Tai ngay!!! Ban co the xoa dong chu Modern Grammars of Case The past is not dead. It is not even past. William Faulkner This page intentionally left blank Modern Grammars of Case A Retrospective JOHN M. ANDERSON 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß John M. Anderson 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 0-19-929707-x 978-0-19-929707-8 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Contents Preface ix Conventions and Abbreviations xi 1 Prologue 1 Part I The Tradition 2 The Classical Tradition and its Critics 11 2.1 The syntax of case and adposition 12 2.2 Grammatical versus local cases 14 2.3 Primary and secondary functions 19 2.4 Conclusion: what is a grammar of case? 22 2.2 The autonomists and other critics of the tradition 24 2.1 The ‘new grammarians’ 24 2.2 Jespersen versus Hjelmslev on case 27 2.3 Early transformational-generative grammar 29 2.3 Conclusion 35 3 Early Case Grammar 36 3.1 The Fillmorean initiative 37 3.1 ‘Cases’ and grammar 38 3.3 ‘Cases’ and the subject-selection hierarchy 43 3.4 Conclusion and prospect 45 3.2 The representation of case relations and forms 46 3.2 The categorial identity of case and preposition: a functional category 48 3.3 ‘Case’ and position 51 3.3 Conclusion 53 4 Case Grammar and the Demise of Deep Structure 56 4.1 ‘Deep structure’ and the place of holisticness 57 vi Contents 4.2 The after-life of ‘deep structure’ 61 4.3 Excursus on the tortuous history of ‘thematic relations’ 74 4.4 Conclusion: where we have reached 76 5 The Identity of Semantic Relations 79 5.1 Distributional criteria for particular ‘cases’ 80 5.2 General criteria: principles of ‘complementarity’ and ‘contrast’ 82 5.3 The ineluctability of ‘case’ 90 5.4 Localist grammars of case 93 5.1 The insufficiency of ‘criteria’ 94 5.2 Hjelmslev and localism 96 5.3 A localist interpretation of ‘datives/experiencers’ 100 5.5 Conclusion and prospect 106 Part II The Implementation of the Category of Case 6 Localist Case Grammar 115 6.1 ‘Syntactic/logical’ case forms and localism 116 6.1 Nominative and genitive 117 6.2 Dative and accusative 119 6.3 Accusative as goal 121 6.3 Nominatives, subjects, and subject formation 136 6.4 Partitives and genitives 141 6.5 Conclusion 147 7 The Variety of Grammatical Relations 149 7.1 Grounding and its loss 149 7.2 Subjecthood and the non-universality of syntax 151 7.3 The function of subjects and other grammatical relations 158 7.4 The continuum of grammatical relations 162 7.5 Ergativity and agentivity 167 7.6 Conclusion 176 8 The Category of Case 178 8.1 ‘Case’ as a functional category 178 Contents vii 8.3 Kuryłowicz’s problem 187 8.1 A solution: the Latin accusative 188 8.2 The Latin case system, and an alternative solution 196 8.3 Case in English 208 8.4 Conclusion: functors and lexical structure 211 8.4 Complex cases: Hjelmslev on Tabasaran 212 8.5 Conclusion and consequences 218 9 The Lexical Structure and Syntax of Functors 220 9.2 Participants and circumstantials 228 9.1 Circumstantials in ‘case grammar’ 228 9.3 A localist analysis of circumstantials 235 9.4 Nominals and circumstantials 242 9.5 Conclusion: circumstantials, incorporation, and absorption 244 9.3 The ineluctability of semantic relations 245 9.1 The irrelevance of UTAH 246 9.2 ‘Abstract syntax’ syndrome I: ‘generative semantics’ 252 9.3 A lexical account of causative constructions 257 9.4 ‘Abstract syntax’ syndrome II: ‘argument structure’ 267 9.4 Conclusion 273 Part III Case Grammar as a Notional Grammar 10 Groundedness: The Typicality of Case 281 10.1 The groundedness of word classes 283 10.1 Verbs and nouns 285 10.2 The syntactic consequences of lexical structure 290 10.2 The syntactic-categorial structure of words 294 10.1 Requirements on syntactic categorization 295 10.2 Parts of speech versus categories 300 10.1 Attributive modifiers 307 viii Contents 10.4 Conclusion: ‘notional grammar’ 324 11 Argument-Sharing I: Raising 327 11.1 Autonomy and transformations 331 11.2 The role of the absolutive 334 11.1 The status of free absolutive 334 11.2 The basic syntax of raising: raising with operatives 337 11.3 Raising with ‘intransitive’ verbs 340 11.4 Raising with ‘transitive’ verbs 342 11.5 The category of the infinitive 344 11.3 Conclusion 348 12 Argument-Sharing II: Control 349 12.1 The role of the absolutive 349 12.1 Raising versus control 352 12.2 Agentive control and the agentivity requirement 359 12.3 Causatives and control 362 12.2 Locative control: tough-movement, passives, and causatives 366 12.2 Passives and argument-sharing 369 12.3 Conclusion 379 13 Epilogue: Case, Notionalism, Creativity, and the Lexicon 381 13.3 Constraints on valency 399 13.4 Lexical structure and morphology 404 13.5 Absorption, incorporation, and ‘constructions’ 407 13.3 Creativity and notionalism 412 References 419 Index 441 Preface This book addresses a piece of relatively recent history and its continuing consequences.
