Re: THEORY: "Quirky" Case -- "Quirky" Subjects and "Quirky" Objects

>2b) What language holds the record for most cases the Object can  have?
>What is the record?
> >>
>
>Same answers (except the Latin part, though it might still be true).
>
>There's never a one-to-one mapping between morphological case
>and semantic roles in natural languages.  For that reason, one can
>think of an argument for any case being assigned to any semantic
>role.  I'm sure if you think one up, a language does it.  It all depends
>on what's being focused on.
There also is a significant ammount of languages where there's not a
one-to-one mapping between morphological and syntactical case: some
languages allow coordination of verbs that take non-nominative with verbs
that don't

Reflexive pronouns in languages where reflexives only can refer to subjects
("syntactically nominative") are surprisingly likely to also refer to
non-nominative subjects. Subject omission in coordinated sentences like 'I
like porridge and hate chips' can happen in many languages even if like
takes a dative subject and hate takes a nominative, or accusative one.

I<1>.dat like porridge.nom and Ø<1>.acc hate chips.obl


-- Miekko

_________________________________________________________________
Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

Replies