmarked-nominative-

absolutive. Bobaljik’s innovation is to foreground this condition and make it the basis of a

general theory of case and agreement with universal aspirations.

29

bases this aspect of his theory on older typological universals of case and agreement by Edith

Moravcsik (1978xx), who did not find languages in which verbs with ergative subjects unless

they also agreed with absolutive subjects. But now that we know more about more languages, we

see that this does happen after all. Therefore, what we need is not a markedness hierarchy, with

different languages setting different markedness thresholds for agreement, as Bobaljik proposes,

but rather very specific statements about which case which functional head is sensitive to.

The second difference between my proposal and Bobaljik’s is that I consider principles

like (52) to be one of several ways that agreement can relate to case in a particular language

within a parameterized system, not the only way.

If it is true that this sort of agreement does not assign case but rather depends on the case

assigned, then it is less relevant to the main topic of this work. Full consideration of it would fit

more properly in a book on agreement than in a book on case. So I do not attempt a full

treatment here. Nevertheless, we should reflect briefly on how including this as one type of

agreement among several might affect the overall typology of case and agreement that we

observe. (52) is presumably one of a series of statements like the following, from which

languages may choose.31

(53) a. F agrees with NP only if NP has ergative case. b. F agrees with NP only if NP has nominative case. c. F agrees with NP only if NP has absolutive case. d. F agrees with NP only if NP has accusative case.

So let us ask briefly what each of these types might look like, how they might be distinguished

from other types we know about, and how likely are they to exist given our (my) current state of

knowledge.

We already have seen probably (53a)-type languages in Coast Tsimshian and Semelai.

What about a (53b) type language, where F agrees with an NP only if it is nominative? That sort

of language should look quite a bit like Sakha, in that subject agreement would be closely related

to an NP having nominative case. But the dependence should only go one way: in a (53b)

language there should be no agreement with NPs that are not nominative, but there could be NPs

with nominative case that are not agreed with.

Tamil is a likely example. Like Sakha, Tamil has agreement with the subject in ordinary

matrix clauses; however, the verb does not agree with the subject in Tamil if the subject is

dative, as is the case for some psych verbs and verbs of possession.

(54) a. Naan anda naaj-e veru-tt-een. (cf. Sarma 1999)

I.NOM that dog-ACC hate-PAST-1sS Agr with nominative subject

‘I hate that dog.’

b. jenn-akku pasi-kk-iDu. (*pasi-kk-een) I-DAT hunger-PRES-3nS I am hungry.

31

Yet another setting might be “F agrees with NP only if NP has dative case” in a language where dative is structural (in part). A possible example might be Basque, which has special agreement with dative NPs (if that is truly agreement and not clitic doubling; see Preminger 2010).

30

Furthermore, if the subject is dative and the verb is dyadic, then the object can be accusative

((55b)) or nominative ((55a)), depending on the verb. I return to an explanation of this

difference in section 5.xx. However, the variation is relevant to agreement, because when the

object is nominative, the verb agrees with it in person, number, and gender, whereas when the

object is accusative, the verb does not agree with it, but must have a default third neuter form.

(55) a. En-akku anda ponnu teve-ppaD-r-aa I-DAT the girl(NOM) need-suffer-PRES-3fS ‘I need the girl’

f. Baala-kku Maala-ve piri-kk-um. (*piri-kk-aa) Bala.M-DAT Mala.F-ACC like-PRES-3nS (*like-PRES-3fS) ‘Bala likes Mala.’

Tamil also has a verb that takes an instrumental subject, the modal ‘can’. This verb does not

agree with its subject either:

(56) Jen-aale inda puttag-atte paDi-kke muDi-um.

I-INSTR this book-ACC read-INF can-3nS

‘I can read this book.’

So it is clear that a verb agrees with NP only if NP is nominative in Tamil. That much is like

Sakha.

But unlike Sakha, Tamil has NPs that are nominative that the verb doesn’t agree with.

