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AgrSP
AgrS
e
3s
AgrS'
T
4.2.5 V S O order
TP
X
T'
Vi X
ju
'be tall
and straight'
XP
X'
VP
ti ni eo
'the coconut tree'
One final virtue of the analysis I have presented for Marshallese declaratives is that it can
explain why V S O order is not possible in Marshallese. In pursuit of this explanation, I
turn to an idea proposed by Belletti (2001, 2004), who rules out the same word order in
Italian. Belletti argues that the ungrammaticality of V S O stems from the way accusative
case is assigned. Following Chomsky (2001, 2002), she assumes that both nominative
and accusative case may be assigned non-locally as opposed to through a spec-head
relationship. Therefore nominative case may be assigned by T to a postverbal subject
through an Agree relationship. In a similar fashion, Belletti proposes that accusative case
is also assigned to the object via Agree, but rather than assuming that accusative case is
assigned within the verb phrase, she assumes that it is assigned by an accusative case
assigning head (Acc) that heads Acc(usative)P. This AccP, she argues, is higher in the
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