Cases and Thematic Roles (Linguistische Arbeiten)

✍ Scribed by Beatrice Primus

• Publisher: Max Niemeyer Verlag
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 300
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This study examines the mapping of thematic roles, such as agent and patient, onto syntactic cases, such as nominative or ergative, or onto structural relations in a cross-linguistic survey that is supplemented with German data. It is shown that cases and structural relations code different aspects of thematic structure and that cases cannot be derived from structural relations in universal grammar. The phenomena that characterize ergative and active languages are shown to be restricted to case mapping.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations and Spelling Conventions
1 Introduction
1.1 The Generalized Hierarchy Approach
1.2 The Order of Presentation
2 Cases
2.1 General Remarks
2.2 Case Allomorphism
2.3 Case Subcategorization
2.4 Explanation
2.5 Summary
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
4 Morphosyntactic Expression of Thematic Information
4.1 A Universal Semantic Principle
4.2 Accusative Languages: German from a Crosslinguistic Perspective
4.3 Ergative Languages
4.4 The Relevance of the Ergative Parameter
4.4.1 Advances in Past Approaches
4.4.2 Problems and Solutions
4.5 Active Languages and Split Intransitivity
4.6 The Relevance of the Split Intransitivity Parameter
4.7 Other Types of Mapping
4.8 Ergativity in German?
4.9 Summary
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
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
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
8 General Summary
References
Author Index
Language Index
Subject Index