Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 9Morphological case in nominative languages such as German or Latin. Noun phrasesin the accusative case generally function syntactically as a direct object (Ger. Er liest einBuch ‘He is reading a book’). The accusative case can also serve to indicate adverbialfunctions and/or relations (Ger. den ganzen Tag lachen ‘to laugh all day’), or predicativecomplements (Ger. Sie schimpft ihn einen Dummkopf ‘She calls him an idiot’). Inaddition, the accusative also occurs after certain prepositions (Ger. gegen ‘against,’ Lat.ante ‘before’). There can also be cognate accusatives ( cognate object) in which thesemantic content of the verb is repeated by a nominal element in the accusative case (e.g.to dream a dream).ReferencesMoravcsik, E.A. 1978. Case marking of objects. In J.H.Greenberg (ed.), Universals of humanlanguage. Stanford, CA. Vol. 4, 250–89.case, direct objectaccusative languagenominative languageaccusative plus infinitive construction (alsosubject to object raising)Syntactic construction consisting of an accusative object and a verb in the infinitivewhich occurs with verbs of saying and perception (I heard him sing) as well ascausatives (e.g. to have: The judge had the defendant come forward; to let: Thepoliceman let him go). This type of construction is often analyzed as two underlyingsentences with the accusative functioning both as the underlying subject of the infinitiveas well as the object of the dominant verb. In the framework of transformationalgrammar this analysis is called raising. Causative constructions are handled in a similarway, for example, in Japanese.ReferencesBech, G. 1955–7. Studien über das deutsche Verbum infinitum, 2 vols. Copenhagen. (Repr.Tübingen 1983.)Harbert, W. 1977. Clause union and the German accusative plus infinitive constructions. In P.Coleand J.M.Sadock (eds), Grammatical relations. New York. 121–50.McKay, T. 1985. Infinitival complements in German: lassen, scheinen and the verbs of perception.Cambridge.