Case: a Dynamic Approach
Ronnie Cann, University of Edinburgh
Abstract
Morphological case marking is generally analysed as (principally) performing two functions: to identify
arguments of predicates or to specify some more oblique relation between a term and a predicate. In the
first function, case is often conflated with grammatical relations and commonly deemed to be induced as
a property of the predicate, rather than a property of the term itself. In the second, the case-marked term is
generally treated as an adjunct with full semantic properties independent of the predicate itself. As has
been noted many times, however, this division is not unproblematic: there are grammatical uses of cases
that have semantic effect, as well as adjunct uses where interpretation is at least partly dependent on the
predicate. Furthermore, grammatical cases themselves may have different functions depending on other
syntactic factors (e.g. accusative and infinitive constructions). It thus appears that the two functions are
not completely distinct and separately specifiable or fully internally consistent, but are derived from an
interaction between linguistic context and fundamental properties of the case marking itself.
In Dynamic Syntax, there is no direct characterisation of the surface structure of strings. Instead, a
representation of the propositional content of the string is built up through the dynamics of the parsing
process, using general rules of deduction, lexical instructions induced by words in the string and
pragmatic actions. The common view of grammatical case as a purely syntactic notion which directly
characterises surface grammatical relations cannot therefore be directly encoded. However, the theory
does provide explicit means to analyse the interaction between linguistic context and lexical content. This
paper exploits this property of the theory to provide an account of the informational content of
morphologically marked case and how this contributes to interpretation in context.
A. Preamble
The term ‘case’ is used to signify a range of concepts within grammatical theory in addition to
(and sometimes in opposition to) its traditional reference to the form of nouns or their
dependents in different grammatical contexts. Thus, we find that the term may essentially refer to
grammatical function, to structural position, to type of participant role, usw. These extensions of
case derive from one or another of the common functions it signifies:
1
2
3
g-case: marks a set of grammatical functions (however defined);
s-case: marks the semantic contribution of a case-marked term, usually an adjunct;
a-case: marks an expression as being dependent on some case-marked term.
All of these functions are extendable beyond traditional case to other domains such as linear
order, structural position, different categories such as prepositional phrases and so on. However,
in this paper I am only interested in the functions of morphological case (although some of what
I say may be extrapolated to more general contexts). In particular, I am interested in the
information that is projected by a case-marked nominal expression and the way this interacts
with context to identify the function being performed by the expression in that context.
First of all, however, I just want to clarify what I am referring to by morphological case. There
are (at least) two ways of interpreting this notion:
4
5
p-case: the set of oppositions found in nominal paradigms within a language as defined by:
m-case: the set of case forms found in a language (which may cut across p-case divisions syncretism).
Aspects of Grammatical Case in Dynamic Syntax
Cann
I am here really concerned with p-case, assuming that an opposition realised in one paradigm is
indicative of an opposition that is significant within the language, i.e. an abstraction over and
idealisation of the more extensional concept of m-case. The reason for this is that syncretism – a
common, if not universal, property of p-case systems - may obscure common functions of the pcases themselves. This is not to say that I think m-case is unimportant. On the contrary, I believe
that it provides an insight to the way that lexical information is organised and how it is
propagated through a derivation, giving rise, for example, to interesting patterns of case
matching and mismatching. I am, however, not yet in a position to go into this in any detailed
way and will restrict myself to a discussion of paradigmatic case.
B. Case functions
I have already indicated that p-cases (hereinafter just case) may have (indeed usually do have) a
range of functions within a particular language.
Classical Greek
Accusative:
a.
O function (‘external object’)
Ho anēr typtei ton paida
‘The man beats the boy’
b.
Cognate (‘internal’) object
Hē aitia hēn aitiōntai
‘The charge which they made’ (Ant.6.27)
Lit. The charge which they charged
c.
Second object
Oudeis edidaxe me tautēn tēn tekhnēn
‘No-one taught me this skill’ (X.0.19.16)
d.
Subject of infinitive
Nomizō gar humas emoi einai kai patrida kai philous
‘For I think you are both native land and friends to me’ (X.A.1.3.6)
e.
Adverbial function
Manner
Measure
Motive: tout’akhthesthe ‘You are vexed for this reason’ (X.A.3.2.20)
Time
We may classify these functions as follows:
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SEMANTIC (adjunct): Manner, Measure, Motive, Time
CASE: Accusative
STRUCTURAL: O function, AcI
GRAMMATICAL
SELECTED: 2nd Object
Note that cognate objects do not fit easily into any of these categories: they are sort of adjuncts
but the case does not really contribute to the interpretation. Furthermore, there are other ways in
which grammatical properties seem to cut across this apparently neat typology:
6
7
Optional: s-case, cognate objects
Obligatory: g-case (both selected and structural)
Do not vary with GF-changing operations: s-case, selected g-case
Ouden allo didasketai anthrōpos ē epistēmēn
‘Man is taught nothing else except knowledge’ (P.Men.87c)
Vary with GF-changing operations: structural g-case, cognate objects
Polemos epolemeito
‘War was waged’ Lit. War was warred (X.H.4.8.1)
It appears, therefore, that


There does not seem to be an absolute distinction between g-case and s-case;
The properties of a case depends on a range of factors: properties of the predicate, the term itself, or
other expressions in the string.
