Case alternation and event structure: Evidence from Russian and Lithuanian
Cori Anderson
Princeton University
Russian and Lithuanian share two usages of instrumental case: instrumental with verbs of moving
body parts, as in (1a) and (2a), and with verbs of making sound, as in (1c) and (2c). Lithuanian, unlike
Russian, allows accusative with such predicates as well (Ambrazas 2007), with a subtle difference in
meaning: the accusative indicates the object (body part, source of sound) is an affected patient rather than
a means for performing the action. For verbs of making sound, it is also important to note that these
predicates can function intransitively, with the source of the sound as the sole argument, shown in (1d)
and (2d). Unlike unaccusative predicates that have transitive counterparts, the addition of an external
argument does not result in accusative case on the internal argument. Verbs of moving body parts do not
license instrumental by virtue of the internal argument being a body part; verbs that involve the change of
position of a body part do allow accusative, even in Russian, as in (1b) and (2b). The case alternation
presents two problems: how is instrumental case licensed, and what is the syntactic difference that allows
accusative to be licensed in both verbs in Lithuanian, but only change-of-position verbs in Russian.
Following Pylkkänen 2008 and Lavine 2010, I assume that the argument-introducing and
transitivity properties of v are split between two functional heads, v-VOICE and v-CAUSE, respectively; see
(3). Russian and Lithuanian differ in which v’s can merge with the V root: both allow v-VOICE, but only
Lithuanian allows v-CAUSE, and thus accusative case. This is further supported by the morphology of
verbs of making sound, many of which have the old causative suffix -(d)y-/-(d)in-. In the intransitive,
non-causative versions of such verbs, accusative is barred (Ambrazas 2007). The instrumental case is a
property of V (or licensed below v), assuming unaccusative predicates do not have vP shells. However,
the instrumental is not licensed without the presence of an external argument, thus it is dependent both on
the verb and the syntactic environment. Svenonius 2006 proposes a similar bipartite case-licensing
structure for accusative and dative in Icelandic: accusative requires V and AgrO (under my analysis, vCAUSE) while dative requires VD and a higher VOICE head. I propose that instrumental is licensed in
verbs of moving body parts (by v-VOICE and VI), dyadic verbs of sound (v-VOICE and VI), and is absent in
the monadic verbs (no v-VOICE to check instrumental). Also, this allows the instrumental on the causative
Lithuanian verbs of sound; it is licensed by checking a case feature on V and the v-VOICE head, despite
the presence of v-CAUSE.
I will also argue that the accusative, allowed in Lithuanian for both types of verbs and on Russian
change-of-position verbs involving body parts, does not come from a lack of the instrumental feature on
the V. Rather, these verbs always occur with the feature to license instrumental, but a difference in event
structure allows the accusative to override the instrumental. Because the accusative in the Lithuanian
alternation yields an interpretation of affectedness, it can be considered a telic predicate when this case
occurs (Tenny 1994). Following Ramchand 2008, the telicity is due to the presence of a result subevent,
which is represented in the syntactic structure as a R(esult) head. This head hosts an argument, the holder
of the result, which can remerge as the internal argument (an UNDERGOER in Ramchand’s terminology),
as shown in (3). If accusative is linked to telicity (cf. Richardson 2007), then the NPi in (3) gets a case
feature from telicity head R, and the instrumental feature of V is not licensed on the internal argument.
The accusative case feature must still check on the higher v-CAUSE head, which is why the non-causative
verbs of sound never allow accusative. By decomposing the verb phrase into the subevents it entails, we
see the relationships between event structure and argument structure, and by extension, case.
(1)
a. Anna požala
*pleči/✓plečami
Anna shrugged shoulders.ACC/INST
‘Anna shrugged her shoulders’
b. Anna skreščivala nogi/*nogami
Anna crossed
legs.ACC/*INST
‘Anna crossed her legs’
RUSSIAN
c. Okhrannik brenčal *ključi/✓ključami
guard
jingled keys.ACC/INST
‘The guard jingled the keys’
d. Ključi/*ključami brenčali v karmane
keys.NOM/*INST jingled in pocket
‘The keys jingled in the pocket’
(2)
(3)
a. Ona traukė
pečius/pečiais
LITHUANIAN
Ona shrugged shoulders.ACC/INST
‘Ona shrugged her shoulders’
b. Ona sukrižiavo kojas/*kojomis
Ona crossed legs.ACC/*INST
‘Ona crossed her legs’
c. Apsaugininkas žvang-in-o
raktus/raktais
guard
jingle-CAUS-PST keys.ACC/INST
‘The guard jingled the keys’
d. Raktai/*raktais žvangėjo/*žvang-in-o
kišinyje
keys.NOM/*INST jingled/*jingle-CAUS-PST pocket.LOC
‘The keys jingled in the pocket’
[[v-VOICEP
NP:EA
v-VOICE’
v-VOICE]]
v-CAUSEP
v-CAUSE
VP
V’
NPi
VI
Res
NPi
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