Diachronica : (), 423–430. ./dia...kul
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e Role of Semantic, Pragmatic, and Discourse Factors in the
Development of Case. Edited by Jóhanna Barðdal & Shobhana L.
Chelliah. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2009. Pp. xx, 432. (Studies in
Language Companion Series, 108).
Reviewed by Leonid Kulikov (Leiden University / Institute of
Linguistics, Moscow)
e contents of this volume are split almost evenly between papers presented at a
workshop organized at the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguis-
tics (ICHL 17) held 31 July-5 August, 2005 in Madison, Wisconsin (seven contri-
butions), and articles written especially for the volume (eight contributions). e
15 papers cover a wide range of topics in the diachrony of case, thus belonging to a
branch of linguistics which has shown rapid development in the last decade — the
diachronic typology of linguistic categories. Altogether, the authors take on this
ambitious question: how and why do case systems change? Except for ve articles
dealing with evidence from non-Indo-European languages (Japanese, Tibeto-Bur-
man and Pama-Nyungan), the bulk of the data under study are brought from ‘clas-
sical’ Indo-European languages, mostly from Western branches: Greek, Germanic,
Romance, Baltic, Slavic, and Vedic.
e volume opens with the short editorial “Introduction”, which conveniently
surveys the main topics addressed in the book and summarizes the content of the
papers.
Part 1, “Semantically and aspectually motivated synchronic case variation”,
includes two papers. Tonya Kim Dewey and Yasmin Syed (“Case variation in
Gothic absolute constructions”) address an important and much debated issue:
which factors determine the choice of the case marking (nominative/dative/geni-
tive/accusative) in Gothic absolute constructions. ey argue that, contrary to the
view advocated by many, the Gothic absolute construction was not a borrowing
from Greek but a construction native to Gothic. e authors convincingly dem-
onstrate that the choice of case forms was not random but motivated by a variety
of parameters — foremost, by the semantic features of the construction. us,
while the dative is the default (unmarked) choice, attested in the majority of the
absolute constructions, the accusative may be triggered by the aspectual (durative)
semantics of the participle, while the nominative appears in the case of coordinate
relationship between the main clause and the absolute construction (probably, a
Gothic innovation).
424 Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen
Eystein Dahl, “Some semantic and pragmatic aspects of object alternation in
Early Vedic”, oers a number of interesting observations on the parameters de-
termining object case variation with some semantic classes of verbs in the lan-
guage of the oldest Vedic text, the Rgveda (RV). ese classes include verbs of
consumption/ingestion, perception/comprehension, desire (all constructed with
the accusative or genitive), enjoyment (instrumental/locative), possession and
some other minor classes.
1
e author identies the main factors which deter-
mine the choice of the case in terms of the deniteness of the object noun (the
parameter which is, crosslinguistically, commonly regarded as responsible for
the accusative/non-accusative case variation with objects, cf. the handbook ex-
ample piba sómam (acc.) “drink (the) soma” ~ piba sómasya (gen.) “drink (some/
of) soma”, where case marking is used “to distinguish situations where the object
argument is fully consumed and situations where only a part of the object argu-
ment is consumed”, p. 40) and telicity of the verb. It is important to note, however,
that, for some types of variation, the parameter of telicity may be of secondary
importance, being conditioned by some (more basic) features. us, as noted by
the author himself (pp. 46–48), in the case of verbs which allow for the reciprocal
interpretation, such as yudh “ght” or sac “associate”, the use of the instrumental in
constructions of the type RV 4.18.2d yúdhyai t
u
vena sáṃ t
u
vena prchai “I (= Indra)
shall ght against one, negotiate with another” can readily be explained as case
marking typical for reciprocal constructions (see Kulikov 2007: 715 for details).
Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere (Kulikov 2001: 449–450), the accusative case
marking with the verb yudh may be of secondary character, emerging in analogy
with the compounds with abhí, where the accusative must be due to the preverb,
as, for instance, in RV 6.31.3 tvám … abhí śúsnam indra … yudhya kúyavam “ght
you, O Indra, against Śusna, against Kuyava …”.
2
Part 2, “Discourse motivated subject marking”, also consists of two papers.
Felicity Meakins (“e case of the shiy ergative marker: A pragmatic shi in
the ergative marker of one Australian mixed language”) describes the use of erga-
tive marker in Gurindji Kriol (originating in a Gurindji ergative morpheme). e
1. ese classes were rst correctly identied and characterized, on the basis of similarity in
their syntactic behavior, by Jamison (1983) as groups of ‘intransitive/transitive’ (I/T) verbs. Un-
fortunately, this important study is not mentioned in Dahl’s paper.