Thus, static theories are unlikely to be able to adequately characterise the information projected
by p-case, even within a single language.
Although I cannot here explore all the different functions of case – even within a single
language, what I shall do is sketch a theory that in principle allows different sorts of information
– syntactic, semantic, pragmatic – to interact to determine the function/interpretation of a casemarked expression within some context. There are, I am afraid, significant gaps in the discussion
as the work is still ongoing and conclusions will often be infuriatingly tentative, but I hope to
show that a theory of the sort I propose is both possible and a plausible alternative to static, noncontext dependent theories of the topic.
C
Dynamic Syntax
The framework I shall use is Dynamic Syntax (Kempson et al. 2001). This theory does not
characterise the surface (constituent) structure of a sentence, but instead models the process of
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assigning an interpretation to a string of words in a left to right fashion. In other words, taking
information from words, pragmatic processes and general rules, the theory derives partial tree
structures that represent the underspecified content of the string up to that point in the parse,
ultimately giving rise to some propositional representation.
Underspecification is the key to the theory and is manifested in a number of different ways. The
resolution of underspecification is driven by the notion of a requirement. Requirements
determine the process of tree growth and must be satisfied for a parse to be successful. [In some
ways, therefore, DS requirements act like feature checking in MP.]
The basic –universal requirement – is to build a representation of propositional content, i.e. to
build a tree rooted in Ty(t)
8
Requirements drive tree construction.
9
Basic (universal) requirement: ?Ty(t)
To satisfy this requirement a parse relies on information from various sources. In the first place,
there are general processes of deduction which give basic templates for building trees that may
be universally available or may be specific to a language. One of the (universal) deduction rules
simply says that you can derive a Ty(t) from a Ty(e) and a Ty(e  t) by Modus Ponens. So we
can expand (9) into (10):
10
?Ty(t)
?Ty(e  t)
?Ty(e),
(pointer)
The pointer tells you where you are in a parse and what you may next develop. In general in a
functor-argument pair the pointer moves to the argument node first so here we are in a position
to develop the ‘subject’.
11
John upset the student.
Other information about tree building comes from lexical entries:
12
Lexical Information:
John
IF
?Ty(e)
THEN put(Ty(e),Fo(j))
ELSE ABORT
TRIGGER
CONTENT (may be
FAILURE
actions)
13
?Ty(t)
Ty(e),Fo(j)
4
?Ty(e  t),
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Lexical entries may make reference to nodes in the tree other than its trigger, either building
them, or annotating them. To allow this sort of reference, we make use of a number of actions
such as make, put, go, and of operators that enable reference to nodes within a tree. The theory
uses a Logic of Finite Trees (LOFT) which has a number of modal operators with the following
interpretations:
14
LOFT operators
From node n:
<0>X: X is argument daughter of n
<0>X: X is mother of argument n
<1>X: X is functor daughter of n
<1>X: X is mother of functor n
<>X: X is daughter of n
<>X: X is mother of n
<*>X: X is dominated by n
<*>X: X dominates n
<1*>X: X is dominated by n along its functor spine
<1*>X: X dominates n along its functor spine
IF
?Ty(e  t)
THEN go(<*>?Ty(t)), put(e < now), go(<*>?Ty(e  t)),
Tense information on top node
make(<1>), go(<1>), put(Ty(e  e  t),Fo(yx.Upset(e,x,y)),
Making and annotating the functor node
go(<1>), make(<0>), go(<0>), put(?Ty(e)).
Making and annotating the argument node
15
upset
16
John upset
?Ty(t), e < now
?Ty(e  t)
Ty(e),Fo(j)
Ty(e  e  t),Fo(yx.Upset(e,x,y)
?Ty(e),
17
John upset the woman
?Ty(t), e < now
Ty(e),Fo(j)
?Ty(e)
Ty(cn  e),Fo(P.(,z,P(z)))
5
?Ty(e  t)
Ty(e  e  t),Fo(yx.Upset(e,x,y))
Ty(cn),Fo(Woman),
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The tree can now be compiled and completed through type deduction: here, modus ponens
working in conjunction with functional application:
18
a: Ty()
b(a): Ty()
b: Ty(  )
To yield the annotation for the top node:
19
{Ty(t), e < now, Fo(Upset(e,j,(,z,Woman(z))))}
The theory allows underspecification that can only be fulfilled by pragmatic actions such as the
identification of the term to be substituted for a metavariable provided by a pronoun. The theory
of anaphora is thus based on substitution and metavariables are associated with a requirement for
a proper formula as annotation:
20
her
IF
?Ty(e)
THEN put(Ty(e),Fo(U),?x.Fo(x))
ELSE ABORT
21
John upset her: {Ty(t), e < now, Fo(Upset(e,j,(z,Woman(z))))}
Structural underspecification is used for accounting for extraction, where unfixed nodes are built
that are required to be fixed at some point in the parse. This is not important for this talk so I
shall not go into details here. In general, in this talk I am going to skip the technicalities of the
theory, except where necessary – I cannot, however, pretend that everything is a smooth
technically as I shall imply, but that’s another matter.
D
Semantic Case
So finally to case. Unusually, I shall start with a sketch of a theory of s-case that tries to account
for the obvious fact that the interpretation of independent cases is radically underspecified.