For example, we saw above that subjects of infinitival verbs can be overt NPs in nominative case

in Tamil, as shown again in (57).

(57) Champa-vukku [Sudha oru samosa-vai saappiɖ -a] veɳ ɖ -um

Champa-DAT Sudha.NOM a samosa-ACC eat-INF want-3sNS

‘Champa wants Sudha to eat a samosa.’

There situations in Tamil in which agreement on the verb is suppressed for morphosyntactic

reasons. For example, negative morphology on the Tamil verb blocks any expression of

agreement on the verb. Nevertheless, the clause can have a nominative subject, as in (58).

(58) Naan town-le pombale-ngaL-e paa-kka-le (Tamil) I.NOM town-LOC woman-PL-ACC see-INF-NEG ‘I didn’t see (any) women in town.’

Similarly (headless) relative clauses and clauses embedded under the determiner –aDu do not

bear morphological agreement in Tamil, but they still have nominative subjects (Selvanathan

2013). So if overt morphological agreement tracks syntactic agreement fairly transparently in

Tamil, we see that agreement depends on nominative case, but nominative case does not

dependent on agreement, just as expected for a (53b)-type language.32

32

Of course, one might say that a functional head like T does agree with the subject in clauses like (58) in Tamil, but the agreement is not realized at PF because the vocabulary items are blocked from insertion by the negative

31

Next consider the possibility of a (53c)-type language, where a functional head agrees

only with an absolutive NP. This should be similar to Tamil, but in an ergative language rather

than an accusative language: the agreeing head can agree only with absolutive NPs (intransitive

subjects and transitive objects), but NPs can be absolutive even when the agreeing head is

absent. Various Caucasian languages are good candidates for this, including Ingush (Nichols

xxx). This language primarily has agreement for noun class, i.e. combinations of gender and

number.33

Various heads show agreement in Ingush, including the verb stem itself, the future and

nonwitnessed tense endings, and various tense auxiliaries (Nichols p. 237). These items show

agreement with the absolutive intransitive subject and the transitive object, but not with ergative

subjects or with the dative subjects of psych verbs.

(59) a. Jett aara-b.ealar; zhwalii aara-d.ealar. (intransitive clauses; p. 432) Cow.B out-B.go.WP dog.D out-D.go.WP ‘The cow went out.’ ‘The dog went out.’ b. aaz dulx d-u’. aaz wazhazh b-u’ (transitive clauses; p. 433)

I.ERG meat D-eat I.ERG apples B-eat

‘I ate meat.’ ‘I ate apples.’

Nichols points out that a case-sensitive agreement rule is more accurate than one stated in terms

of grammatical functions or the adicity of the verb, since Ingush has a small number of dyadic

verbs that select an object with quirky lative case, and (therefore) their subject has absolutive

case, not ergative case. Such verbs agree with the subject and not the object:

(60) Muusaa cwan hamagh v-aashazh v-aac (p. 432) Musa.V any.OBL thing.LAT V-like.CVSIM V-NEG ‘Musa is not impressed by anything.’

So agreement clearly depends on absolutive case. However, absolutive case in Ingush probably does not depend on agreement with any specific functional head. First, Ingush has a whole variety of nonfinite verb forms, including a masdar (verbal noun), an infinitive, and several converbs. These presumably lack some of the functional heads associated with a finite clause.34 Nevertheless, absolutive (and ergative) NPs are perfectly fine in such clauses, following the normal rules of argument structure and alignment for Ingush. Nichols (p549) writes of the masdar, for example, that it is “morphologically like a noun, but syntactically much like a verb in that all arguments including the subject appear in their regular cases”. (61) illustrates.

morpheme. It would take more careful analysis of Tamil than I can do here to discern where that sort of analysis may be called for and where it is not. The point here is that the theory of nominative case in Tamil need not depend on the results of this potentially delicate inquiry. It is also worth noting that some related Dravidian languages have a similar case system, but no surface agreement at all, including Malayalam. 33

There is a small amount of sensitivity to person in Ingush agreement in that first and second

plurals belong to a different noun class than other human plurals. 34

Although the verb stem apparently can still agree with the absolutive in these clauses, suggesting that this form of agreement is not agreement on T in Ingush.

