Sank's Glossary of Linguistics
Cas-Chh |
CASE CONNECTIVITY
(Syntax) Merchant (2001) employs Case connectivity effects as an argument for clausal ellipsis in Sluicing. As shown in (1), the Case of the wh-phrase in German Sluicing has to match that of the corresponding indefinite phrase in the antecedent clause. Similarly, a Stripping remnant must have the same Case as its contrastive phrase in the antecedent clause, as in (2) (Nakao 2009, Jurka p.c.). Example (3) shows that Why-Stripping also shows Case connectivity in that the remnant and the correlate of Why-Stripping bear the same Case.
- Sluicing
Er
he
will
wants
jemandem
someone.DAT
schmeicheln,
to.flatter
aber
but
Sie
they
wissen
know
nicht,
not
*wer/*wen/wem
who.*NOM/*ACC/DAT
'He wants to flatter someone, but they don't know who.'
- Stripping
Peter
Peter
will
wants
der
the.DAT
Sekretärin
secretary
gefallen,
to.please,
aber
but
nicht
not
dem/*den
the.DAT/*ACC
Chef.
boss
'Peter wants to please the secretary, but not the boss.'
- Why-Stripping
A:
Peter
Peter
will
wants
der
the.DAT
Sekretärin
secretary
gefallen.
to.please
B:
Warum
why
der/*die
the.DAT/*ACC
Sekretärin?
secretary
A: 'Peter wants to please the secretary.' B: 'Why the secretary?'
| Chizuru Nakao, Masaya Yoshida, and Ivan Ortega-Santos, 2012
CASE CONTAINMENT HYPOTHESIS
(Morphosyntax) One growing area in the syntax/morphosyntax literature is research on the case containment hypothesis, according to which some morphosyntactic cases are in a structural (hierarchical) containment relationship (Caha 2009, 2019, Moska and Smith 2015, Zompì 2017, Smith et al. 2019, Davis 2023, a.o.). Very briefly, the main claim of the case containment hypothesis is that structural (morphosyntactic) case is internally complex, and more complex cases structurally contain the less complex ones. Caha (2009) argues for the containment hierarchy in (1), where accusative case structurally contains nominative, and is structurally contained by genitive. Similarly, genitive is contained by dative and so on.
- [ [ [ [ [ [ NOM ] ACC ] GEN ] DAT ] INSTR ] COM ]
The main evidence for the case containment hypothesis comes from a cross-linguistic ban on
ABA patterns (*ABA) on case-driven suppletion patterns, and cross-linguistic case syncretisms,
i.e., two distinct cases surfacing with the same morphological form.
A different containment hierarchy as in (2), following dependent case theory (Baker 2015),
is proposed by Smith et al. (2019), where dependent cases (e.g. accusative) structurally contain
unmarked cases (e.g. nominative) and are contained by oblique cases (e.g. locative).
- [ [ [ UNMARKED ] DEPENDENT ] OBLIQUE ]
Under both views, the proposed containment is on the abstract / structural level, and is not necessarily represented in the surface (morphological) form. For example, according to the case containment hypothesis, the English pronoun us structurally contains its nominative counterpart we, even though us does not morphologically (or phonologically) contain we (e.g. Caha 2009). | Metehan Oǧuz and Elsi Kaiser, 2024
CASE FILTER
- (Syntax) The traditional requirement that nouns have Case. | Željko Bošković, 2007
- (Syntax) The key element of Case Theory is the proposal that all lexical
NPs (i.e., NPs other than PRO or NP-trace) require Case, even in Modern English, where the morphological exponence of case is limited to the pronominal system. This proposal (which Chomsky attributes to Jean-Roger Vergnaud) is formalized as the Case Filter, given in one version here in (1).
- *NP if NP has phonetic content and has no Case (Chomsky 1981)
| Jonathan David Bobaljik and Susi Wurmbrand, 2012
CASE-MARKED SLUICING
- (Syntax) The case-marker on the wh-remnant is optional in Japanese. Those with case-markers are called C(ase)M(arked)-sluicing, and those without are called Non-CM-sluicing. The CM-sluicing requires a linguistic antecedent and respects subjacency, contrary to the non-CM-sluicing. | Ting-Chi Wei, 2009
- (Syntax) In non-case-marked sluicing, remnants do not include case markers. | Akari Ohba, Hiroyuki Shimada, and Kyoko Yamakoshi, 2018
- (Syntax)
- Japanese case-marked sluicing (Fukaya and Hoji 1999)
John-wa
John-TOP
otooto-ni
brother-DAT
nanika-o
something-ACC
okuttekita
sent
hito-o
person-ACC
syootaisita
invited
rasiiga,
seem.but
*boku-wa
I-TOP
nani-o
what-ACC
ka
Q
siranai.
know.not.