I should acknowledge that it is ‘a personal history’: I am not remote, in any sense, from some of the events of the ‘history’; I am not an impartial historian, and cannot pretend to be one. So the ‘history’ not only suffers from gaps in my knowledge and understanding—and no doubt in my sympathies; it has also assumed a shape that would almost certainly not have been given it by any other narrator. Moreover, if I can indulge in more explanation of the reasons for the continuing scare quotes around ‘history’, what follows is not a strict chronicle, insofar as what there is of ‘history’ is intermeshed with reinterpretations and reassessments and other after- thoughts concerning the proposals and disputes that form much of the matter of the book. I am primarily concerned with what of the ‘history’ I see as important now, not necessarily with how different developments were viewed at earlier times, though I shall try to document how earlier reactions and non- reactions have had an effect on this history and on present-day attitudes.
But since the subject of the ‘history’ itself is not temporally remote events, what seems important, even as it strikes a single person, will doubtless change before long. To sum up, what is offered here cannot pretend, of course, to substitute for direct consultation of the record: it provides only one perspec- tive on the development of the complex of issues that have arisen and arise out of recent concerns with the grammar of case. The book grew out of preparations for seminars and lectures to be given at the Universities of Toulouse II and Bordeaux III, June 2004, one of them at the conference ‘Journées de Linguistique Anglaise’, in Toulouse, 17–18 June 2004, organized by the Équipe de Recherche en Syntaxe et Sémantique (ERSS) (UMR 5610). The others (Toulouse 15–16 June 2004, Bordeaux 21 June 2004) constituted part of the ‘Perpaus’ programme, the Peripatetic Seminar on Language, Computation and Cognition.
I am very grateful to those responsible for the organization of these events for, among other things, the opportunity to have been able, in this extended way, to expose to my peers some of my thoughts on the development of grammars of case. These heartfelt thanks go particularly to Jacques Durand (ERSS, Toulouse), Anne Przewowny and Jean Pamiès (Département des Études du Monde Anglo- phone, Toulouse), Claude Müller (Bordeaux), and Michel Aurnague (University of Pau). x Preface The varied discussions that accompanied the above presentations did much to contribute to the form and to modify the content of the first five chapters of this book: considerations of time and compassion ensured that these long- suffering and stimulating audiences were spared most of what is discussed in the rest. It is invidious to single out particular participants on these occasions, but I must acknowledge the particularly helpful comments and questions proffered by Christian Bassac, Jacques Durand, Andrée Morillo, Claude Müller, and Jean Pamiès.
A revision of these presentations appears in the series Carnets de grammaire (ERSS, UMR 5610, CNRS and Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail) no. That version profited from the comments and suggestions of Jacques Durand. As usual, written versions of (parts of) the book have also benefited from the perceptive comments and suggestions of Roger Böhm and Fran Colman, as also from Jacques Durand’s and Christian Bassac’s continuing interest and stimulus. The extent of acknowledgment in the text of the contribution of the first of these does not do justice to the extent of his influence on it; and I shall no doubt again regret not making more of his attempts to save me from myself.
This version is also dependent on the comments of two anonymous readers. The volume would not be, without the help and encouragement of John Davey, Consultant Editor Linguistics, Humanities and Social Sciences, OUP. The book is dedicated to John Lyons, who honoured the Toulouse confer- ence with his presence, as did his wife Danielle: dia exont«§ diadv Lamp soysin all hloi§ (Plato) He it was who first accused me of being a ‘localist’; but he is not to blame, any more than the others mentioned above, for what I have made of it, or the other ideas discussed here. Methoni Messinias, Greece July 2005 Conventions and Abbreviations Examples are numbered consecutively throughout each chapter, (1) to (n).
References to and re-presentation of examples in other chapters are preceded by the chapter number, so that (4.3) is example (3) in Chapter 4; but the chapter number is omitted with (reference to) examples in the current chapter. Cited words (and lexemes) and word forms are not distinguished typographically or otherwise, since it should be clear from the context which is intended. On grounds of practical economy, the previous work of the present author is invoked as simply ‘Anderson (date etc.)’, and that of Stephen Anderson as ‘S. Anderson (date etc.
The following abbreviations are used in glosses of examples, where the practice recommended by the Leipzig glossing rules is followed where appropriate. The rules are available at: http://www.de/lingua/files/ morpheme.