32

(61) a. Muusaa [zhwalii waaxar] qer. (p. 551) Musa dog bark.VN fear ‘Musa is afraid the dog will bark.’ b. Waishet cec-j-ealar [Muusaa-z baq’ aalaragh.] (p. 550) Aisha surprise-J-LV.WP Musa.ERG truth say.VN.LAT ‘Aisha was surprised that Musa told the truth.’

Furthermore, we have seen that in languages like Sakha where functional heads assign case

under agreement, only one head can agree with the nominative subject in a complex tense form

(see (9)). Ingush certainly follows no such rule: it is common to have multiple heads agreeing

with the same absolutive argument in this language. Nichols (2011:237) writes that gender

marking has «various and often multiple markings". (62) is an example of the periphrastic

progressive.

(62) Txy naana-z maasha b-ezh b-ar. (p. 263) 1pex.GEN mother-ERG homespun.B B-make.CVSIM B-PROG.PAST ‘Our mother was making homespun (when I came in).

Finally, Ingush is like Tsez (Polinsky and Potsdam 2001) in that it tolerates some instances of

long distance agreement, where the matrix verb agrees with an NP inside an embedded clause.

Nichols calls this « gender agreement attraction ». (65) is an example.

(63) [Maasa cho b-aaqq-a] b-ieza sy? (p. 478)

How.many hair.B B-take-INF B-must I.GEN

‘How many hairs must I cut ?’

Note that this is not an instance of pure restructuring, since ‘must’ determines quirky genitive

case on its subject ‘I’. Therefore ‘must’ is a thematic verb, taking its own arguments (not merely

an auxiliary) but it nevertheless agrees with the argument of the embedded verb. Here there is no

reason not to think that the object ‘hair’ is fully licensed in the embedded clause, including case

marked, but nevertheless the matrix verb can agree with it. There is no such long distance

agreement in Sakha. So the parametric possibility mentioned in (56c) seems also to be attested.

Hindi may well be another language of this type.

The final possibility to consider is (53d): a language in which accusative is assigned as a

dependent case, independently of agreement, but a functional head agrees with an NP only if it is

accusative. This may be particularly hard to distinguish from a language in which the functional

head assigns accusative under agreement. Mangarrayi, for example, could be analyzed in this

way too, at least as far as the data outlined in the previous section is concerned. Indeed, this new

possibility may have a small advantage over my first proposal when it comes to double object

constructions. I mentioned above that the second (theme) object of a DOC has accusative case in

Mangarrayi, but the verb cannot show object agreement with it, since it must agree with the first

(goal) object (see (47b)). Now we could say that NP gets dependent accusative because it is c-

commanded by another NP, whereas F cannot agree with it because the goal is a closer target for

F to agree with. In other words, this alternative does not require us to posit multiple Agree

where only one agreement is spelled out morphologically, potentially a small advance. But there

is some indeterminacy in the analysis here, and we cannot realistically expect to distinguish

33

accusative-assigning agreement from accusative-sensitive agreement without finding more

candidate languages and languages that are more thoroughly described.

I conclude from this short survey that including parameters like (53) in the theory of case

and agreement does little or no harm to my formal generative typology of this domain, and

seems to do some good. This is especially true for ergative languages like Coast Tsimshian and

Ingush, but also for the subtler distinction between nominative in Sakha and nominative in

Tamil. The extra complexity of including this new type of agreement is thus commensurate with

increased descriptive and analytical power. The main cost is that it adds a degree of redundancy

to the system, since case assigned by agreement and agreement sensitive to case can be

superficially quite similar. Hence one might wonder whether one really needs both, and whether

the difference is learnable by children. But languages are rich, and children are immersed in

them and are not dumb. So I tentatively assume that all these possibilities are allowed by

Universal Grammar, noting that if anything case-assigning agreement might be eliminated in

favor of case-dependent agreement (as proposed by Bobaljik (2008) and Levin and Preminger (in

press)).

