The importance of meaning in understanding case: Understanding case-marking in four-place predicates

Abstract

The importance of meaning in understanding case: Understanding case-marking in four-place predicates. Cathryn Donohue The University of Hong Kong In this paper I present an overview of case marking data from a range of languages, with a special focus on Basque. In particular, I focus on data where three-place predicates, such as give, are causativized. This results in a four-place predicate, one more than ever occurs naturally. There is thus a maximum of only three structural cases to mark these four core arguments and it is not obvious how structural case should be assigned. I focus on Basque and discuss how Lexical Decomposition Grammar (LDG; e.g. Kiparsky 1997, Wunderlich 1997 and others), which takes the predicate and decomposes it into its core meaning, has many benefits for understanding and analyzing these data. Working with LDG in an Optimality Theoretic framework enables an analysis of the data in Basque that also extends across time and space to capture the desired typology.