22a
22b
23a
23b
23c
Sie
studierte die
ganze Nacht.
she.nom studied the.acc whole night
‘She studied for the whole night.’
Das
kostet keinen Dollar.
that.nom cost no.acc dollar
‘That doesn’t cost a dollar.’
Er goß ihr die Pflanzen.
he.nom watered her.dat the.acc plants
‘He watered the plants for her.’
Er zündete ihr das Haus an.
he.nom set-on-fire her.dat the.acc house prt.
‘He set her house on fire.’
Laßt mir den Hund in Ruhe!
leave me.dat the.acc dog in peace
‘Leave my dog alone!’
While the accusative can be roughly glossed as denoting ‘extent’, it is clear that the actual
interpretation of the relation between the case-marked noun phrase and the predicate is
determined by the semantic properties of both the term and the predicate and pragmatic
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properties of the whole clause. Thus, in (22.a) the fact that we have an activity and term denoting
a temporal interval yields the interpretation of duration while in (22.b) with a state and money
we interpret the extent as an amount. The dative too has a range of meanings that are more or
less definable. In (23.a), the interpretation of ihr is most reasonably interpreted as a benefactive
while in (23.b) it is malefactive. Note, however, that this could vary depending on context: e.g. is
(23.a) is to be assessed in a situation where the plants are cacti and the season is winter or (23.b)
in a situation where Marie wants to get rid of the remains of her previous lover … In (23.c), we
have another underspecified relation where the dative is usually referred to as the ‘ethical’ dative
where the referent of the dative term is marked as somehow being ethically implicated in the
event. This may be as the owner of the dog, but need not be. She could be a bystander watching a
boy torturing some dog or other, but the use of the dative indicates that leaving the dog alone
would be somehow to her advantage or benefit. Whatever the actual interpretation it is clear that
what is said underspecifies the relation between referent and event and certainly does not assert
any specific relation. So it appears that case gives rise to inferential effects rather than the
assertion of some specific relation or property.
The question arises how to represent adjuncts within the framework. Within type theory and
categorial grammar, adjuncts are typically represented as functors from a type X to type X.
24
25
Adjuncts: Ty(X  X)
?Ty(e  t)
Ty(e  t),Fo(x.Water(e,x,(,y.Plants(y))))
die Pflanzen gießen
Ty((e  t)  (e  t)),Fo(f(U))
ihr
There are a number of arguments in the literature why treating all adjuncts in this way
(particularly PP adjuncts) is not appropriate. These generally have to do with the extensional
properties of such phrases (the analysis implies that such adjuncts modify the whole of the
predicate rather than express a relation between an individual and the event denoted by the verb).
But I shall not rehearse the arguments here. Suffice it to say that as far as case-marked noun
phrases are concerned there is no morphosyntactic reason to assume that a form like ihr (or any
other case-marked term) is ambiguous between two categories, a term and a complex functor
(indeed a set of complex functors to allow for NP internal modification as well as predicate
modification). There is no significant morphological difference between g-case markers and scase ones (although there may be phonological ones in some languages, E.g. Finnish where scase endings tend to be phonologically complex) and the internal structure of case-marked noun
phrases does not vary according to function. A uniform categorial assignment is thus preferable
to a polymorphic one wherever possible – as indeed is done in CS analyses where noun phrases
are noun phrases (however analysed) wherever they appear (modulo KP analyses, of course …).
Other reasons to do with extraction are also pertinent but again I will not go into details here.
Suffice it to say that I shall treat all case-marked terms as being of the same type, i.e. Ty(e), an
individual term. The question then is how the contribution of such terms as adjuncts is to be
analysed.
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I do not want to make the assumption that they are complements and so selected by a verb, as
suggested by Lutz Marten or implied by some HPSG approaches, but wish to maintain
something of the VP adjunction approach of P&P. I propose that adjuncts are type e arguments
under an e  t node but are in some sense external to the principal (internal) arguments of the
predicate. Unfortunately, the fairly standard VP adjunction structure is not open to us.
26
?Ty(e  t)
adjunct
?Ty(e)
?Ty(e  t)




not a legal deduction:
e,e  t  t
However, to maintain the idea that case-marked adjuncts are in some sense built upon a predicate
‘outside’ its internal arguments, I propose a deduction rule that takes a one place predicate (Ty(e
 t)) and extends it into a two-place predicate (Ty(e  e  t)):
27
?Ty(e  t)
adjunct
?Ty(e)
?Ty(e  e  t)
The resulting two-place predicate is the original predicate extended by a pragmatic variable that
specifies nothing more than that some relation or other exists between the case-marked term and
the event denoted by the verb (or analogously for nominals between the internal variable of a
term). This can be thought of as 'concept strengthening' in the RT literature in that the embedding
of a pragmatically extended predicate (involving some extra relation) into some model is more
restrcited than an embedding of the predicate alone. As a straightforward deduction rule this is
easy to state (28) although the proposed DS construction rule in (29) is pretty horrid:
28
P: e  t
yx.P(x) & R(E,y): e  e  t
29
(29) takes a to be completed predicate node and provides the information that this has two
daughters: an argument, Ty(e), daughter, and a two-place predicate functor daughter. The latter
has a formula that pragmatically extends a one-place predicate which forms its sole daughter. It
is possible that this be better analysed as two rules: one of Introduction (30a) and one of
Elimination (30b):
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On the assumption that one or the other of the construction possibilities are technically coherent,
this gives us an analogue of VP adjunction within DS without assuming a higher type for the
adjunct. But, of course, this says nothing at all about the case-marked adjuncts themselves. The
predicate adjunct rule just provides some very underspecified relation between an event and a
term without constraint, but, of course, the actual relation, although subject to pragmatic
influence, is constrained – by a preposition or a case-marking. To incorporate such constraints I
need to extend the notation of DS. Currently, the formula label just contains a lambda
expression, something that is asserted and that can input into some syntactic inferencing
mechanism to derive the actual proposition expressed by an utterance in context. However, not
all lexical content is of this sort. A lexical item may project, e.g., presuppositions that are not
directly asserted and do not necessarily directly input into any top level inferences, but which
constrain interpretation in other ways. We may treat case as providing very underspecified
‘presuppositions’ which help to constrain some general pragmatic relation associated with some
extended predicate.