2.5.3 Applying the idea: on the non-universality of case

Given that agreement can be dependent on the case value that an NP has as in (53), it may give

us some leverage on a difficult question raised at the end of chapter 1: the question of whether

the major differences in the case systems we observe are syntactic or purely morphological in

nature.

We know that, at least on the surface, we can divide the languages of the world up into at

least four major types: accusative, ergative, tripartite, and neutral (Comrie 1978, 2005). Putting

aside for now the possibility of case assigned by a functional head under agreement, the case

features underlying these systems assigned to NPs in the syntax by rules of dependent case

assignment like those in (35), restated slightly here as (64).

(64) a. If NP1 c-commands NP2 and both are in the same domain, value the case of NP1 as ergative. b. If NP1 c-commands NP2 and both are in the same domain, value NP2’s case as accusative. c. If NP has no other case feature, value its case as nominative/absolutive.

(64a) and (64b) are syntactic rules in that they refer to the details of syntactic structure: what c-

commands what, whether something is in the same domain (syntactic phrase) as something else,

and whether something is an NP or some other sort of category. All of these notions belong to

the vocabulary of syntax, not primarily to the vocabulary of PF.35

But we saw in section 1.2.2

that case has a morphological aspect too, which determines how a particular case feature is

realized as phonological material in a particular morphological environment, and one thing that

the morphological component can do is realize different case values with the same affix

(possibly null), accounting for a kind of syncretism in case systems. This raises the question of

whether languages are indeed parameterized in terms of which of the rules in (64) they make use

of, as I have assumed so far, or if rather they are only parameterized in terms of which of the

universal stock of cases they realize as distinct morphemes at PF. An alternative, then, would be

35

Recall that Marantz 1991 and Bobaljik 2008 say that case assignment happens in PF, but their notion of (early stages of) PF is clearly “syntactic” structure in this sense. Thus, the question of whether case assignment happens in the syntax or not may be considered partially terminological.

34

to say that the rules in (66) are universal, and the variation among alignment types comes from

different systems of realization rules, along the lines of (65).

(65) a. Sakha: X [Case: ACC] X-(n)I (accusative system)

X X-Ø elsewhere

b. Shipibo: X [Case: ERG] X-(ni)n (ergative system)

X X-Ø elsewhere

c. Nez Perce : X [Case: ACC] X-ne (tripartite system)

X [Case: ERG] X-nm

X X-Ø elsewhere

d. Lubukusu : X X-Ø everywhere (neutral system)

The system using (65) could be seen as being compatible with Chomsky’s (2001:2) Uniformity

Principle, and similar conjectures. This view also recalls Vergnaud’s famous hypothesis that case

assignment takes place in all languages (Vergnaud xx), even though this shows up

morphologically to varying degrees in different languages, a view that has been mainstream in

the Chomskian tradition since Chomsky (1981).

I raise this issue again now because the phenomenon of case-dependent agreement in

languages of the world can give us a line of evidence that bears on this issue empirically. Let us

assume that case-sensitive agreement, like case-assigning agreement, is essentially syntactic

(contrary to Marantz (1991) and Bobaljik (2008), but see note 35). One reason for thinking this

is that it, like case-assigning agreement, seems to be sensitive to c-command relationships (e.g.,

in Hindi, see Bhatt 2005) and syntactic domain restrictions (e.g., in Tsez, see Polinsky and

Potsdam 2001xx). A second reason to think this is that F agreeing seems to be sensitive to the

abstract case feature an NP bears, but not to the specific morpheme that realizes that case feature.

For example, Icelandic is a language in which T agrees with NP only if NP is nominative

(Schütze xxx, Bobaljik 2008, among many others), and it has different declension classes, such

that -ur spells out nominative on strong masculine nouns, -Ø spells out nominative on strong

nouns of other genders, and so on. But T agrees with any nominative NP in the right position,

regardless of its declension class. So case-sensitive agreement is sensitive to syntactic case

features, not to specific morphological exponents.

