Semantics of case

Abstract

This paper presents a framework which connects case assignment with the semantics of argument realization. Broad notions of agency and affectedness are decomposed into more fine-grained semantic properties, loosely based on Dowty's Proto-Role theory, but conceived in terms of privative opposition and organized into a lattice. This lattice provides a semantic space of participant properties and supports defining hierarchical relations among participant types, interpreted as semantic prominence, as well as topological relations such as 'closeness', interpreted as semantic similarity between participant types. Cases are defined as connected regions of this space, relating a given case to a structured set of semantic properties. A case system is represented as a semantic system, which embodies oppositions and contrasts, and operates against the backdrop of the general semantics of argument realization, where one can define notions such as maximal agents and maximal patients and represent generalizations from the research on transitivity. Core case markers (e.g. ergative, accusative) are represented as subspaces of the lattice spreading outwards from the maximal agent and maximal patient nodes of the lattice. Case alternations arise when the subspace of the lattice delimited by a predicate's entailments for an argument is partitioned by different cases, exemplified with the genitive/accusative alternation in Russian occurring with direct objects of certain intensional predicates. This method also provides a treatment of case polysemy, viz. a single case subsuming multiple uses, by relating the diverse uses at the more abstract semantic level of the case's region on the lattice, demonstrated with non-canonical uses of the dative.

Lexical case marking affects the processing of animacy in simple verbs, but not particle verbs: Evidence from event-related potentials

“…An interesting exception are lexical case marking verbs, i.e., two-place verbs that assign lexical dative instead of structural accusative to their objects. These verbs differ both semantically and syntactically from nominative-accusative-assigning verbs (Blume 2000;Bayer et al 2001;McFadden 2004;Grimm 2010), and elicit different processing effects (Hopf et al 1998;Bader et al 2000;Bayer et al 2001;Hopf et al 2003;Bornkessel et al 2004).…”

“…Lexical case marking verbs occur in different case-marking languages, and encode a special type of argument semantics (Blume 2000): The situations encoded by German NOM-DAT verbs are not prototypically or maximally transitive (Dowty 1991;Grimm 2010). This means that they do not describe situations with a prototypical agent doing something to a prototypical patient; the semantic features associated with the proto-agent role (in the sense of semantic properties contributing to these roles, see Dowty 1991) are usually more evenly distributed among the participants.…”

“…A rough way of putting this would be to say that their objects in general are more agentive relative to their subjects than in prototypically transitive situations. 2 It is important to mention that although the role of animacy is discussed in this part of the literature, animacy is not included in the list of semantic properties making up the agent and patient proto-roles in Dowty's account, and neither in the set of properties defining prototypical agents in Grimm (2010). Some of the semantic properties that contribute to Dowty's agent proto-role strongly imply animacy (e.g., sentience and volitional involvement).…”

Applications of Conceptual Spaces

“…In one form or another this 'spatial' approach has been used for such diverse domains as modal verbs like may and can (Van der Auwera and Plungian 1998), container nouns like jar and bottle (Malt et al 1999), motion verbs like climb and crawl (Geuder and Weisgerber 2002), adpositions like in and on (Levinson and Meira 2003), verbs of cutting and breaking (Majid et al 2008), and case markers like the dative and accusative (Grimm 2011), to name just a few.…”

“…The psychological way of deriving a conceptual space can be seen in Malt et al (1999) and in much other work that uses pile sorting or other ways to derive non-linguistic similarity judgments of stimuli. Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998), Geuder and Weisgerber (2002), Grimm (2011), and build their spaces on semantic considerations, that is, on an analysis of the functions or referents that are covered by the expressions that they study.…”