Chapter 9 - LOT publications

Accounts of SLI in Afrikaans
(167e) Wat? *My/Ek jou verkul? Nooit nie!
‘What? Me/I cheat on you? Never!’
On the one hand, it would appear from (167) that Afrikaans differs from
English in terms of default case. The default case in English is claimed to
be accusative, but the same cannot be claimed for Afrikaans. On the
other hand, Afrikaans also appears to differ from German, for which the
default case is claimed to be nominative. As regards example (166a),
Afrikaans and German are the same. However, Afrikaans resembles
English and not German as regards constructions similar to that given in
example (166b), as shown in (168). 159,160
(168a) *Ek/My, my het hy geslaan
‘I/Me, me he hit’
(168b) *Sy/Haar, haar het hy gesien
‘She/Her, her he saw’
When considering the examples in (167) and (168), it appears that the
default case in Afrikaans is not obviously either nominative or
accusative. However, one could argue that the left-most ek/my in (168a)
and sy/haar in (168b) are fronted, with the second instance being a
repetition; i.e., the ek/my and sy/haar are not base-generated in a left
peripheral topic position. 161 If this is the case, then the examples in (168)
should receive less emphasis when considering default case than those in
159 The Afrikaans equivalents of examples (166c-d) do not provide evidence as to the
default case of Afrikaans: (166c) translates as Laat my jou liefling wees, where the secondperson
pronoun will be jou regardless of its case. However, a sentence such as Laat ek
jy/*jou wees en jy ek/*my ‘Let me be you and you be me’ clearly shows that predicate
nominals bear nominative case in Afrikaans. In (166d), Afrikaans would not permit an
article before the proper noun, and even if it did, the form of the article would be die,
regardless of the case of the DP die Hans.
160 As mentioned in note 158, it should be possible to have a contrastive left dislocated
constituent with accusative case in German. Mich, mich hat er geschlagen ‘Me, me he hit’
should therefore also be acceptable (similar to Mij, mij heeft ie geslagen being acceptable in
Dutch). If this is the case, then Afrikaans resembles both English and German in this
respect.
161 Compare English wh-question constructions such as Who (yes) who did it?, Dutch ones
such as Wie (ja) wie heeft het gedaan?, and Afrikaans ones such as Wie (ja) wie het dit gedoen?,
where the left-most wh-element is not base-generated in this left-most position but is
rather a repeated wh-element.
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