'It seems that John invited a person who had sent something to his brother, but I don't know what.'
| Lan Kim, 2010
CASE MATCHING
- (Syntax) The name of a phenomenon where two cases have to be identical
in order to get a grammatical structure. This phenomenon is a common property of
sharing construction, where one item has to realize two different cases.
Originally, the term matching effect comes from studies on free relatives (Grimshaw 1977, Bresnan and Grimshaw 1978, Groos and Riemsdijk 1981). Case matching effects are thus a subtype of matching effects. Matching can also concern other types of morphological marking. Other features that can be subject to matching are, for example, categorial and φ-features. | Anke Himmelreich, 2017
- (Syntax) Sauerland and Gibson (1998) argue that relative clause attachment preferences can be explained by a case-matching preference: relative clauses are preferentially attached to hosts whose case matches the case of the relative pronoun. If no host with matching case marking can be found, recency takes over. For German NP1 [NOM]–NP2 [GEN] constructions, most comparable to the English NP1-of-NP2 construction, case matching predicts an NP1 preference if the complex NP is followed by a subject relative clause. Since most experiments published for German used this construction and found exactly the results predicted, case matching offers an alternative explanation to the attachment-binding dualism. Furthermore, the low attachment preference found for modifying PPs results from the fact that case matching does not apply here so that recency determines the attachment preference. | Barbara Hemforth, Lars Konieczny, Harald Seelig, and Michael Walter, 2000
CASE METASYNCRETISM
(Morphology) Williams (1994) identified metasyncretism as a phenomenon to be
accounted for. Williams illustrated the concept with a subset of the Latin nominal declension endings. His example is provided in (1) below: the various case/number
paradigms of Latin's five nominal classes:
I
| sg
| pl
|
Nom
| -a
| -ae
|
Acc
| -am
| -as
|
Dat
| -ae
| -is
|
Abl
| -a
| -is
|
II
| sg
| pl
|
Nom
| -us
| -i
|
Acc
| -um
| -os
|
Dat
| -o
| -is
|
Abl
| -o
| -is
|
III
| sg
| pl
|
Nom
| (var)
| -es
|
Acc
| -em
| -es/is
|
Dat
| -i
| -ibus
|
Abl
| -a
| -ibus
|
IV
| sg
| pl
|
Nom
| -us
| -us
|
Acc
| -um
| -us
|
Dat
| -ui
| -ibus
|
Abl
| -u
| -ibus
|
V
| sg
| pl
|
Nom
| -es
| -es
|
Acc
| -em
| -es
|
Dat
| -ei
| -ebus
|
Abl
| -e
| -ebus
|
William's point is that Dative and Ablative case always syncretize in the plural, regardless of what the actual suffix is. This is a metaparadigm—a generalization over the shape of a given type of paradigm within a language, which holds regardless of the particular forms in any particular instantiation of that paradigm type. A syncretism that holds in a metaparadigm is a metasyncretism—again, it's a syncretism that holds for a particular set of features in a language, regardless of the particular affixes used in any particular instance of the syncretism. The plural Ablative / Dative syncretism in Latin case endings is thus apparently a metasyncretism. | Heidi Harley, 2008
CATAPHORA
- (Grammar) Or, anticipatory anaphora, or, backward anaphora. A notion less common in use than that of anaphora. Cataphora is the relation between an anaphoric expression and an antecedent that comes later (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 1997). Thus cataphora refers to an entity that is mentioned later in the discourse. Consider this sentence:
- I turned to the corner and almost stepped on it. There was a large snake in the middle of the path.
The pronoun it (the cataphor) in (1) can be interpreted as referring forward to a noun phrase a large snake (the antecedent) and is said to have cataphoric reference. | Setiono Sugiharto, 2004
- (Grammar) Or, anticipatory anaphora, or, forward anaphora, or, cataphoric reference, or, forward reference. Adjective cataphoric. The use of a pronoun or other linguistic unit to refer ahead to another word in a sentence (i.e., the referent).
Cataphora and anaphora are the two main types of endophora—that is, reference to an item within the text itself.
In the following examples, cataphors are in italics and their referents are underscored.
- Why do we envy him, the bankrupt man? (John Updike 1984)
- A few weeks before he died, my father gave me an old cigar box filled with faded letters.
- In 'The Pendulum Years,' his history of the 1960s, Bernard Levin writes of the 'collective insanity which seized Britain.' (The London Evening Standard 1994)
- You must remember this:
A kiss is just a kiss; A sigh is just a sigh. (Herman Hupfeld 1931)
- It must have been tough on your mother, not having any children. (Ginger Rogers 1943)
| Richard Nordquist, 2019
CATEGORIAL GRAMMAR
(Syntax, Semantics) Abbreviated CG. A term which covers a number of related formalisms that have been proposed for the syntax and semantics of natural languages and logical and mathematical languages. All are generalizations of a core context-free grammar formalism first explicitly defined by Ajdukiewicz (1935), but with earlier antecedents in the work of Husserl, Leinewski, Frege, Carnap and Tarski on semantic and syntactic categories, ultimately stemming from work in the theory of types, (a tradition to which some recent work in CG shows signs of returning). The distinguishing characteristics of these theories are:
- An extreme form of lexicalism where the main and even entire burden of syntax is borne by the lexicon.
