Dative Case

This article deals with the loss of the affected possessor construction (external possessor construction, sympathetic dative) in the history of English. First it is shown that Old English made a formal and semantic distinction between coding the possessor noun-phrase externally in the dative and noun-phrase internally in the genitive, as all other old Indo-European languages do, and as German does to the present day. [Sie schlug ihm (dative) den Kopf ab ‘she cut off his head (he: a living person)’ vs. Sie schlug seinen (genitive) Kopf ab (he/it: a corpse, a statue, etc.)’. Then the loss of this distinction in Middle English is demonstrated. Several possible reasons for this development are discussed and rejected, and the fact is pointed out that the only other languages spoken in Europe (beside Lezgian and Turkish) not making the distinction are the Insular Celtic languages. This leads to the conclusion that English lost the distinction because the Celtic substrate population did not acquire it in the language shift to Anglo-Saxon. Finally the question how Insular Celtic itself lost the distinction is answered analogously, viz. by the Semitic substrate population’s not learning to make the distinction in the language shift to Celtic (which then still made the inherited distinction), all the old Semitic languages only knowing the internal genitive possessor construction.

The focus of this book is how Slavic languages represent spatial relations, and how spatial cognition and perception influence the understanding and linguistic coding of nonspatial domains. Individual analyses concentrate on the semantics of selected prepositions and cases in Bosnian/ Croatian/ Serbian (B/ C/ S), providing a comparative perspective on other Slavic languages, primarily Russian and Polish. The opening analysis discusses the main theoretical notion - metaphorical extension - exemplifying the relation of spatial usages of linguistic items to non-spatial usages. This is followed by an analysis of the most basic spatial relations, "in-ness" and "on-ness." The meaning network of prepositions equivalent to on and in helps explain the meaning of the cases they combine with: the accusative and locative. Another crucial spatial relation, proximity, is taken into account in the semantic analysis of the B/ C/ S prepositions kod and pri, their Slavic equivalents, and cases they combine with: the genitive and locative. The next chapter deals with the spatial meaning of the dative case, examining dative's prepositional usages, the bare directional dative in B/ C/ S, and the semantic relation of the bare directional dative to other meaning domains of this case.

Сведение большинства инактивных высказываний к общей рубрике с "интранзитивы с эксперенциальным субъектом" допустимо для языков с бедной морфологией, но не позволяет адекватно описать таких языков как современный русский, которые различают разную степень участия субъекта в ситуации, и соответственно, разную степень контролируемости процесса. Наиболее показательно в этом плане противопоставление русских связочных предложений с предикативом на -о и глагольно-безличных предложений с винительным или дательным падежом лица. Не могут иметь трансформации с предикативом Agr(x) > Ndat - о-Pred прилагательные, обозначающие активные свойства субъекта.: *мне бешено, злобно, буйно, гневно и т.д. В этом случае избирается модель Vimp-Nacc/dat: меня бесит, злит, раздражает, что Р.
2 Элемент P обозначает сентенциальное вхождение, роль
данного элемента - СРЕДА (Env). Распределение глагольной модели и модели с именным предикативом указывает на то, что в первом случае cреда получает роль агенса, а субъект - пациенса, а в модели с предикативом роль СРЕДЫ ограничивается воздействием на аффицированность лица, а роль субъекта состоит в констатации этого воздействия. Именно для этого случая уместно зарезервировать термин "субъект состояния" .

"This dissertation is about the elements that build verbs, the elements that introduce arguments, and how these elements interact to determine the interpretation of arguments and events. A theory of argument structure is a theory how arguments are introduced syntactically, interpreted semantically, and marked morphologically, and how this information is linked to predicates and their morphological shape. Through a detailed empirical study of Icelandic verbal alternations, this dissertation contributes to a line of research in which much of the work of argument structure is handled by the syntax, the component of language responsible for combining elements into larger structures, rather than a pre-syntactic lexicon.

The major theoretical contribution of this thesis is a syntactic theory of argument structure which is much more syntactically autonomous than its closest relatives. The system proposed shares with construction-based approaches to argument structure the assumption that structures generate meanings independent of the lexical roots embedded in them. That is, lexical roots play a secondary role in effecting argument structures. However, it differs from most syntactic approaches in that the syntax is far less deterministic of semantics, much as late insertion theories of morphology take syntax to underdetermine morphophonology.

