From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Subject: Case & NP-movement [formerly Re: SVO / VSO --> NP-movement]
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 01:37:16 GMT

In article <andaling.718442713@durras> andaling@durras.anu.edu.au (Avery Andrews) writes:
>Re: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky),
>    <1992Oct2.151844.22435@athena.mit.edu>
>
>>The problem is not a lack of imagination that can develop "accounts",
>>but a lack of any real understanding concerning the cross-language and
>>language-internal asymmetries found.  I, for one, have yet to see a
>>discussion of these matters that looked insightful, ...
>
>Hmm.  It seems to me that Sigurdsson's 1991 NLLT article shows that
>case-marking of a position may be necessary for an NP to appear in
>it, but *can't* be sufficient.  So maybe the difference between
>Icelandic and English is that Icelandic has case-marking rules
>that can get at more positions than in English, so Icelandic
>(and presumably various other Western European languages) illustrate
>the non-case theoretic aspect of NP-licensing.  

I agree with the first point, though Sigurdsson's conclusions have long
been known, no?  You and I discussed a problem set of mine on the topic
-- based mostly on your old article -- about 6 years ago.  As for the
second point, I'm somewhat at a loss to see how the "Western European"
possibilities for non-movement in passive and ergative constructions are
unrepresented in English.

>In particular, one
>thing that Sigurdsson shows is that there is a visible case-transmission
>effect from `subject-raised-to-object' to `original object' position:
>
>(a)  thad var kosinn  einhver leikari  til forsetaembaettis
>     it   was elected some    actor(N) to  Presidency
>
>(b)  their segja hafa    verid kosinn einhvern leikara til forsetaembaettis
>     they  say   to-have been elected some     actor(A)
>
>So the post-verbal nominative in (a) could well be getting its case
>via transmission from the subject, by a rule/effect that Lasnik argues
>doesn't exist in English, but in (b) we can really see that it is
>happening.

Lasnik's article is far from conclusive.  A lot hinges on fairly subtle
judgments concerning the intervention of an adverb between finite vs.
participial "be" and its object in English.  So suppose Lasnik is wrong
-- again, how is English so different?

>On the other hand, postverbal nominatives coocurring with dative
>subjects do keep their nominative case in `SOR' constructions,
>so these might involve nominative assigned by the (lower) verb:
>
>(c)  their segja str'akunum  hafa   verid gefnir hestarnir
>     they  say   the-boys(D) to-have been given  the-horses
>
>(some people do accept accusative here, however, suggesting that
>case-transmission & assignment by the verb are both possible).

Ah! This I didn't know (was it in Sigurdsson's article?).  Are there
speakers who positively don't accept the nominative.  Of all aspects of
Iceland that I know something about, it's the nominative with infinitive
that always seemed troubling to me, if we take the morphology seriously,
i.e. as telling us that the object case found in these infinitives has
something fundamental in common with the usual occurence of nominative.

On a related matter [?] is there any account of the German "was fuer" or
Russian "chto za" (`what kind of`) constructions that explains why the
following NP is nominative?

-David Pesetsky