Case mismatches in Greek: Evidence for the autonomy of morphology

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188 manuel espaol-echevarra and angela ralli (a) Why is nominative the only alternative Case value for CLLD constituents, as shown in (11)(12), which involve a dative and an accusative dislocated constituent respectively 11 (11) (a) ()O Pavlos, tu pirane to pedi the-nom Paul-nom, him-gen took-away-3pl the kid (b) Tu Pavlu, tu pirane to pedi the-gen Paul-gen, him-gen took-away-3pl the kid `They took the kid away fromPaul' (c) *Ton Pavlo, tu pirane to pedi the-acc Paul-acc, him-gen took-away-3pl the kid (12) (a) ()I tites, i kathijites tus agapane olus the students-nom, the professors-nom them-acc love-3pl all-acc `The professors love all the students' (or The students, the professors love them all) (b) Tus tites, i kathijites tus agapane olus the students-acc, the professors-nom them-acc love-3pl all-acc `The professors love all the students' (or The students, the professors love them all) (c) *Ton titon, i kathijites tus agapane olus the students-gen, the professors-nom them-acc love-3pl all-acc (b) Why do Nominative, Accusative, and Genitive behave dierently in free relatives contexts, which combine a CLLD-chain and a wh-chain, cf. section 1 We deal with the questions in (a) and (b) in sections 2.2 and 2.3, respectively. 11 As shown by the following example, the sentence becomes ungrammatical if the dislocated constituent appears in Vocative. (i) *Pavle, tu pirane to pedi Paul-voc, him-gen took-away-3pl the kid Vocative is the fourth value of the Greek Case system, but it will not be considered here because of its special character: it is the case form of address and marks constituents that stand outside construction, bearing no relation of dependents to heads. On the other hand, as shown byKuryowicz (1964, 188), Nominative, Accusative and Genitive are the most grammatical cases, that is the cases closely related to grammatical relations. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47, 2000
2.2. Nominative as a default Case value case mismatches in greek 189 With respect to the rst question above, we would like to claim that Nominative acts as a default Case value in CLLD contexts. Since non-movement chain formation does not involve identity of ;Interpretable features, as claimed in (10), any Casevalue could be possible in CLLD contexts. Furthermore, CLLD contexts do not involve Case-checking congurations for the dislocated constituent, and we might expect checking of any Case feature on a CLLD constituent to be excluded, as opposed to what we have seen in Greek. The data we have considered so far show that the dislocated constituent mayhave either the same Case value as the one on the clitic, or Nominative (cf. (11)(12)). Our proposal then is that Nominative is assigned within morphology and its presence in syntax can be considered as that of a default Case value which becomes possible for two reasons: (a) dislocated constituents and their doubling clitics do not need to agree in Case (cf. (10)), and (b) all Greek nominals must bear a Case value, as a consequence of their morphological make-up. The fact in (b) leads to the possibility of the presence of a default value in nominals for which no particular value is syntactically justied. There are many pieces of independent evidence which square quite well with the idea that Nominative should be considered as the default option in the Greek Case system. For instance, Nominative has always been the Case outside construction in Greek, the Case for naming (onomazo in Ancient Greek). According to Humbert (1960, 249), it can be conceived independently of any grammatical/syntactic relations. On the other hand, Jakobson (1958) attributes the close relationship between Nominative and the concept of topichood (an observation that goes back to Aristotle) to the fact that Nominative is the Case value with less relational content. 12 Thus, it is not unreasonable to claim that in a non-checking syntactic conguration, such as the one involving left- 12 The idea that the default use of Nominative is related to the notion of topichood is also exploited by Alexiadou Varlokosta (1996). In their paper, the authors characterize left-dislocated constituents as instances of hanging topics marked for a default Nominative value (1996, 20). They claim that non-matching left-dislocated free relatives are also instances of hanging topics. According to Alexiadou Varlokosta (1996, 20) the default Nominative case and the presence of a resumptive clitic (cf. (i)) are characteristics of hanging topics: (i) Opjos argisi ton timorun whoever-nom is late him-(cl)-acc punish-3pl Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47, 2000
Page 1 and 2: Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Vol. 47
Page 3 and 4: case mismatches in greek 181 howeve
Page 5 and 6: case mismatches in greek 183 (5) (a
Page 7 and 8: case mismatches in greek 185 2. The
Page 9: case mismatches in greek 187 tween
Page 13 and 14: case mismatches in greek 191 often
Page 15 and 16: case mismatches in greek 193 (17) M
Page 17 and 18: case mismatches in greek 195 that,
Page 19 and 20: case mismatches in greek 197 (c) I
Page 21 and 22: case mismatches in greek 199 value.
Page 23 and 24: case mismatches in greek 201 in Ger
Page 25: case mismatches in greek 203 Smyth,

Case mismatches in Greek: Evidence for the autonomy of morphology

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