Berlin Dative Days :: Abstracts
Artemis Alexiadou (Berlin):
Genitives and datives in the DP
This talk will revisit the nature and assignment of genitive and dative case in noun phrases from the perspective of the theory of dependent case (Marantz 1991, Baker 2015).
Anna Bondaruk (Lublin) & Bożena Rozwadowska (Wrocław):
The structure and derivation of psychological predicates with dative experiencers in Polish
The goal of this talk is to determine the syntactic position of dative Experiencers found with verbal and non-verbal psychological predicates in Polish and to propose the derivation of structures hosting dative Experiencers in Polish within the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2008). We argue that: (i) dative Experiencers in Polish are generated in Spec, vP with verbal and non-verbal psych predicates, and can therefore bind anaphors within the T/SM argument as long as the AAE (Anaphor Agreement Effect, Rizzi 1990) does not block this; (ii) dative Experiencers found with predicates realised as adverbs occupy Spec, AdvP; (iii) dative Experiencers represent PPs with a null P head, and therefore they do not form verbal passives; (iv) dative Experiencers move to Spec, CP in the Experiencer-first order, as T does not inherit the EF-feature from C, only the φ-features.
Pavel Caha (Brno):
*ABA and the two datives
The talk addresses the issue of syncretism in case paradigms that pertain to the dative case. Of particular importance will be the fact that the dative case sometimes shows systematic syncretism with the accusative (Icelandic, Hardarson 2016) and sometimes not (Russian, McCreight and Chvany 1991). Recently, it has been proposed by Starke (2017) that this is because there are in fact two distinct datives, and that the Icelandic dative is different from the Russian dative. I provide additional evidence for Starke's proposal and investigate its consequences for the syntax and morphology of datives in various varieties of Saami.
Ola Gogłoza (Berlin) & Paulina Łęska (Poznań):
Settling the unsettled – in search for the base-generated position of the Polish Experiencer Dative
We discuss experiencer datives as binders in the experiencer-theme construction. We focus particularly on the the differences in the experiencer’s binding potential when binding anaphors adjoined to nominative marked themes, as opposed to non-nominative themes. We show that Polish dative experiencers can bind anaphors as long as the anaphor binding is not blocked by Rizzi’s (1990) Anaphor Agreement Effect (AAE). We analyse the data proposing an Extended AAE, which accounts for the data as well as the reported speaker variation.
Daniel Hole (Stuttgart):
Binder datives and other similar argument alternations
In this talk, I take the set of binding generalizations that single out free datives in German and test their applicability to other non-base alternants of argument alternations. I will review split stimulus constructions (The paper impresses me with its good style), the predicative alternation (Lea ist Schauspielerin von Beruf), the locative have and posture alternation (The tree has a nest in it, The room sleeps five people in it) and some more constructions, always finding binding requirements that are similar or identical to the ones attested for datives. I conclude by speculating on why binding and non-base alternants are such a frequent match.
Zorica Puškar (Berlin):
Lexical and structural dative as dependent case
Lexical and structural datives are morphologically identical and often behave similarly, and ‘just where the line should be drawn between the two is a theoretical matter’ (Baker 2015:13). In this talk we argue that in fact no line should be drawn between the two, as both types of dative can be derived by the same process. We implement this process in the Dependent Case Theory (Marantz 1991; McFadden 2004; Baker & Vinokurova 2010; Baker 2015) and argue that both structural and lexical case can be assigned as dependent case. Dependent Case Theory can thus abandon case assignment via a syntactic head (c.f. Chomsky 2000, 2001) as a means of assigning lexical case and it can derive both types of case as a function of a structural relation between two DPs.
Elisabeth Verhoeven (Berlin):
Datives versus accusatives: a crosslinguistic experiment on object fronting
We present a crosslinguistic experimental study on languages with different word order properties (German, Greek, Hungarian, and Korean), focussing on effects of the experiencer role on the linearization of arguments. The findings reveal a strong effect of case in the sense that dative experiencers appear more frequently early in an utterance than accusative experiencers. Based on the specific properties of the investigated languages, we are revising previous hypotheses about the source of the dative/accusative asymmetry and conclude that the asymmetry relates to phrase-structural differences.
Ewa Willim (Kraków):
On the Dative Experiencer in Polish Reflexive Impersonal Middles
In this talk, I will argue that Polish (non-generic) reflexive impersonal middles, i.e. structures with the verb marked with [3 person, singular number, neuter gender] morphology which include the reflexive pronoun się, an adverb like łatwo ‘easily’, and a (definite) noun phrase in the dative, are bi-eventive, consisting of an experience event, which is stative, and a dynamic V-ing event, which is the source/cause of the experiencing event. The dative participant, the argument of the experience event, perceives the V-ing event as good/positive or bad/negative on the basis of a specific, personal experience of V-ing, and the adverb, a measure function, maps the V-ing event onto a degree on an associated scale, as judged by the experiencer. In contrast to active voice impersonal generics, which are built from an active Voice head introducing an external argument realized with an argumental się in its specifier, impersonal middles involve vDO or vGO, which verbalize roots which can be interpreted as lexicalizing MANNER (Cuervo 2014, 2015), and which correspond to predicates with stages (Rothstein 2004). The V-ing event is selected by a syntactic head Affect (Bosse et al. 2012), which introduces the experiencing event. Voice is expletive and has a non-argumental się in its specifier (Schäfer 2008). Polish canonical middles are built from a verbalizer which lacks a feature of structural case, and from an expletive Voice, with an expletive się in its specifier. Thus, Polish middles as well as active voice impersonals offer support for recent constructionalist approaches to verbal meanings, in which different event structures of verbs occurring in different constructions are a function of the interactions of lexical roots and functional heads.
Jacek Witkoś (Poznań) & Roland Meyer (Berlin):
Dative and Accusative Arguments as Antecedents for Reflexives in Polish
This paper aims to account for peculiar binding properties of dative and accusative arguments in Polish, both objects and Experiencers. It has been observed that although Polish reflexive pronouns are strictly (nominative) subject oriented, they can be bound by dative and accusative experiencers (Bondaruk & Szymanek 2007; Miechowicz-Mathiasen & Scheffler 2007; Tajsner 2008, Wiland 2016). At the same time, experiencers, unlike nominative subjects, are also proper antecedents for both reflexive and pronominal possessives. This mixed behaviour poses a puzzle for the traditional and novel formulations of Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981, 1986; Manzini & Wexler 1987; Rappaport 1986; Willim 1989; Reinders-Machowska 1991; Reuland 2011), which assume complementarity between anaphors and pronominals in their local domains and plainly state that the subject is the privileged binder in Slavic. We base our analysis on the idea that morphologically deficient elements move to a functional category to compensate for the missing structure (Béjar & Rezac 2003; Franks 2017) and an approach to binding proposed recently in Safir (2014) and Nikolaeva (2014), following Hestvik (1992). The latter proposal implements the concept of Index Raising (IR), where the undifferentiated anaphoric/pronominal element (henceforth the index) is (covertly) moved and adjoined to v or T. The distribution of the two spell-out forms of the index (as either anaphoric or pronominal elements) is determined by two factors: the landing site of the index and the case position of the binder.