Now if we combine this result with the hypothesis that all languages have the same case

system in the syntax, we derive a strong prediction: the types of case-sensitive agreement that a

language can have should be independent of its visible case system. This follows because all

languages actually have the same case in the syntax, by hypothesis. But this strong prediction

seems to be false. It is a familiar result of typology that there are (as far as we know) no

languages that have an ergative agreement system but an accusative system of overt case on NPs

(REFS xx). For example, there is no known language like the hypothetical one in (66), where

transitive and intransitive subjects both show up as nominative, transitive objects show up as

accusative, and T agrees with the transitive subject only.

(66) a. Past run dogs.NOM (unattested language type)

b. Agr+Past see dogs.NOM fox-ACC

The morphological view finds nothing wrong with such a language. In the syntax, it would be

exactly like Coast Tsimshian, with the very same case assignment rules and agreement process

35

(see (52)). The only difference is that morphologically the feature [ERG] is spelled out as -Ø, the

same as [NOM] ((65a)). But T doesn’t know this at the point when it agrees, by hypothesis; it

only knows that the subject is [ERG], and that should satisfy its needs. Therefore, the

morphological view seems to over-generate here.

In contrast, the view in which the ergative-assigning parameter is syntactic can

explain this typological gap. If no sort of nominal in the language shows a special inflection as

the subject of a transitive verb, then children learning the language do not have the ergative rule

(64a) activated in their internalized grammar of the language. Therefore, the subjects in (66a)

and (66b) have the same case, default nominative by (64c). Therefore an agreement-sensitive

functional head cannot distinguish them: it must agree with both or neither. I conclude that

syntactic parameterization is supported.

Another argument for this conclusion comes from a garden-variety language in which

some T-like functional head shows case-sensitive agreement with both transitive and intransitive

subjects, a language like Icelandic or Tamil. It is easy to account for this pattern if (64a) is not

present in these languages, as just discussed. But it is not so easy to explain it if the alignment

parameterization is purely morphological. Then we need to posit (67) for, say, Tamil.

(67) F agrees with NP only if NP is ergative or nominative (not Acc, quirky Dat, etc.)

But (67) is a disjunctive statement, hence theoretically unattractive. It implies that languages can

put not only simple case conditions on agreement, but also conditions that are Boolean functions

of those simple conditions—a large increase in complexity and descriptive power. At the very

least, we might expect languages that agree with both transitive and intransitive subjects to be

rarer than the simple sorts where F agrees only with intransitive subjects or only with transitive

ones. But of course the opposite is true: nothing is more common than ordinary subject

agreement. Once again, the fundamental alignment pattern of a language seems to matter for its

agreement in a way that mere morphological exponents do not.

These two empirical problems come together in a language where a functional head F

agrees only with absolutive NPs. We have seen that this happens in Caucasian langauges like

Ingush. On the morphological view, this requires a disjunctive statement like (68), which is a

problem in itself.

(68) F agrees with NP only if NP is nominative or accusative (not Erg, quirky Dat, etc.)

Furthermore, if our theory allows (68), then it should allow it for languages that spell out

accusative but not ergative as an overt affix NPs, like Sakha. Indeed, this should be just as

possible as having this form of agreement in languages that spell out ergative on NPs but not

accusative, like Ingush. But again, no such language is known: it goes against the typological

generalization that no language has an ergative agreement system but an accusative case system.

