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« Phonology Reading Group | Main | Acquisition Lab Meeting»

Syntax Reading Group

The Syntax Reading Group meets today (March 30) at 4:30 pm. Rajesh Bhatt and Amy Rose Deal will give practice talks for CLS 42. Abstracts and links to the conference program are below the fold.

After the meeting, there will be a dinner at Rajesh's house, starting at 7:30 pm. All are invited.

Variable Case Marking, Argument Structure, and Interpretation
Rajesh Bhatt

Hindi-Urdu has been documented extensively as displaying the phenomenon of Differential Object Marking (DOM, see Butt 1993, Masica 1982, Mohanan 1993, Singh 1994 i.a.). That a similar, though not identical, process is available for subjects has not been noted so far (with the exception of Hook 1979:132- 133). Like DOM, Variable Case Marking on the subject correlates with interpretation. Unlike DOM, variable case marking seems to only be available to subjects of a subclass of predicates, namely the unaccusatives. I argue that this particular constellation of facts suggests that contrary to what has been previously assumed - at least for Hindi-Urdu - unaccusative v can optionally assign accusative, but in a very limited set of environments. These restrictions, I show, follow from the dependent nature of accusative case and Diesing-style limitations on what can be interpreted VP-internally.

The morphosyntax of (non-)case-marking in Nez Perce: Case or Voice?
Amy Rose Deal

The surface realizations of two-participant clauses in Nez Perce divide into two classes: one with case-marking (Type 1), and one without (Type 2). On a Case analysis (Woolford 1997, Carnie and Cash Cash 2005), Type 1 is ergative/ objective, whereas Type 2 is nominative/accusative. On a voice analysis (Rude 1985, Crook 1999), Type 1 is active, whereas Type 2 is antipassive. Here, I present evidence that Type 2 morphosyntax (i.e., no case marking) corresponds to two separate structures. One of these structures is a true antipassive, whereas one contains transitive syntax but intransitive case-marking. Thus, both voice and Case analyses are required.

March 30, 2006 12:25 AM | 04:09 (2006-03-30) , faculty news , grad-student news , syntax reading group