I thus propose that lexical items, in addition to providing some semantic content in the form of a
lambda expression, may also provide some sort of context in which the content of the lambda
expression is to be evaluated. This is not a discourse context but a clause internal context
projected by lexical expressions. The context, which I shall refer to as an L-context, may include
things like real world gender, grammatical gender, person and number for pronouns,
grammatical gender and possibly person for nouns, perhaps 'thematic role' information, perhaps
more general lexical information – information that may not ultimately contribute directly to the
truth conditional content of the proposition expressed in an utterance but which may play some
other part in determining the content of that proposition.
I represent an L-context by a possibly null set of terms or propositions prefixed to the lambda
expression. These L-contexts are then propagated up a tree, but have all metavariables
instantiated as deduction proceeds (for reasons I won’t go into here):
31
32

Fo(P) for  an L-context consisting of a set of terms and propositions and P, a lambda
expression.
a: Ty()
′b: Ty(  )
′b(a): Ty()
For case, I represent the L-context it induces by a proposition with label , a set A of relations
that can be associated with some case-marking and two terms, one y is the term expressed by the
case-marked NP and x is the thing (event or individual) with which the term is associated.
30
(A,x,y) for A a set of relations, x and y terms

(A,x,y): true  a(x,y): true for some a  A.

(dat,e,y): dat = {for_the_benefit_of, to_the_detriment_of, ethically_concerns, …}
There may, of course, be some ‘central’ meaning of the dative which might give rise to a
singleton set of relations that transparently interacts with properties of the case-marked term and
the predicate to induce the required reading (as often asserted in some of the typological
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literature) or it may be that there is a prototypical concept of ‘dative’ that gives rise to
metaphorical extensions and an open-ended context set (as in Cognitive Grammar) or it could
simply be a closed set of relations that a hearer has already encountered being signalled by the
case. I leave these matters open here. What is important is that the case provides a context within
which some relation is to be identified but does not itself assert truth-conditional content. So we
get representations like those in (36):
36a
36b
die ganze Nacht: Fo({(acc,E,(,x,whole_night(x)))}(,x,whole_night(x)))
ihr: Fo({(dat,E,U), female(U), singular(U)}U)
NB. the dat and acc are not labels themselves, but are strictly sets of relations. This means that
certain case-marked nominals potentially project different sets of relations, even if marked with
the same case. So, for example, in Modern Greek (and similarly in French, Bernadette Plunkett
p.c.) only dative clitic pronouns will project the least specified dative relation,
ethically_concerns, while full noun phrases do not. (Note the case is strictly a genitive with
which the dative has merged in Modern Greek.)
37a
37b
37c
37c
mou arostise to pedi
me.gen was.sick the child
'The child was sick (and this concerned me)'
*emena arostise to pedi
me(strong)
arostise to pedi tis Marias
the.gen Maria.gen
'My child was sick' (No ethical reading)
tis Marias tou arostise to pedi
'The child was sick (and this concerned me)'
Interestingly, Clitic Doubling permits the inference of an ethical dative, indicating that it is the
clitic that licenses this. (Thanks to Ianthi Tsimpli and Theodora Alexopoulou for this
information.)
Individual cases may therefore vary in the information which they project depending on the
expression with which they are associated. Indeed it may be that certain case-marked expressions
come to have a single interpretation.
38
Accusative:
kharin 'for the sake of' (< kharis 'grace', Manner);
touto 'for this reason' (accusative neuter of 'this', Motive);
tí 'why' (< acc. neut. of 'who/what')
Within a derivation, metavariables in the L-context will be instantiated as soon as possible to
ensure that the contexts refer to the correct entities when they are propagated through the parse.
Notice, however, that there is no need to state separate propagation rules beyond the general rule
of type deduction in (32). L-contexts will in general persist (although it is possible to envisage
situations where information in a context will be lost as the result clause internal inference – this,
however, poses a problem for monotonicity, a central feature of the formalism). The fact that Lcontexts are propagated as part of the deductive process means that there is no real problem with
case-markers appearing on different elements in the noun phrase. For example, case may appear
on the noun only (e.g. Kannada (39.a)), on the noun and certain modifiers (e.g. determiner and
noun, but not adjective, in Yaqui (39.b), on determiner, adjective and noun in Classical Greek
(39.c)) or only on some modifier (as generally in Modern German (39.d)).