So this possibility is doubly problematic for the view that the typological variation is purely

morphological.36

36

Note that the other logically possible kind of mismatch is well-attested: languages in which T agrees with both ergative and nominative subjects (like Kewa and Burushaski, see section 2.2.3). This doesn’t show that agreement can be sensitive to a disjunction of ERG and NOM features; rather it shows that agreement can be insensitive to case—that there are CDAP:no languages. Therefore nominative-accusative agreement patterns are less revealing

36

I conclude that the phenomenon of case-sensitive agreement shows us that there is a

(small) syntactic difference between ergative languages and accusative languages, not just a

morphological one.37

Therefore, languages do in fact vary in what case assignment rules they

include, as well as in their case spell out rules. Learnability considerations then suggest that

children’s default assumption is that a case rule in (64) does not exist unless they get direct overt

evidence that it does, from the distribution of morphologically marked NPs. Therefore, I assume

that this syntactic parameterization is widespread, not just in languages where case-sensitive

agreement puts this beyond doubt.

The varied relationship of case and agreement that we have surveyed in this chapter is

thus not only of interest for its own sake, but because it shows that there are real syntactic

parameters of case assignment, not merely morphological ones.

\

Aldridge, E., 2004. Ergativity and word order in Austronesian languages. Cornell University. Aldridge, E., 2008. Generative approaches to ergativity. Language and Linguistics Compass: syntax and Morphology 2.5, 966-995. Aldridge, E., 2012. Antipassive and ergativity in Tagalog. Lingua 122, 192-203. Anand, P., Nevins, A., 2006. The locus of ergative case assignment: evidence from scope, in: Johns, A., Massam, D., Ndayiragije, J. (Eds.), Ergativity: emerging issues. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 3-25. Bok-Bennema, R., 1991. Case and agreement in Inuit. Foris, Berlin. Laka, I., 2006. On the nature of case in Basque: structural or inherent?, in: Broekhuis, H., Corver, N., Huybreghts, R., Koster, J. (Eds.), Organizing grammar. Mouton de Gruyter, New York, pp. 374-382. Legate, J., 2006. Split absolutive, in: Johns, A., Massam, D., Ndayiragije, J. (Eds.), Ergativity: Emerging issues. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 143-171. Legate, J., 2008. Morphological and abstract case. Linguisitic Inquiry 39, 55-102. Legate, J., 2012. Types of ergativity. Lingua 122, 181-191. Mahajan, A., 2012. Ergatives, antipassives and the overt light v in Hindi. Lingua 122, 204-214. Massam, D., 2006. Neither absolutive nor ergative is nominative or accusative, in: Johns, A., Massam, D., Ndayiragije, J. (Eds.), Ergativity: emerging issues. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 27-46. Nash, L., 1996. The internal ergative subject hypothesis, in: Kusumo, K. (Ed.), Proceedings of NELS 26. MIT working papers in Linguistics, Harvard and MIT, pp. 195-209. Preminger, O., 2012. The absence of an implicit object in unergatives: New and old evidence from Basque. Lingua 122, 278-288. Rude, N., 1986. Topicality, transitivity, and the direct object in Nez Perce. International Journal of American Linguistics 52, 124-153.

than ergative-absolutive ones, because the nominative-accusative pattern can arise directly from the syntactic configuration, from F(=T) agreeing with the closest NP regardless of case. 37

Indeed, class of problems for a strongly universal view of the syntax of case will multiply

considerably once we admit new forms of dependent case in certain languages, including marked

nominative case (chapter 3) and dative and oblique case as dependent cases assigned within the

VP domain (chapter 4). Note also that there would be difficulties in integrating (64) as a

universal feature of language with the idea that some cases (like nominative in Sakha) are

assigned by a functional head under agreement, since strictly speaking (64) leaves no room for

this.

37

Willson, S., 1996. Verb agreement and case marking in Burushaski. Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics North Dakota 40, 1-71. Woolford, E., 1997. Four-way case systems: ergative, nominative, objective, and accusative. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15, 181-227. Woolford, E., 2006. Lexical case, inherent case, and argument structure. Linguistic Inquiry 37, 111-130. Yip, M., Maling, J., Jackendoff, R., 1987. Case in tiers. Language 63, 217-250. Zaenen, A., Maling, J., Thráinsson, H., 1985. Case and grammatical functions: the Icelandic passive. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3, 441-483.