Languages & Linguistics
Objective Case
The objective case is a grammatical case used for the direct object of a verb or the object of a preposition in a sentence. In English, pronouns such as "me," "him," and "her" are in the objective case when they function as direct objects or objects of prepositions. In other languages, nouns and pronouns may also change form to indicate the objective case.
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4 Key excerpts on "Objective Case"
- Anders Holmberg, Urpo Nikanne, Anders Holmberg, Urpo Nikanne(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
3 Most linguists making use of grammatical function hierarchies take these notions to be primitives of the theory. It is possible that these notions could be translated into configuration terms, e.g. SUBJ = [SPEC, IP], OBJ = sister of V, ADJUNCT = sister of V' and so on. I leave open the correct analysis of such notoriously problematic constructions as there-inseition and raising to object. 4 See however Babby (1980a,b), who argues that in Russian accusative adverbs of duration must be treated in the same way as arguments/objects, since ACC alternates with GEN under negation. Of Nominative and Accusative 51 However, there are languages where certain classes of adverbials seem to get syntactic case, e.g. Chinese (Li 1985/1990), Korean (Maling 1989), Classical Arabic (McCarthy 1976; Noyer 1989), Warumungu (Simpson 1991). There are two facts about this phenomenon to note: (i) the same class of adverbials shows up again and again: adverbials of duration/frequency, measure phrases, cognate objects, suggesting the existence of a semantically natural class, and (ii) not only do these adverbials get the same ACC case assigned to verbal objects, BUT they exhibit the same Case-alternations diagnostic of structural Case. i.e. they show up with NOM case in the same sorts of environments that verbal objects do. (Since adverbials do not passivize or raise, this fact has obvious implications for the usual case-theoretic account of NP-movement. Some recent work in GB distinguishes between case-assignment and case-licensing (SigurSsson 1990; Freidin and Sprouse 1990.) Another language of this type is Finnish (but not Hungarian). The purpose of this paper is to explore the predictions of the Case-Tier model for the assignment by investigating the assignment of grammatical cases to verbal objects and certain adverbial adjuncts. 2. THE CASE OF FINNISH OBJECTS Finnish is said to have four grammatical cases, illustrated in the paradigm for kirja book' shown in (3).
eBook - ePub- Diane C. Nelson(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
Chapter 2 Grammatical Case Assignment in Finnish 2.1 IntroductionPatterns of Objective Case in Finnish, or, more precisely, case marking on internal arguments and quasi-arguments, are problematic for Case Theory for a number of reasons and so have attracted scrutiny in the previous literature on Finnish. In simple transitives, subjects appear in nominative case and objects in accusative (identical in form to singular genitive case in full DPs) or partitive case. However, despite predictions made by Case Theory and Burzio’s Generalization, full DP ‘nominative objects’ (here referred to as ‘zero accusatives’) surface in certain well-defined syntactic contexts, but alternate with accusative-marked animate pronouns in the same environments. Moreover, the distribution of both of these accusative forms alternates freely with partitive case. A separate form for plurals also exists, which is identical for nominative and accusative cases.Data is presented first illustrating nominative and Objective Case marking in transitive sentences. Next, the partitive/accusative alternation is examined. Finally, data illustrating the theoretically problematic zero-accusative case form is discussed, followed by a review of the previous literature on the topic.2.2 Subject and Object CaseCanonical subjects appear in nominative, morphologically unmarked, case and agree with the verb. Plural nominative case is signalled by a suffix, -t:1Nominative pronouns occur within the following paradigm:Objective Case in simple transitive sentences may be marked with one of three suffix forms, accusative -n and -t, and partitive -TA. The distribution of the -n
eBook - PDF- Olga Kagan(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
It should also be noted that in still other languages, accusative case is associated with a high degree of individuation. This issue will be addressed in Chapters 5 and 6. 4.1 OBJECTS IN FINNIC LANGUAGES It is a well-established fact that direct objects often affect the aspectual properties of a clause. This property characterizes so-called incremental theme predicates, whose internal argument undergoes an incremental change over the course of the event. To illustrate, consider the verb eat. When it combines with an unbounded object, for example apples, the whole VP (eat apples) is atelic (lacks an inherent natural endpoint). In turn, if the verb combines with a bounded object, for example an apple, the VP (eat an apple) is telic. The fact that the object is bounded causes the whole VP to receive an inherent endpoint: once the whole apple is consumed, the eating event is completed. (See e.g. Vendler 1957, Verkuyl 1972 and Krifka 1992 for a detailed discussion.) While this relation between the object and telicity is present with incremental theme verbs, it is absent with many other predicates. For instance, the VP love John is atelic, even though John is bounded. This is due to the stative nature of the verb love. Still, in numerous nominative-accusative languages, accusative case- marking is totally unrelated to verbal aspect. A nominal phrase receives accusative marking as long as it is base-generated in the object position and accusative case is available (e.g. the clause is not passive). However, Finnic languages form an exception. In these languages, accusative case on the object alternates with the partitive. Case selection strongly depends on the aspectual properties of the clause. Languages that exhibit such a dependence include Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Veps, Votic and Livonian (Lees 2015). While some differences between these languages are attested, the general pattern remains the same.
eBook - PDF- Wolfgang U. Dressler, Martin Prinzhorn, John R. Rennison, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Martin Prinzhorn, John R. Rennison(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
136 Igor Mel'cuk 1.3. The proposal: changing names As far as I can judge, the difficulty here arose, in the first place, because the founders of African linguistics chose to apply case names according to the case's main syntactic function. So, following the syntactic pattern of Latin, the case whose main function is to mark the Grammatical Sub-ject was called the nominative, while that which marks the Direct Object automatically got the name of the accusative. However, such a practice cannot be condoned for at least two reasons. First the syntactic patterns of one language should not be mechanically transposed to another. Se-cond, and even more importantly, by linking too rigidly the case and the Surface-Syntactic role we blur the extremely important distinction be-tween them, thus blocking, among other things, the possibility of saying readily that, in a language L, a given syntactic role can be marked by several different cases, while a given case can mark several different syn-tactic roles. My solution is simple and drastic. It derives from the following defini-tion of nominative case: Nominative Case In a language L that has grammatical cases, the case used to NAME ob-jects or situations, i. e. to mark a noun in isolation, must be called the nominative, whichever role it plays in the syntax of L and whichever is its formal exponent (Mel'cuk 1986: 71). In other words, I propose to restore to the nominative its etymological meaning: the case of nomination. If this proposal is accepted, then Maasai (like all related languages) has two cases: the nominative (the former accusative) and the oblique (or else ergative or subjective; the former nominative). 6 The resulting two-case system is typologically highly plausible: it is sim-ilar, for instance, to that of Kabardian/Circassian, Kurdish or Old French. With this new terminology, all the statements concerning the use of cases in Maasai cease to be exotic and become quite plausible.
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