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39a
39b
39c
39d
Cann
naana ellaa maanara janaangaranne priitisattene
(Kannada)
I.nom all human community.acc love.1sg
'I love the whole human community'
ini-e
tu?I usi-ta=u
noka-?e
(Yaqui)
this-obl good child-obl=to speak-imp
'Speak to this good child'
ho
Sōkratēs
orgiz-etai
tois
agath-ois
polīt-ais (Greek)
the.nom.m.sg Socrates.nom.m.sg be-angry.3.sg.pres the.dat.m.pl good-dat.m.pl citizen-dat.m.pl
'Socrates is angry at the good citizens'
Dem
jungen
Mann wird
vom Lehrer geholfen.
(German)
the.dat.m.sg young.m.sg man become.3sg by.the teacher helped
‘The young man is being helped by the teacher.’
In all these cases, the case-marking induces an appropriate L-context with respect to the
expression on which it appears, and it does not matter on which item or how many times the
case-marking occurs: the contextual information is propagated up to the whole case-marked noun
phrase without the need for special rules.
To indicate how an analysis proceeds, consider (40):
40
?Ty(t)
*
*
{Ty(e),Fo(U)} {Ty(e  e  t),Fo(yx.Water(e,x,y))}
{Ty(e),Fo({(dat,E,V)}V)}
?Ty(e  t)
?Ty(e)
{?Ty(e  e  t),Fo(yx.P(x) & R(E,y))}
{?Ty(e  t),?Fo(P)}
{Ty(e),Fo(,y,plants(y))}

?Ty(e  e  t) 
Ty(t),Fo({(dat,e,m)}Water(e,j,(,x,Plants(x))) & R(e,m) (assuming U = j, V = m)

E
Structural Case
So far then we have the makings of a theory of s-case: a notion of an extension to a predicate that
appears with an adjunct and a theory of L-context that allows a case to restrict the radically
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underspecified pragmatic relation provided by the predicate extension. What, however, of
structural case?
I begin by looking at the case which, in Indo-European at any rate, appears to be purely
structural: the nominative. In all IE languages that I am aware of, the nominative is never used
independently and never contributes real semantic content. (The proto-agent concept of (e.g.)
Dowty is not in contradiction of this because Dowty is concerned with how predicates determine
their arguments independently of properties of the argument terms.) Its usual function is to mark
the subject (A/S) of a predicate it may also be used to mark the complements of copula clauses,
independent ‘topics’ and citation forms. All these function are illustrated in Classical Greek:
42
Nominative case (in Classical Greek)
a.
identifies S/A function (1st argument of predicate)
b.
marks complement of copula
c.
marks independent topic
d.
used for citation
43a
43b
43c
ho sos patēr phobeitai ‘Your father is afraid’
(X.C.3.1.22)
k
h
Kleark os p ugas ēn ‘Clearchus was a fugitive’
(X.A.1.1.9)
hoi de philoi, an tis epistētai autois khrēsthai, ti phēsomen autous einai; (X.O.1.14)
‘As for friends, if anyone knows how to treat them, what shall we call them?’
to d’humeis hotan legō, legō tēn polin ‘Whenever I say you, I mean the city’ (D.18.88)
43d
Furthermore, it appears that nominative is never selected by a predicate independently of one of
the functions in (43). This is certainly true of Classical (and Modern) Greek although there are
arguments in the literature that there may be nominative selection in German. Be that as it may,
the nominative does seem to be the archetypal structural case in Indo-European, as the absolutive
may be so characterised in many ergative/absolutive languages. And, of course, these cases are
often not morphologically marked.
I leave on one side the use of the nominative in its quotative function (as I do not have a theory
of such things) and in the complement of copular verbs (a use that should be attributed to
agreement since in non-finite clauses the complement will surface in the accusative). The other
two functions can, however, be represented as structural requirements in DS. The subject
requires the term to be attached as the first argument of the clause while the topic requires there
to be no dominating node (It is interpreted as being independent of the clause but LINKed to it):
44a
44b
subject function:
topic function:
<0>Ty(t)
[]
Note that, although (44) gives constraints on structural position, this is not constituent structure
or any analogue thereof. The structure is a logical structure so that the ‘subject’ function is
strictly the 1st argument of some predicate, associated with one and only one possible node in a
tree – the daughter of a Ty(t) node. It has no other interpretation.
Of course, the subject function in all IE languages is not just to be first argument of some
predicate but to be first argument of some finite predicate as in German (but not in Classical
Greek where subjects of infinitives may be nominative if they are co-referential with the
nominative subject of the higher predicate). Thus, we may interpret nominative marking not just
as imposing a requirement on its position but also on properties of the predicate, i.e. that it
should be finite, however that property may be manifested.
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This is clearly shown in the analysis of Germ der the masculine singular nominative definitive
article:
45
der
IF
?Ty(e)
THEN put(<0>?Ty(t)), go_first(<*>?Ty(t)), put(<*>?FINITE),
go(<*>?Ty(e)), make(<1>), go(<1>),
put(Ty(cn  e), Fo({3rd(U),masc(U),sg(U)}P.(,x,P(x))),
go(<1>), make(<0>), go(<0>), put(?Ty(cn))
ELSE ABORT
The finite verb itself imposes a restriction on the subject according to its personal ending, here
shown as a requirement on the L-context of the subject:
44
goß
IF
…
THEN go_first(<*>?Ty(t)), put(e < now, <0>?(Fo())  {3rd(U),sg(U)}), …
This sort of co-constraint between functor and argument looks very like a process of agreement
as has been suggested from time to time in the literature and it is possible that this should be
handled by whatever mechanisms determine this relation with DS (possibly as part of type
deduction over person values but this remains to be done).