In the present theory, syntactic structure may underdetermine interpretation in three ways. First, a functional head may be compatible with multiple ‘allosemes’, or denotations, which are decided post-syntactically on the basis of surrounding material. The categorial v head, for example, may have the interpretation of an activity or a cause (among other possible interpretations), depending on the interpretation of its complement. Second, a DP may be interpreted as an entity, or may be type-shifted to be interpreted as a (stative) eventuality. Third, a lexical root is associated with a web of possible semantic contributions, but the selection from among them is made on the basis of surrounding structure, after such structure has been built."

Wilhelm Schott’un 1841 yılındaki keşfiyle devrim niteliğinde önemli bir buluş gerçekleşmiş ve Çuvaşçanın Türkçenin bir lehçesi olduğu gerçeği gün yüzüne çıkmıştır. Bu devrim niteliğindeki buluşla birlikte Türkoloji çalışmaları Çuvaşça üzerinden farklı bir ivme kazanmış ve Orta çağda Batı Türklüğünün diline dair önemli veriler, günümüzdeki yegâne vârisine de böylece kavuşmuştur. Daha sonra yapılan çalışmalardaki Türkçenin diğer dillerle ortaklaşmış olabileceği tipolojik bazı özellikler için ki bir kısmından haberdar bile değiliz, bir kısmına ise malum çekincelerden dolayı belirli bir mesafede durmayı yeğlediğimiz tartışma götürmez bir gerçektir. Bu çekincelerin önemli bir kısmını paylaşmakla beraber bazı noktalarda bu tipolojik özelliklere değinmeden herhangi bir mesafe kat etmek söz konusu olmayacak gibi görünmektedir. Buna rağmen söyleneceklerin tarihî Türk lehçeleri sınırları içerisinde kalarak da aydınlığa kavuşturulabileceğinin mümkün olduğunu burada ihtiyatlı bir kayıtla ifade etmek yerinde olur. İşte bu çalışmada Çuvaşçada izleyebildiğimiz bir özelliğin izlerini Kutadgu Bilig’de bulabileceğimiz inancındayız.
Tarihî dönemlerde durum eklerinin birbirinin yerine nöbetleşe kullanılışı sıradan bir durumdur ve herhangi bir metin araştırmacısı için bu durum çok da üzerinde durulası ve vakit geçirilesi bir konu değildir. Bu nöbetleşe kullanımlarda görülen hususiyetler de aşağı yukarı her dönemde, hepsine olmasa bile bir kısmına rastlanabildiği için, bu eklerin nöbetleşmesi hemen akla bir rastgeleliliği getirir. Tarihî metinlerden Kutadgu Bilig de bu açıdan oldukça zengin bir görüntü arz etmektedir. Bu anlamda Kutadgu Bilig üzerine yapılmış çalışmalarda da defaatle gösterildiği üzere bu nöbetleşmenin sayısız örneğiyle karşılaşırız. Bu özelliklerden örneklere yansıyan bir kısmı sistemli bir bakış açısıyla irdelendiğinde ise bugün özellikle Türkoloji’nin üzerinde mutabakata varılmış olan dillik hususiyetlerinin hiç de öyle sanıldığı gibi olmadığı ortaya konabilir. Konunun örneklerinin bir kısmının Kutadgu Bilig’de geçiyor olması ve metnin bağlamının kendince yeterli ve bütünlüklü olması bu değerlendirmeleri de sağlıklı yapma olanağını bizlere sunmaktadır. Bu çalışmayla Çuvaşçadaki belirtme durumunun -A yönelme ekiyle ifade edilir olması konusuna Kutadgu Bilig’ten hareketle farklı bir bakış açısı getirilmeye çalışılacaktır.

This study provides a typological analysis of two phenomena related to case-marking in Basque. In both of them, animacy —or the distinction between what is animate and what is not— turns out to be determinant: we discuss case assignment to direct objects, on the one hand, and marking of locative cases, on the other hand. We have compared the two phenomena with diverse typological parallels in order to account for the variety of possible morphological strategies and identify particular conditions and restrictions. Furthermore, we have argued that differential object marking in Basque is a recent phenomenon, induced by language contact, whereas differential locative marking has an intralinguistic nature. Finally, we have defended that the role of animacy in both types of differential marking is different: in the first example it conditions case assignment and in the second it operates as a grammatical gender.

