As Halle & Marantz (2008: 71) acknowledge, “we have no real idea about how a child assigns features to Vocabulary Items” in Distributed Morphology (DM). Stated generally, how do children acquire language-specific (sometimes variable) mappings between morpho-syntactic features and their morpho-phonological exponents? Following Emonds (1986) in a DM framework, this article advances a testable ‘morphological transparency’ constraint on the acquisition of Vocabulary, and presents supporting results from a pilot observational child-language study in Danish. This constraint explains a significant difference in the mechanisms of Germanic case morphology. By hypothesis, ‘vestigial’ case forms of English and Danish pronouns are contextual allomorphs, with Vocabulary that do not contain any morpho-syntactic case features. Vestigial-case mechanisms constitute a comprehensive analysis of intra-individually variable case-form mismatches in coordinate Determiner Phrases, predicate nominals, and other syntactic structures. Thus, a principle of language acquisition ultimately explains the distribution of case forms both within and across language varieties.
<p class="NL-Abstract" style="margin: 0cm 14.2pt 12pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">This paper is primarily concerned with inter- and intra-individually variable case-form mismatches inside coordinate determiner phrases (CoDPs). For English, the phenomenon is both socially salient </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">(e.g., O'Conner & Kellerman 2009, among many others)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US"> and well studied </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">(Angermeyer & Singler 2003, Quinn 2005, Grano 2006, Parrott 2007: Ch. 6)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">. The most prominent theory of (default) case </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">(Schütze 2001, incorporating Johannessen 1998)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US"> explains English variation in CoDPs mostly with parameterized syntactic mechanisms. The parametric theory does not make clear cross-linguistic predictions, and accordingly there has been little cross-linguistic investigation of case variation in CoDPs. This paper therefore has two main purposes. The first is to argue for a theory of (default) case </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">(Parrott 2007, 2009a, following Emonds 1986, and incorporating McFadden 2004, 2007)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US"> within the Distributed Morphology (DM) framework </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">(Halle & Marantz 1993, Embick & Noyer 2007)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;" lang="EN-US">. In contrast with the parametric theory, the DM theory makes testable cross-linguistic predictions that, <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inter alia</em>, connect the (non) attestation of case mismatches in CoDPs with Germanic case typology. Thus, the paper’s second purpose is to present some results from investigations, utilizing diverse empirical methods, into case variation in CoDPs for Danish and Faroese. These results are consistent with predictions made by the DM theory.</span></span></span></p>
The second issue of volume 35 (2012) of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics will be a special issue devoted to Case Variation and Change in the Nordic Languages, edited by Jeffrey K. Parrott.
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