In a language like Greek where nominative has more than one function lexical entries will be
concomitantly more complex. (46) assumes that the word is functioning as an indefinite term
(which is slightly problematic but simplifies the exntry considerably):
46
graus IF
?Ty(e)
THEN IF
[]
THEN put(Ty(e),
Fo({3rd((,x,old_woman(x))),feminine((,x,old_woman(x))),
sg((,x,old_woman(x)))}(,x,old_woman(x)))
Topic
ELSE IF
<*>?Ty(t)
THEN put(Ty(cn), <0>?Ty(t),
Finite subject
Fo({3rd((,x,old_woman(x))),feminine((,x,old_woman(x))),sg(U)}
(,x,old_woman(x))), go_first(<*>?Ty(t)), put(<1*>?FINITE)
ELSE ABORT
i.e. if nothing dominates my most local dominating term node, then just assert my semantic
content. If there is a Ty(t) node dominating that node then put the semantic content and a
requirement for an immediately dominating Ty(t) node; then go to the first ?Ty(y) node and put a
requirement that somewhere along the functor spine there should be a finite predicate. The
nominative term must thus be interpreted as ‘topic’ or the 1st argument of some finite predicate.
So we now have a theory of case-marked adjuncts and an idea of how purely structural case is
realised as conditions on tree position to ensure that terms are interpreted as the appropriate
argument of a predicate. What of cases that may perform a range of functions, both free and
structural?
Returning to the accusative in Greek, we have already seen that it may be used independently,
may mark the DO argument and to act as the subject of a non-finite predicate. The latter two
functions may be associated with the two structural properties of the Ty(e) node:
48
13
O function:
<0>Ty(e  t)
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S/A function (non-finite):
Cann
<0>Ty(t) & <0><1*>NON-FINITE
Leaving aside the strong possibility that the case-marking of non-finite subjects is the result of
agreement, we can postulate lexical entries such as (49) for accusative terms headed by the
definite article:
49
ton
IF
?Ty(e)
THEN IF
<*>?Ty(t)
THEN make(<0>), go(<0>), put(?Ty(cn)),
Subject of non-finite
go(<0>), make(<1>), go(<1>),
put(Ty(cn  e)), Fo({masc(U),sg(U)}P(,x,P(x)))),
go_first(<>?Ty(t)), put(<1*>?NON-FINITE)
ELSE
put(<0>?Ty(e  t)),
Adjunct & object
make(<0>), go(<0>), put(?Ty(cn)),
go(<0>), make(<1>), go(<1>),
put(Ty(cn  e)), Fo({(acc,E,U), masc(U),sg(U)}P(,x,P(x)))),
[Note that it is possible to generalise across entries of this sort to extrapolate the information
directly associated with case, but for ease of understanding I will not do this here.]
Notice here that the first condition (which again for convenience sake I have rather simplified!)
does not add the L-context of the case. This captures the fact that case-marking in this context
never contributes inferential effect. The participant role of the term is entirely determined by the
predicate. [As we would expect if this is in fact the result of an agreement process.] The second
condition covers both adjunct and object functions of the accusative. It requires a dominating
predicate node and asserts the accusative context. The difference between the interpretations of
these two functions is straightforwardly accounted for.
In the adjunct case, illustrated in (50), the extended predicate provides a variable relation
between the event it denotes and a term that needs to be instantiated for the expression to be
interpretable. The accusative context provides a range of possible relations with the same
arguments and so is used (necessarily by Relevance Theory) to identify that relation and so
identify the role of the term within the event. The case-marking is thus semantically potent.
50a
50b
emeinen hēmeras hepta. 'S/he remained seven days.' (X.A.1.2.6)
{(acc,e,(,x,7_days(x)),3rd(U),sg(U)}Remain(e,U) & R(e,(,x,7_days(x)))
In the object case (51), the accusative term is an argument of the predicate and there is no
pragmatic variable to be identified and the role of the accusative is determined by the predicate.
The contextual restriction provided by the accusative marking thus does not have to do any work
and, again by RT considerations, will not do so: it will not yield significant inferential effects and
so is not semantically potent.
51a
51b
ton Sōkratē misei. 'S/he hates Socrates.'
{(acc,e,s),3rd(U),sg(U)}Hate(e,U,s)
Of course, there are situations when case does contribute something to the interpretation even
when it marks an argument of a predicate. Thus, there are predicates that vary in the case they
appear with and the different cases induce different interpretations of that predicate. For
example, the verb timōrein means ‘to avenge’ or ‘take vengeance’ but may take either the
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accusative, when it means take vengeance on someone, or the dative, when it means to avenge
someone or take vengeance on behalf of someone. The case-markers here clearly determine the
sense intended but they appear not to be adjunct uses because the case of the object argument
changes in the passive. Hence, the case of arguments may be semantically potent in certain
contexts and so the L-context it induces must be available even if not fully independent.