Greek and Romance have been spoken alongside of one another for centuries in<br> southern Italy. Even though the Greek-speaking areas have been dramatically reduced over the centuries such that today Greek is now only spoken by a small<br> number of increasingly elder speakers in a handful of villages of Calabria and<br> southern Apulia (Salentino), the influence of Greek is still undeniable in that it<br> has left its mark on the structures of the surrounding Romance dialects. Indeed, in<br> this respect Rohlfs aptly coined the phrase spirito greco, materia romanza (literally<br> "Greek spirit, Romance material") to highlight the fact that in many respects the<br> syntax of these so-called Romance dialects is underlying Greek, despite employing predominantly Romance lexis. In this paper we draw on two case studies from<br> the Romance and Greek varieties spoken in Calabria to illustrate how the syntax<br> of argument-m...

The paper proposes a low applicative analysis of two constructions with external possessors: namely, dative and PP external possessors headed by the preposition u. I argue that external possessors are merged by a low applicative head immediately above the DP containing the possessee. External possessors may either remain in situ or move to a subject position if there is no higher argument in the clause. I show that dative external possessors can only be licensed in the presence of an Accusative phrase; PP possessors need not be licensed and have a freer distribution. Furthermore, I argue against movement and high applicative analyses of Russian external possessors.

Most previous studies on Korean psych-predicates have treated the dative case in Dative Experiencer constructions (DECs) as inherent case, which means that it is not assigned systematically by the syntactic or semantic structures of the predicate but determined by a certain thematic role, which is experiencer in this case. Contrary to these studies, the goal of this paper is to show that the dative in DECs is not inherent or quirky case but semantic structural case. That is, I argue, under the framework of Conceptual Semantics, that the dative case is predictable from the lexical conceptual structure of the psych-adjectives that constitute DECs.

The aim of this article is to determine the syntatic-semantic nature of the dative appearing in some constructions of three Latin verbs ('maneo', 'permaneo' and 'remaneo') which share —among others— the semantic notion of “permanence”.
After presenting the data provided by the dictionaries and a corpus study, I propose different semantic and complementation structures for the verbs analysed. A more detailed examination of the structures in which a dative constituent appears, allows us to understand that the verbal notion of these constructions is existential in nature and that the dative can be considered an argument. Accordingly, I propose a predicate frame of the construction as well as a possible process for the setting of this construction.

In this paper we propose a syntactic analysis of dative DPs in ditransitive constructions in Russian, answering three questions: (I) what semantic roles the indirect object realizes; (II) how it is syntactically ordered with respect to the direct object realizing the theme argument, and (III) how the first two issues are related to the morphological encoding of the indirect object, as a PP or as a morphologically case-marked DP. Addressing first question (II) we show that two kinds of syntactic hierarchies between the two internal arguments of a ditransitive configuration coexist, and that there are two sorts of datives that are hierarchically higher than the theme: those that can reconstruct and those that cannot. We then establish an interpretative correlation between these two types of dative DP, showing that the former is locational and the latter is not, providing the answer to question (I) and elucidating what underlies the morphological similarity, question (III). The interpretative and syntactic differences between scrambled and base generated high datives lead us to claim that in Russian, dative ditransitives have two distinct underlying structures that are not derivationally related. A scalar approach to event structure enables us to pinpoint the interpretative correlate of each type of dative (locational vs. non-locational) and provides a conceptual argument in favor of a non-synonymy non-derivational approach we pursue here: a path scale encoding event schema cannot be transformed into a different scale based event schema due to movement of the dative DP. Finally, the scalar approach allows us to identify the lexical correlates of a possessive interpretation of the high dative vs. a more beneficiary-like interpretation. Extent scales allow the former whereas property and path scales facilitate the other.

