Re: THEORY: Non-nom Subj & Nom Obj -- Quirky OVS Word Order Or Quirky Case?

On Tue, 2 Aug 2005 18:29:03 -0000, tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:

>Hello everyone, especially Tom Wier, Henrik Thieling, and Markus
>Miekk-Oja.
Hi, Tom!

This is long and assumes some knowledge of syntax. If you want, I can
probably create a brief explanation of the important stuff and toss it up on
my webspace, but you probably know enough. And if not, Wikipedia should have
enough.

[snip]

>Here's the thing; Why aren't these sentences in an admittedly unusual
>OVS word order, rather than having quirky cases?
In order for that to happen, you'd need a few things to happen:
1. Nominative case would have to be assigned to a subject in its base position.
2. Either the base position for subjects would have to be below*
(c-commanded by) the verb, or the verb would have to move above the base
position for the subject.
3. The object would have to be assigned case from the verb as usual.

* 'Up' is to the left in surface order, and 'down' is to the right. These
days, it's rare to suggest that something moves down, due to theoretical
concerns.

It's possible--compare it to stylistic inversion. It would have to be
optional, though--no theory that I know of allows a verb to decide the word
order of a sentence at so basic a level. So you could simply say 'If it's
optional, it's OVS surface word order from stylistic inversion; otherwise,
it's quirky case.'

There's more to it than that. Check the theta roles: is the first noun
phrase the agent or experiencer in a regular, unemphasized sentence? If so,
then it's extremely likely to be quirky case. Otherwise, it's more likely to
be stylistic inversion or semantic case (semantic case is present before we
even begin to think about syntax, so it can pretty much bypass this discussion).

Why should you care which it is? Well, stylistic inversion usually involves
moving the verb higher than the subject, then moving the object higher than
the verb; and it's always optional (or forbidden, but never required). This
alters the positions of modifiers (adverbs and adverbial prepositional
phrases). Also, if you have an auxiliary or modal 'verb', that will be moved
instead of the content verb.

This all works for SVO languages. OVS languages are different; I haven't
looked into them much, but either they're SOV languages that move the
predicate (so you get indirect objects before the verb), or they're SOV/SVO
languages that move the verb up and then the object (so it's possible to
have indirect objects after the subject).

Basically, you start with:
Swords please I [no case assigned]

And end with:
Swords(dat) please I(nom) [quirky case]
Me(dat) please swords(nom) (trace:'please') (trace:'me') [regular case,
inversion]

>The Anglo-Saxon verb "lician" used to mean "to please".  If I could
>say in A-S "Cadillacs(NOM) my boss(DAT) lican" that would be SVO word
>order A-S for the modern English, "Cadillacs please my boss".  If I
>could say "My boss(DAT) lican Cadillacs(NOM)" in A-S, that would
>still have the same meaning; it would be in a funny, OVS word order,
>but that would be just fine, because the case-marking would keep
>everything straight.
>
>So why aren't Icelandic sentences like the ones in Sigurdsson's paper
>(which I can't copy because I can't type eths and thorns etc.) just
>as plausibly analyzed as OVS instead of Quirky Case?
I'm not familiar with the Icelandic data, but it's probably a matter of
optionality. Languages just don't switch between SVO and OVS for certain
verbs; so finding case in unusual places, and having this situation as a
requirement rather than an option, is an indication that the case is just
assigned to odd places. This would break early Chomskyan theories, and maybe
even G&B (not certain); minimalism would have an explanation (it's an
extremely flexible theory, which means probably nobody will come up with a
new revolution in syntax), but it requires replacing one value of Tense with
a nearly identical one.

This really is strange. I'm tempted to say that the verb assigns both cases
here, but that would be strange as well. And then Tense would have an extra
case to assign. Unless the verb could absorb that by carrying a case
feature. Or maybe Tense assigns case, but chooses the case to assign based
on the verb every time--in which case you'd expect a lot more quirky case,
except for historical reasons.

Or maybe Tense never assigns case in these languages (the ones with quirky
case). Though I wouldn't go so far with Russian.

>[...] everyone's welcome to chime in; almost anybody
>knows as much as I do, almost no-one knows less.
A good attitude to have, except when you do know more, you tend to go over
people's heads. And then you really don't know when you should explain basic
things or not.

>I'm an amateur, a conlanger-wannabe, I've been lurking here since
>1997 and actively contributing since 2004, and I've had half a
>semester of a real Linguistics course (as opposed to courses in
>various languages).  I am positive I am not the first person to think
>of this.
I'm pretty much the same, except I've had a few extra semesters of syntax.
It's fun, though.

>Thank you,
And you as well.

>Tom H.C. in MI
-Chris Wright

Replies