52a
52b
timōrein + acc: ‘avenge (self) on someone’
timōrein + dat: ‘avenge someone’
In the entries above, I have indicated the structural conditions associated with g-cases as
requirements for the type of their immediately dominating node. However, while this
requirement is in a sense satisfied within an appropriate tree, there is currently in the theory no
way of actually eliminating the requirement. While it may be fairly trivial to rectify the problem,
a more interesting solution poses itself. Rachel Nordlinger (1998) suggests within the framework
of LFG that case may be interpreted as building its own functional structure independently of the
predicate. While she argues for this position using data from Australian languages (which alas I
do not have time to reconstruct), such a process could be postulated for a number of IndoEuropean languages with fairly free word order. Instead of treating Classical Greek as being
mostly fixed (like English) or mostly unfixed (as in the Kempson et al. treatment of Japanese),
one could treat it as a mixed system utilising unfixed partial structures. These structures will be
induced by the case-marking of a term. For example, an accusative nominal may build the
appropriate predicate structure which will be merged with the structure projected by the
predicate. Part of the entry for ton, the accusative masculine singular definite article would then
appear as in (53) (and the common noun entry in (49) would be concomitantly simplified).
(53)
ton
IF
?Ty(t)
THEN … (accusative and infinitive)
ELSE make(<*>), put(?Ty(e  t)), make(<1>), go(<1>),
put(?Ty(e  e  t)), go(<1>), make(<0>), go(<0>), put(?Ty(e)),
make(<0>), go(<0>), put(?Ty(cn)), go(<0>), make(<1>), go(<1>),
put(Ty(cn  e)),Fo({(acc,E,U),masc(U),sg(U)}P(,x,P(x))))
The precise mechanics of this remain to be worked out, but it would seem to provide an account
not only of the function of g-case, to construct partial trees, but also of clause internal
scrambling.
F
Selected Case
Finally, we need to look at selected case. Unlike structural case, in many languages selected case
either cannot be input into GF changing processes or is not affected by such operations. Consider
the German data in (54) to (57):
54a
Ich wasche den Wagen
I.nom wash the.acc car
‘I am washing the car’
54b
Der
Wagen wird
gewaschen
the.nom car
becomes washed
‘The car is being washed’
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55a
55b
55c
56a
56b
56c
57a
57b
57c
Cann
Der
Professor lehrt die
Studenten jede Woche einen neuer Ansatz
the.nom professor teaches the.acc students every week a.acc new approach
‘The professor teaches the students a new approach every week’
?Die Studenten wurde jede Woche ein neuer Ansatz gelehrt.
the.acc students
a.nom
‘A new approach was taught (to) the students every week’
*Die
Studenten wurde jede Woche einen neuer Ansatz gelehrt
the.nom
a.acc
Jemand
hilft mir.
someone.nom helps me.dat
‘Someone is helping me’
Mir wird
geholfen.
me.dat becomes help.part
‘I am being helped’
*Ich
wird geholfen.
me.nom
Das Mädchen gedenke
seines Freundes.
the.nom girl commemorates her.gen friend
‘The girl commemorates her friend’
Seines Freundes wird gedacht.
her.gen friend becomes commemorate.part
‘Her friend is being commemorated’
*Sein Freund wird gedacht.
her.nom
We see in (54) a normal structural accusative object which appears in the nominative in the
passive. In (55), there are two accusatives, one ein neuer Ansatz is structural and so may appear
in the nominative in the passive, while the other die Studenten is selected and so cannot appear
in the nominative.1 In (56) and (57), we have dative and genitive arguments which are not
independent of the predicate and which persist in the passive (where they have been argued to be
subjects). This pattern indicates that selected case arises as a requirement by the predicate that
must be satisfied (and that persists in different contexts).
How is this requirement to be specified? It cannot be a requirement for a specific L-context
because of the fact that such a context may be projected by an embedded term. For example, the
nominative noun phrase in (58a) will have a dative L-context projected by the term that is
dependent on the adjective. But as (58c) shows this context does not satisfy the requirement for a
dative argument projected by helfen.
58a
58b
58c
Der
seiner Frauen
treue Mann
the.nom his.dat woman.dat true man
‘The man (who is) true to his wife’
{(dat,x,(,y,Wife(y))),…}(,x,Man(x) & True(x,(,y,Wife(y))))
*Sie hilft der seiner Frauen treue Mann
So a predicate does not select an L-context, but there is nothing to stop it requiring a case label
with a particular value independently of Fo. Consider (a simplified!) lexical entry for the verb
form hilft:
1
Actually, it seems that many speakers prefer the students to be in dative in which case the passive in (52.b) is fully
acceptable (with den Studenten).