Proposer de voir dans l'accusatif un ancien latif (ou directif) n'a rien de nouveau. Ce qui distingue l'hypothèse présentée ici est qu'elle est purement syntaxique et se borne à des questions d'alignement. Nous proposerons de voir dans l'« accusatif » des langues indoeuropéennes un ancien datif parce que c'est le cas auquel on a recours, dans les langues ergatives pour marquer le patient quand l'agent, au lieu d'être à l'ergatif, est, pour une raison ou une autre au cas non marqué et que le patient se trouve de ce fait en position de complément.

The German possessor doubling construction is remarkable in that there is double agreement: the possessive pronoun agrees both with the possessor as well as the possessee in phi-features. We will argue that double agreement is not to be interpreted as resulting from two syntactic Agree operations: Positing two such operations involving the possessive pronoun leads to insurmountable technical problems; rather, we will introduce novel empirical evidence showing that the agreement between possessor and possessive pronoun is anaphoric rather than grammatical in nature. While this solves the double agreement problem, the dative case on the possessor still needs to be accounted for. We will propose that dative case does not come from the possessive pronoun or from a preposition as in the Predicate Inversion approach, but rather from N. This not only avoids an overgeneration problem resulting in case assignment to the wrong goal, but also opens up the possibility to unify case assignment in Germanic with possessor agreement in languages like Turkish.► Double agreement in possessor doubling in German does not involve double Agree. ► The relationship between possessor and possessive pronoun is anaphoric. ► Possessor case is assigned by N. ► Case assignment within DP fully conforms to the Agree model. ► The analysis can be extended to possessor agreement in languages like Turkish.

This book offers a comprehensive account of dative structures across languages –with an important, though not exclusive, focus on the Romance family. As is well-known, datives play a central role in a variety of structures, ranging from ditransitive constructions to cliticization of indirect objects and differentially marked direct objects, and including also psychological predicates, possessor or causative constructions, among many others. As interest in all these topics has increased significantly over the past three decades, this volume provides an overdue update on the state of the art. Accordingly, the chapters in this volume account for both widely discussed patterns of dative constructions as well as those that are relatively unknown.

This paper aims to discuss some semantic and syntactic properties of sentences with a dative subject and stative
predicates in Ukrainian. Previously analyzed as impersonal, these sentences show a subject-predicate non-agreement
pattern which apparently results from the non-canonical subject case marking. Besides, I draw particular attention
to Ukrainian nonverbal predicates, also known as predicatives, and one more time emphasize the distinction
between them and related adverbs and adjectives.

This paper aims at investigating a special, causative use of dative case in Hungarian that has not received much attention in the literature so far. I show that Hungarian dative causers differ from dative causers in the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund, German, or Spanish in important ways. What makes Hungarian dative causers different is that they are not licensed and interpreted via syntactic structure but are lexically determined to be causative given that dative case has a special, causative lexical entry in Hungarian.

El presente trabajo ofrece un análisis tipológico de dos fenómenos relacionados con la marcación de caso en la lengua vasca en los que la animacidad —o la distinción entre lo animado y lo que no lo es— resulta determinante. Se trata, por un lado, de la asignación de caso al objeto directo y, por otro, de la marcación de los casos locativos. Hemos cotejado ambos fenómenos con diversos paralelos tipológicos a fin de dar cuenta de la variedad de estrategias morfológicas posibles, así como de identificar determinadas condiciones y restricciones. Además, hemos argumentado que la marcación diferencial de objeto es un fenómeno reciente en vasco, inducido por el contacto linguístico, en tanto que la marcación diferencial del locativo es de naturaleza intralinguística. Finalmente, hemos defendido que el rol de la animacidad en ambos tipos de marcación diferencial es diferente: en el primer ejemplo condiciona la asignación de caso y en el segundo opera como género gramatical.

[This study provides a typological analysis of two phenomena related to case-marking in Basque. In both of them, animacy —or the distinction between what is animate and what is not— turns out to be determinant: we discuss case assignment to direct objects, on the one hand, and marking of locative cases, on the other hand. We have compared the two phenomena with diverse typological parallels in order to account for the variety of possible morphological strategies and identify particular conditions and restrictions. Furthermore, we have argued that differential object marking in Basque is a recent phenomenon, induced by language contact, whereas differential locative marking has an intralinguistic nature. Finally, we have defended that the role of animacy in both types of differential marking is different: in the first example it conditions case assignment and in the second it operates as a grammatical gender.]