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The paper argues that Case and Agreement are subject to parametric variation and explores the consequences of this claim with a particular attention to word order. Departing from much generative work, it is argued that languages can lack abstract Case and/or abstract Agreement. By modifying several Minimalist assumptions, it is demonstrated that languages without Case, but with Agreement will require overt NPs to appear in non-argumental, dislocated positions. These are exemplified by Mohawk and Kinande. In contrast, languages with Case features may allow, but not require NP dislocation. These are exemplified by all of the Indo-European languages and Japanese. Finally, languages that lack both Case and Agreement are predicted to have a rigid word order. Chinese is used as an example of such a language. In addition, the paper addresses a number of phenomena that pose a problem for the view that Case and Agreement are universal and are better understood if these properties are taken to vary parametrically. The phenomena include locative inversion and inverse voice constructions in Bantu languages, the distribution of subject anaphors in Japanese, and the non co-occurrence of overt accusative case with overt object agreement.

This paper addresses the syntax of copular constructions in Russian with special attention to the prohibition on the appearance of instrumental predicates in present-tense copular constructions and their obligatory presence in argument small clauses with null predicators. I argue that copular constructions with instrumental predicates involve an eventive Pred (following Adger and Ramchand 2003), which I call \"PredEv\". PredEv introduces an event argument and checks instrumental case on the predicate. In contrast, constructions with nominative predicates involve a non-eventive Pred that has no case to check. I further argue that the event argument introduced by PredEv must be licensed by Asp. However, the present-tense form of the Russian verb 'be' (est') lacks the relevant aspect features. Consequently, instrumental predicates are impossible in present-tense copular constructions. In argument small clauses, on the other hand, the event argument is licensed by the Asp of the matrix verb, which makes instrumental predicates possible. In the course of the discussion I also address predicate case in adjunct small clauses and in constructions with overt predicators. Finally, I briefly compare predicate case phenomena in Russian to those in other Slavic languages.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence was pleased to present the AAAI 2013 Spring Symposium Series, held Monday through Wednesday, March 25–27, 2013. The titles of the eight symposia were Analyzing Microtext; Creativity and (Early) Cognitive Development; Data‐Driven Wellness: From Self‐Tracking to Behavior Change; Designing Intelligent Robots: Reintegrating AI II; Lifelong Machine Learning; Shikakeology: Designing Triggers for Behavior Change; Trust and Autonomous Systems; and Weakly Supervised Learning from Multimedia. This report contains summaries of the symposia, written, in most cases, by the cochairs of the symposium.

In this thesis I argue for a non-arbitrary relationship between the syntax of case and agreement and its morphological realization, as reflected in the following linguistic universals: (1) If a language overtly case-marks the subject, it overtly marks the object; (2) If a language has overt object agreement, it has overt subject agreement (Moravcik 1974, Comrie 1988, Lehmann 1982). The goal of this thesis is to explain the nature of the morphology-syntax connection the above universals embody and explore the consequences it has for syntactic theory, grammars of individual languages, and for UG. In this dissertation I depart from the Universal Approach (e.g. Chomsky 1981, Rouveret and Vergnaud 1980, and later in Chomsky 1995, 2000, Harley 1995, Sigurdsson 2003 inter alia) that treats case and agreement as universal properties of language and their overt realization as arbitrary and language specific. Building on a proposal presented in Pesetsky and Torrego 2001 that features are interpretable but may become uninterpetable if placed on a wrong head, I argue that case and agreement features are misplaced interpretable features used by languages to create PF-records of thematic relations. I further argue that misplaced features are not universal: in the absence of case and agreement features PF-records of thematic relations are preserved via rigid word order. I further demonstrate that restrictions on feature misplacement together with the inherent properties of misplaced features and the syntactic configurations in which misplaced features are valued account for the above universals, derive a constrained cross-linguistic case and agreement typology, and has consequences for (non)-configurationality. In particular, I argue that languages without case features but with agreement features will be non-configurational, languages that have both case and agreement features may allow but not require NP dislocation, and finally languages that lack case and agreement features will have rigid word order. This is the topic of Chapter 4. In this thesis I also address (quirky) dative subjects (Chapter 2), infinitives (Chapter 3), and ergativity (Chapter 5).