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59
hilft
Cann
IF
?Ty(e e  t)
THEN …
put(Ty(e e  t),Fo(yx.Help(e,x,y)),
go(<>), put(<0>(?Ty(e),?(dat,e,U))
ELSE …
The requirement for the case label can then be used as a trigger for dative terms which merely
annotate the node with the relevant case label and do not project a L-context, as illustrated in the
lexical entry for ihm:
60
ihm
IF
?(Ty(e),?(dat,E,U))
THEN put(Ty(e),(dat,E,V),Fo({masc(V),sg(V)}V))
ELSE IF
?Ty(e)
THEN put(Ty(e), Fo({(dat,E,V), masc(V),sg(V)}V))
ELSE ABORT
What (60) shows is that there are two conditions for triggering ihm (and other dative-marked
terms) in German: where a predicate requires the case and no context is projected by the term
and where there is no case requirement and the term is independently interpreted. Note that in
German the actions of the active verb are carried over to the passive. The information projected
by geholfen is almost identical to that of the active, modulo the ‘absorption’ of the active 1st
argument, as shown in (61). The dative requirement now, however, maps onto the 1st argument,
i.e. subject, node and so surfaces in the passive. [The failure of the 2nd accusative argument to
passivise in (56.c) is due to the fact that the related action imposes a restriction on the 2nd, object,
node.]
61
geholfen
IF
?Ty(e  t)
THEN …
put(Ty(e  t),Fo(y.Help(e,a,y)),
go(<>), put(<0>(?Ty(e),?(dat,e,U))
ELSE …
I have already noted that even selected case may be semantically significant. However, this
appears to be a property of the predicate rather than the term. Going back to Classical Greek, I
have stated that timōrein differs in interpretation when taking an accusative and when taking a
dative, a difference that can (at least in part) be attributed to the case marking. The dative is a
structural case in Greek but indicates the indirect object or 3rd argument not the direct or 2nd
argument. Hence, with the dative case timōrein must select the appropriate label. Greek differs
from German, however, in allowing certain (especially human denoting) datives to passivise
irrespective of whether the dative is structural or selected (although independent datives never
passivise as far as I am aware). In order to maintain the hypothesis that selected case-marked
terms do not project semantic information (in general true), for the dative context to be available
in this instance it must be projected by the verb itself. So we have the partial lexical entry for
timōrein in (62):
62
17
timōrein
IF
?Ty(e e  t)
THEN EITHER
put(Ty(e e  t),
Fo({(dat,e,U)}yx.avenge(e,x,y))),
go(<1>), put(<0>(?Ty(e),?(dat,e,U)))
OR
put(Ty(e e  t), Fo(yx.avenge(e,x,y)))
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We may speculate that idiosyncratic case marking proceeds diachronically from independent use
(63a), through selection plus projection of context (63b) to selection without the projection of
context (63c):
63a
63b
63c
{(dat,e,U)}yx.avenge(e,x,y))) & R(e,U)
{(dat,e,U)}yx.avenge(e,x,y)))
yx.avenge(e,x,y)))
Ergative and Active Languages
A. Theory is extendable to ergative/absolutive systems without problems:
 Absolutive: often not morphologically marked. Projects neither context nor structural
restriction.
 Ergative: projects a context (including ‘agentive’ relations) and imposes a 1-argument
condition on position (<0>Ty(t)).
In strict ergative languages (where the case only marks A function in structure), the marker
will impose a requirement on the most local Ty(t) node to have a local transtive predicate
(go_first(<*>?Ty(t)), put(?<1*>Ty(e  e  t)).
Warlpiri:
karnta-ngku ka-rla
kurdu-ku miyi
yi-nyi.
woman-erg pres-3dat baby-dat food.abs give-npst
'The woman is giving food to the baby’
Again in strict ergative languages the predicate may have to impose an ergative requirement on
its subject (although this requirement could be derived). However, in many languages human or
highly animate ‘subjects’ may appear in the absolutive. There are two effects of this:
 ‘subject’ loses some agentive property:
Woman-erg hit child.abs
Woman.abs hit child.abs
= ‘The woman hit the child (intentionally)’
= ‘The woman hit the child (unintentionally)’
 high animacy terms do not receive ergative marking:
man.abs hit kangaroo.abs
= ‘The man hit the kangaroo’
 ‘The kangaroo hit the man’
man.abs hit kangaroo-erg
= ‘The kangaroo hit the man’
(cf. Object marking with humans in some Bantu languages)
In so-called active languages, unergative and unaccusative subjects are distinguished by casemarking:
Unergative subjects in ergative:
woman-erg laugh
Unaccusative subjects in absolutive: woman.abs is-hungry
Notice there is no characterisation of ‘grammatical subject’ so no need to force ergatives into a
nom/acc mould – BUT we do keep the intuition that ergative is a 1-argument, the most active
participant.
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Conclusion
What I have tried to do in this talk is to sketch a theory of paradigmatic case as being something
that projects information from a case-marked term which has different effects in different
contexts. In particular, I have tried to account for three specific functions of case:
64a
64b
64c
Independent (s-)case: Projection of L-context to constrain interpretation of a pragmatic extension
to a predicate.
Structural case: Projection of structural requirement and of L-context which may, or may not, be
used in interpretation of the role of the case-marked term.
Selected case: Projection of case label as satisfaction for some requirement imposed by a
predicate.
With respect to what predicates project we have:
65a
65b
65c
Adjunct extension: Projection of underspecified relation between a term and an event.
Structural argument selection: No projection beyond type of predicate.
Case selection: Projection of requirement for a case label annotating an argument node.
Clearly, I have not given a full account of case in any one language nor have I had time to
discuss some of the interesting consequences that this approach to case has for ergative and
active languages. However, I hope that my hopping around between German and Classical Greek
gives you an idea of how Dynamic Syntax can provide an account of case in context that
captures the way it interacts with other factors to give rise to different inferential effects.
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