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This article investigates the temporal and aspectual composition of infinitival complementation structures in English. I show that previous classifications of tense in infinitives are insufficient in that they do not cover the entire spectrum of infinitival constructions in English. Using the distribution of nongeneric, nonstative, episodic interpretations as a main characteristic, I show that infinitival constructions fall into three classes: future irrealis infinitives, which allow episodic interpretations with bare VPs; simultaneous infinitives that do not allow episodic interpretations; and simultaneous infinitives that allow episodic interpretations depending on the matrix tense. I argue that the three classes of infinitives are derived from the following properties: future infinitives are tenseless but involve a syntactically present future modal woll; simultaneous propositional attitude infinitives impose the NOW of the propositional attitude holder as the reference time of the infinitive; and certain simultaneous infinitives form a single temporal domain with the matrix clause. The analysis proposed has consequences for the composition of tense and aspect, the syntax of infinitives, and the way selection is determined.

Recent studies on agglutinative languages, such as Japanese, Finnish, and Turkish, have reported case marking deficits in children with developmental language disorder.In this study, we investigate case marking in bilingual children speaking Turkish as a heritage language in Germany in comparison to those in France and the U.S. and late successive bilinguals in Germany. The research focuses on the potential use of case marking to identify developmental language disorder in Turkish as a heritage language. In this study, we compare data obtained from 73 children with and without developmental language disorder (age 5;1–11;6) that speak Turkish as a heritage language to those obtained from 10 late successive bilinguals (age range 7;12–12;2) in Germany, France, and the U.S., analyzing case marking and the possessive markers included in genitive–possessive constructions and using both standard and heritage Turkish as reference varieties. The results show that the groups differ significantly (p < 0.05) regarding the use of case and possessive markers. Current first language use is the leading predictor of performance in case marker production in the TEDİL when using heritage Turkish as the reference variety in scoring. The results demonstrate that children with developmental language disorder that speak heritage Turkish produce fewer case markers and show higher rates of omission and substitution errors, particularly in accusative/dative and genitive markers, thus confirming the results of previous research. The omission of possessive and genitive markers in simpler structures may serve as a clinical marker of developmental language disorder, allowing for children with typical language development that speak heritage Turkish to be distinguished from those with a developmental language disorder.

This paper describes a special case marking system in the Sinitic languages of Northwest China, by examining the materials from fieldwork and literature. This marking system represents a nominative-accusative system, in which A(gent) and S(ubject) are zero-marked while P(atient) is marked by the accusative marker. It is special in the sense that (1) it is neither the same as the nominative-accusative system in the Altaic languages nor akin to the ergative-absolutive system in Tibetan, let alone Mandarin Chinese, in which case markers are absent; and (2) the dative-accusative syncretism is not seen in the nearby Tibetan and Altaic languages. This paper points out that Hezhou is a district in Northwest China in which many languages have long been in contact with each other, creating a linguistic area. The special case marking system discussed in this paper is the outcome of the language contact in the very linguistic area.

AimsThis study investigated three- to five-year-olds’ ability to generalise knowledge of case inflection to novel nouns in Estonian, which has complex morphology and lacks a default declension pattern. We explored whether Estonian-speaking children use similar strategies to adults, and whether they default to a preferred pattern or use analogy to phonological neighbours.MethodWe taught children novel nouns in nominative or allative case and elicited partitive and genitive case forms based on pictures of unfamiliar creatures. Participants included 66 children (3;0–6;0) and 21 adults. Because of multiple grammatical inflection patterns, children’s responses were compared with those of adults for variability, accuracy, and morphological neighbourhood density. Errors were analysed to reveal how children differed from adults.ConclusionsYoung children make use of varied available patterns, but find generalisation difficult. Children’s responses showed much variability, yet even three-year-olds used the same general declension patterns as adults. Accuracy increased with age but responses were not fully adult-like by age five. Neighbourhood density of responses increased with age, indicating that analogy over a larger store of examples underlies proficiency with productive noun inflection. Children did not default to the more transparent, affixal patterns available, preferring instead to use the more frequent, stem-changing patterns.

The dative case in Vafsi appears in three structures: (a) the case of the experiencer in sensory verbs, (b) the case of the indirect object (IO), and (c) the case of the object of the preposition /da/ (to), or the preposition /az/ (to), or the enclitic /-o/ (to), or the object of the postposition /rā/ (for). In Vafsi, as in many other Indo-European languages, sensory verbs necessitate the emergence of quirky subjects which have the experiencer function and are dative case marked. In order to analyze the dative case marking in Vafsi using optimality theory, this article uses the faithfulness constraint of faith-lex and the markedness constraint hierarchy of *ERG>>*DAT>>*ACC>>*NOM. Vafsi always allocates the dative case to the IO of the ditransitive verbs. This phenomenon is illustrated by use of an optimality theory (OT) tableau. Some Vafsi ditransitive verbs dative case mark the IOs using adpositions. If so, Vafsi differential adpositional case marking (DACM) will rule, as the IOs are objects of adposition (OAs) simultaneously.

