Cases and Thematic Roles (Linguistische Arbeiten) 348430393X, 9783484303935

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Linguistische Arbeiten

393

Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal, Herbert E. Brekle, Gerhard Heibig, Hans Jürgen Heringer, Heinz Vater und Richard Wiese

Beatrice Primus

Cases and Thematic Roles Ergative, Accusative and Active

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1999

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Primus, Beatrice: Cases and thematic roles : ergative, accusative and active / Beatrice Primus. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1999 (Linguistische Arbeiten ; 393) ISBN 3-484-30393-X

ISSN 0344-6727

© Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 1999 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt Buchbinder: Nadele Verlags- und Industriebuchbinderei, Nehren

Table of Contents Preface Abbreviations and Spelling Conventions

vii ix

1 Introduction 1.1 The Generalized Hierarchy Approach 1.2 The Order of Presentation

1 1 13

2 Cases 2.1 General Remarks 2.2 Case Allomorphism 2.3 Case Subcategorization 2.4 Explanation 2.5 Summary

16 16 17 24 28 30

3 Thematic Roles 3.1 General Remarks 3.2 Dowty's Proposal 3.3 The Present Approach 3.3.1 Proto-Agent 3.3.2 Proto-Patient 3.3.3 Proto-Recipient and the Hierarchy of Thematic Dependency 3.4 Semantic Transitivity 3.5 Summary

32 32 33 47 48 51 54 56 60

4 Morphosyntactic Expression of Thematic Information 61 4.1 A Universal Semantic Principle 61 4.2 Accusative Languages: German from a Crosslinguistic Perspective 65 4.3 Ergative Languages 74 4.4 The Relevance of the Ergative Parameter 83 4.4.1 Advances in Past Approaches 83 4.4.2 Problems and Solutions 88 4.5 Active Languages and Split Intransitivity 94 4.6 The Relevance of the Split Intransitivity Parameter 112 4.7 Other Types of Mapping 115 4.8 Ergativity in German? 116 4.9 Summary 120

VI

5 Phrase Structure and Basic Word Order 5.1 Structural Relations 5.2 Basic Order 5.3 Basic Order Determined by Thematic Structure 5.3.1 Structural Expression of Semantic Dependencies 5.3.2 Explanation 5.3.3 Alternative Proposals 5.4 Basic Order Determined by Cases and Formal Complexity 5.4.1 Structural Expression of Case Relations 5.4.2 Multi-Factor Word Order in German 5.4.3 Ergative Languages 5.4.4 Explanation 5.5 Topic-Predication Structure 5.6 Summary

123 123 132 136 136 142 147 154 154 155 161 166 170 176

6 Predicate Agreement 6.1 A Universal Rule Schema 6.2 Case-Determined Agreement 6.2.1 Agreement with Nominative/Absolutive Arguments 6.2.2 Agreement with Several Case Arguments 6.3 Structure-Determined Agreement 6.4 Multi-Factor Agreement 6.5 Person-Hierarchical Agreement 6.6 Potential Exceptions 6.7 Summary

178 178 182 182 191 197 202 210 213 215

7 Passive and Antipassive 7.1 General Remarks 7.2 The Passive Prototype 7.3 Passive vs. Ergative 7.4 The Antipassive Prototype 7.5 Conclusions

216 216 217 233 237 246

8 General Summary

252

References Author Index Language Index Subject Index

263 275 279 283

Preface

The main topic of the present investigation is the mapping of semantic (or thematic) roles, such as agent and patient, onto morphosyntactic cases, such as nominative, accusative or ergative, or onto structural relations. This work explores the consequences of different types of mapping for the grammar of different languages. It provides a global cross-linguistic perspective against which particular manifestations of the phenomena under discussion can be judged. This view has the advantage of considerably broadening the empirical basis of the investigation. It also reflects the conviction of the author that a principled account of the mapping problems addressed in this book cannot be properly accounted for by concentrating only on one particular language or only on languages of the familiar, nominative type such as Latin, German or English. Nevertheless, German data will recurrently serve as an illustration of the main theoretical assumptions of this book. The orientation of the book is also theoretical in nature, in the sense that one of its main aims is to revive a theoretical perspective which has been neglected in modern research: it demonstrates the relevance of the concept of formal case, the nature of the autonomous hierarchical organization of case systems, and its role in universal grammar. The autonomy and relevance of the formal case concepts have been denied, or simply neglected, in both functionalist and generative approaches. The autonomy hypothesis of the formal case concepts is defended in this book against attempts to derive them from phrase structure, from syntactic or semantic functions. Therefore, many passages of the book are devoted to phrase structure considerations or to other functional factors besides thematic roles (e. g. to the function of sentence topic). In particular, the book tries to sort out case-based phenomena from phenomena which have another basis. This also explains the fact that the book incorporates ideas from several research traditions, including generative grammar and various functional approaches. The conclusion which I have reached from this fresh look at the data is that the specific facts pertaining to the ergative and active language type are determined by the morphosyntactic form of the core verb arguments and that the typological parameter under discussion is a morphosyntactic parameter, specifically a parameter based on the mapping between formal cases and thematic roles. It explicitly refutes the traditional, generally accepted view that this typological distinction is explicable in terms of a thematic or other functional pa-

Vlll

rameter (agent- vs. patient-prominence or subject- vs. object-prominence). Many passages of the book are also devoted to showing the empirical deficits of analyses of ergative or active phenomena in functional terms. This explains why some data are discussed as presented in second-hand sources. The book has benefited from the critical discussion of its preliminary version and of various presentations of its main ideas on several occasions. I am particularly indebted to Hans Altmann, Kerstin Blume, Hans Brekle, John Hawkins, Joachim Jacobs, Ekkehard König, Anna Siewierska, Theo Vennemann (in alphabetical order). I have also benefited enormously from the participation in the Constituent Order Group of the EUROTYP Programme in Language Typology, founded by the European Science Foundation. The members of the Constituent Order Group also deserve special mention for their constructive criticism of various oral and written presentations of the main ideas of the book: Anders Holmberg, Katalin Kiss, Jan Rijkhoff, Maggie Tallerman, Yakov Testelec, Maria Vilkuna, and as already mentioned, John Hawkins and Anna Siewierska. I would also like to thank Betsy Hadden for her valuable stylistical comments on the manuscript of the book. Special thanks go to Arnulf and my private friends; their love and patience ensured the congenial private atmosphere for the completion of the book.

Abbreviations and Spelling Conventions

1, 2, 3