The Nom/Acc alternation in Germanic

Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann

doi:10.1075/la.97.03sig

Cited by 31 publications

(39 citation statements)

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“…Since I cannot do any justice to all the important contributions to this research field, I only refer the reader to some of my own work (see, in particular, Sigurðsson 1989Sigurðsson , 1991Sigurðsson , 2003Sigurðsson , 2006aSigurðsson , 2006bSigurðsson , 2006cSigurðsson , 2007aSigurðsson , 2007bSigurðsson , 2007d and to Zaenen, Maling, and Thráinsson (1985), Marantz (2000), McFadden (2004), Nomura (2005), and the numerous references cited in these works. I cannot review but a part of the relevant observations and facts here, so I will only mention a few of the most central ones.…”

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“…In contrast to the abstract morphological values, the phonological values are not copied under agreement, as illustrated in (69) 42 Accordingly, language-specific case and agreement markings can (and commonly do) represent or relate to semantic/syntactic categories, internally to individual languages. 41 Sigurðsson 2003Sigurðsson , 2004cSigurðsson , 2006aSigurðsson , 2006bSigurðsson , 2006cSigurðsson , 2007aSigurðsson , 2007bSigurðsson , 2007cSigurðsson , 2007dsee also, e.g., Marantz 2000;McFadden 2004;Platzack 2006;Bobaljik 2006;Landau 2007. 40 Consider the discussion of the 'hard problems' in Chomsky (2002: 59-60).…”

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The case of PRO

Sigurðsson

2008

Nat Language Linguistic Theory

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Icelandic case agreement suggests that nominative case is active in PRO infinitives in much the same way as in finite clauses, thus posing a difficult and a long-standing problem for generative (GB and minimalist) case theory and the PRO Theorem. In this article, I examine the Icelandic facts in detail, illustrating that the unmarked and common nominative morphology in Icelandic PRO infinitives is regular structural nominative morphology, suggesting that PRO cannot be reduced to a copy. What went wrong in the GB approach to PRO was not PRO itself but the binding theoretic and 'Case' theoretic conception of it. PRO is an empty category that is simultaneously a reference variable (like overt pronouns and anaphors) and a phi-feature variable (unlike overt expressions). Due to this unique combination of variable properties, PRO cannot be deduced from other traits of grammar, such as movement, nor can it possibly be lexicalized. Importantly, also, the facts studied here suggest that case is a post-syntactic category, assigned in morphology. In contrast, Person is evidently a syntactically active category, having some of the properties and effects that have commonly been attributed to 'Case'.

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The case of PRO

Sigurðsson

2008

Nat Language Linguistic Theory

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“…The derivation of plain Nom-Acc patterns is parallel to that of Nom-Dat patterns, with the difference that V is selected by plain v. The structural cases, Nom and Acc, come for nothing as the first and the second case (Sigurðsson 2005a(Sigurðsson , 2005b, as illustrated in (69):…”

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Agree in syntax, agreement in signs

Sigurðsson¹

2006

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

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“…Furthermore, there is a high degree of contact between the languages, especially in the Øresund metropolitan region. However, a Swedish colleague at the meeting quickly disabused me of this erroneous expectation, informing me that not only is case variation inside CoPDs impossible in Swedish, but that Nominative Forms are the apparent default, appearing in predicates and other structures where OFs would occur in Danish (see e.g., Sigurðsson 2006).…”

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Introduction: Case variation and change in the Nordic languages

Parrott

2012

Nord J Linguist

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Shortly after arriving in Copenhagen five years ago, I realized what many linguists have long understood: the case situation in the Nordic languages is formidably complex. Of course, the broad outlines of inter-speaker (or, cross-linguistic) variation in Nordic nominal case inflection are well known. Within two major language families, (North) Germanic and Uralic, there are dozens of closely related language varieties. The Finnic and Sami languages of Uralic have adpositional case systems, while the North Germanic languages can be further subdivided into the Mainland and Insular groups, partially on the basis of their different case systems. The latter group, namely Icelandic, Faroese, and Älvdalian (which is spoken in a fairly isolated rural community in the interior of Sweden), has ‘rich’ inflectional case morphology on a range of elements comprising nominal phrases, including articles, determiners, demonstratives, nouns, pronouns, wh-words, and more. The former group, namely Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, are ‘case-poor’, maintaining only a vestige of their historically rich case morphology on a subset of personal pronouns, which have Nominative, Oblique, and Possessive forms. Furthermore, certain varieties of Swedish and Norwegian retain vestigial Dative forms of clitic pronouns.

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The Nom/Acc alternation in Germanic

Cited by 31 publications

References 19 publications

The case of PRO

The case of PRO

Agree in syntax, agreement in signs

Introduction: Case variation and change in the Nordic languages

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