This report investigates the uses of the ergative case marker in transitive clauses in Bumthang, a language of Central Bhutan. We discuss the conditions under which the ergative is required and show that a simple analysis involving multiple influences models the data. Previous studies have shown that variable case marking may be determined by syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic factors, but in Bumthang we see that ALL of these factors play a role in determining the use of the ergative case marker. We hope that our analysis will prove useful for understanding the variable uses of the ergative case marker in Himalayan and other languages as well as providing interesting challenges for formal models of case marking.

Park, Sang-Hee and Eunkyung Yi. 2020. Perception-production asymmetry for Korean double accusative ditransitives. Linguistic Research 38(1): 27-52. Ditransitive constructions, expressing an agent, a recipient and a theme, are syntactically realized in various structures within and across languages (Malchukov et al. 2010). Korean is known to have two ditransitive constructions that vary in case marking on the recipient argument, i.e., the canonical ditransitive construction Jisu-kaNOM Mina-eykeyDAC chayk-ulACC cwu-essPAST-taDBCL and the double accusative construction Jisu-kaNOM Mina-lulACC chayk-ulACC cwu-essPASTtaDECL 'Jisu gave Mina a book.' They are often used in the study of crosslinguistic comparison as counterparts of the English dative alternation. Previous research, however, reported huge imbalance between the two Korean variants in their frequencies of occurrence and speakers' acceptability of the constructions. In this context, we conducted two experimental studies that investigate the perception and production of the constructions, respectively. Study 1 examined the factors that may influence the acceptability of the constructions, i.e., verb type and -cwu benefactive morpheme. Study 2 investigated whether the double accusative ditransitive construction is a valid construction ever produced by Korean speakers, using sentence completion experiment. The results showed that Korean speakers judge the double accusative ditransitives as highly unacceptable but they do not completely avoid them in sentence completions. We discussed the results in the context of theoretical and psycholinguistic perspectives. (Duksung Women's University · Ewha Womans University)

This article discusses A-licensing and case from a minimalist perspective, pursuing the idea that argument NPs cyclically enter a number of A-relations, rather than just a single one, resulting in event licensing, case licensing, and ϕ-licensing. While argument case commonly reflects Voice-v relations, canonical A-movement is driven by higher elements, either in the C-T system or in a superordinate v-system (in ECM constructions). In addition, there is a distinction to be drawn between the triggering of A-movement, by for example C, and the licensing of the landing site, by for instance T, C-probing leading to tucking-in into Spec, T. Much of the evidence presented comes from quirky case constructions in Icelandic and from ECM and raising constructions in Icelandic and English. It is argued that T in ECM constructions inherits ϕ-licensing from the matrix v ϕ , regardless of the case properties of v ϕ .

This remark argues for the Case-theoretic concept of Case as a syntactic licensing requirement of DPs related to their case morphology, against alternatives where DPs need no syntactic licensing, or where their case morphology is unrelated to it. The argument is made from constraints on combining exceptional Case marking (ECM) and the double object construction, where there is a single object Agree/Case locus for two DPs. The mechanisms and nature of Case are briefly examined. The appendix sketches an extension to wager-class ECM.

In this paper, we tackle the twin issues of obligatoriness of semantic arguments and variation in their expression through a study of Estonian constructions denoting need. The variation under investigation consists in the choice of case-marking, between adessive and allative case, as well as the option to omit the oblique argument. We extracted and coded ‘need’-constructions from spoken and written corpora and used non-parametric classification methods for analysis. We found high rates of oblique experiencer omission in these constructions (nearly 60% across corpora). The most important predictors of overt expression of the experiencer in our models were participant-internal modality and the presence of nominal complements, meaning that both semantic and syntactic factors are relevant. The choice between two overt cases is affected by person, complement type, and referential distance. Topical experiencer arguments do not show the subject-like tendency to be omitted more often, but they are more likely to be marked with adessive case, suggesting that adessive is more grammaticalised as a structural, non-nominative, argument-marking case than the more semantic allative case. Our findings show that oblique, semantic arguments may be frequently omitted, and both semantic and syntactic factors may affect variation in case-marking.