- The characterization of constituents, both syntactically and semantically, as functions and/or arguments.
- The characterization of the relation between syntax and semantics as compositional, with syntactic and semantic types standing in the closest possible relation, the former merely encoding the latter.
- A tendency to freer surface constituency than traditional grammar, the previously mentioned characteristic guaranteeing that all the non-standard constituents that CG sanctions are fully interpreted semantically.
Such grammars have been implicated in much work at the foundation of modern theories of natural language semantics. | Mark Steedman, 1993
CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTION
(Grammar) A linguistic expression which denotes a complex situation consisting of two component events (Comrie 1989, Song 2001):
- The causing event, in which the causer does or initiates something.
- The caused event, in which the causee carries out an action, or undergoes a change of condition or state as a result of the causer's action.
The following Japanese sentence is such a linguistic expression.
Kanako
Kanako
ga
NOM
Ziroo
Ziro
o
ACC
ik-ase-ta.
go-CAUS-PST
'Kanako made Ziro go.'
In (1), the causer (Kanako) did something, and as a result of that action the causee (Ziro) in turn carried out the action of going. | Ajeet Kumar, 2017
CAUSATIVE VERB
(Grammar) Verb with an argument that expresses the cause of the action described by the verb. In (1)-(3), let, make, and cause are causative verbs; John refers to the cause of Bill's eating grass.
- John let Bill eat grass.
- John made Bill eat grass.
- John caused Bill to eat grass.
A certain class of verbs alternate between a causative reading and an inchoative reading. Examples are break, drown and de-adjectival verbs formed with the suffix -en in (4) - (7).
|
INCHOATIVE |
CAUSATIVE |
4. |
The vase broke. |
John broke the vase. |
5. |
The lady drowned. |
Our tenant drowned a lady. |
6. |
The canal widened. |
They widened the canal. |
7. |
The tomatoes reddened. |
The sun reddened the tomatoes. |
(Borer 1990, Grimshaw 1990, Jackendoff 1992) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
CESSATION IMPLICATURE
(Pragmatics) Consider the following situation:
A little boy named Scotty has just been brought into the hospital. Dr. Spock is talking to him, when the head nurse walks in and asks, "How is our patient doing?"
Dr. Spock replies, "He was anxious."
The nurse infers that Scotty is no longer anxious. We call this inference a cessation implicature:
Cessation Implicature
When the utterance of a past tensed sentence implicates that no state of the kind described currently holds.
Here is an analysis of how the cessation implicature arises in the scenario described above and summarized here:
- How is Scotty doing?
- Scotty was anxious.
The proposition expressed by the present tense counterpart of (2), i.e. Scotty is anxious, entails the proposition expressed by Scotty was anxious, for if be anxious is true at the moment of utterance, then, by the Temporal Profile of Statives hypothesis, Scotty be anxious is true at some moment m' prior to the moment of utterance (m), and the truth of Scotty be anxious at that prior moment verifies the past tensed Scotty was anxious. The entailment from PRES φ to PAST φ is asymmetric; PAST φ does not entail PRES φ.
With this result in hand, we can advance to a calculation supporting a Gricean quantity implicature. The doctor chose to utter (2) when she could have used the stronger statement Scotty is anxious. She must have avoided the stronger statement because it is false, assuming she possessed all the relevant information, which is plausible in this case. So the use of (2) implicates that Scotty is no longer anxious. | Daniel Altshuler and Roger Schwarzschild, 2019
CHAIN
See MOVEMENT CHAIN.
CHANNEL BIAS
(Sociolinguistics) Analytic bias and channel bias are two kinds of causal explanation for a sound pattern. Channel bias stems from facts about the transmission process, e.g., articulation or perception. In each individual case, either an analytic bias or a channel bias (or both) could be at work. | Ollie Sayeed, 2023
CHECKING DOMAIN
See C-DOMAIN.
CHECKING THEORY
(Syntax) In generative syntax, checking theory is a notion in the Minimalist Program.
- [TP John T [vP tJohn likes Mary]
In (1), movement of John to spec,T deletes the uninterpretable φ-features of likes; the φ-features of likes are checked by John.
Checking theory attempts to link two apparent "imperfections" of human language: the existence of LF-uninterpretable features in lexical items, and movement. Movement of an element A with feature F to the checking domain of an element B with a matching (uninterpretable) feature F', deletes the uninterpretable feature F' in B. If F in A is uninterpretable, F is also deleted. (Chomsky 1995, 1998, 1999) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
Page Last Modified July 27, 2024