2. Note also that, for some instances of accusative case marking, the telic interpretation is not
indisputable; thus, RV 4.30.5ab yátra devam
rghāyató ' víśvām
áyudhya éka ít should be ren-
dered as ‘where you (sc. Indra) alone fought / was ghting against all impetuous gods …’, rather
than ‘where you alone defeated all the raging gods…’ (as Dahl translates it, p. 48). Note that the
standard Geldner’s (1951: I, 458) translation of this passage (‘Wo du die drohenden Götter alle
ganz allein bekämpest …’) does not imply the telic reading: it only refers to the process of ght-
ing, without specifying its outcome.
© 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved
Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen 425
author concludes that, in spite of the formal identity of the ergative marker in Gur-
indji Kriol (sux -ngku with substantives) with the source morpheme in Gurindji,
its function is quite dierent from the original. It is used as a marker of discourse
prominence, retaining the ergative function (that is, distinguishing subject from
object in transitive clauses) only marginally. is results in a phenomenon called
‘optional ergativity’.
Ulrich Detges (“How useful is case morphology? e loss of the Old French
two-case system within a theory of Preferred Argument structure”) addresses the
much debated issue of the restructuring of the case system in the history of French,
which had resulted in the loss of case distinctions by the Middle French period. He
approaches this issue in the framework of Preferred Argument Structure. Arguing,
quite convincingly, against a variety of approaches, such as the explanation of the
loss of case distinction in terms of ‘phonological erosion’ (loss of the nal -s), the
emergence of rigid word order, a Natural Morphology approach, or Markedness
eory, he arrives at a somewhat paradoxical conclusion that “inectional case
marking on full nouns is unnecessary for successful communications” (p. 116)
as long as pronouns can be used to distinguish subjects from non-subjects. e
author explains the collapse of the Old French case system by generalization of
the more frequent oblique form. is explanation, however convincing it might
appear, may be overly simple. Although the general tendency to preserve case dis-
tinction for determiners and pronouns, in accordance with the hierarchy of topi-
cality, is correctly predicted by Preferred Argument Structure, other factors, such
as the tendency to avoid ‘conceptually too complicated’ systems (van Reenen &
Schøsler 2000) should not be disregarded either.
Part 3, “Reduction or expansion of case marker distribution”, is the largest,
with ve papers which focus on situations when two or more cases are in compe-
tition and on the mechanisms of distributional changes within the system, when
the functional domain of one case is usurped by another. Jóhanna Barðdal’s paper
“e development of case in Germanic” argues against a number of traditional ex-
planations of the loss of morphological case in several Germanic languages (fore-
most in English, Swedish, German and Icelandic), such as phonological erosion or
changes in word order (from free to xed). Instead, she proposes a dierent ex-
planation in the framework of the usage-based construction grammar. e central
point of Barðdal’s explanation is the rich polysemy of case constructions in Old
Germanic, which, logically, should result either in the loss of morphological case
(the scenario followed by English, Swedish, and Dutch) or in the disappearance
of low frequency constructions ousted by (partly) synonymous high frequency
types (German and Icelandic). e author also draws attention to the correla-
tion between the loss of morphological case and extensive lexical borrowings due
to language contact (as in English or Swedish), which could trigger the former
© 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved
426 Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen
scenario: “the faster the vocabulary is renewed, the sooner the high type frequen-
cy constructions increase in type frequency, and the sooner the low-frequency
constructions decrease in their type frequency” (p. 155). Although it is unclear
how straightforward the correlation between changes in the lexicon, on the one
hand, and in the morphological (grammatical) system, on the other, might be,
there must undoubtedly be a connection between koinéization, due to intensive
language contacts, and the reduction of the grammatical system — observed by
several scholars for mainland Scandinavian (e.g., Trudgill 1986, Trask / McColl
Millar 2007: 398.).
A usage-based construction grammar approach is also adopted in the two next
papers, concentrating on evidence from Slavic and Baltic. Hanne Martine Eck-
ho (“A usage-based approach to change: Old Russian possessive constructions”)
explains the decline of possessive adjective constructions of the type korabl’ Gle-
bov [possessive adjective] “Gleb’s boat”, ousted by genitive constructions (korabl’
Gleb-a [genitive]) in terms of the ‘deschematisation’ of the former type (which
results in a decrease in its productivity), followed by the ‘schematisation’ of the
latter. Sturla Berg-Olsen (“Lacking in Latvian: Case variation from a cognitive and
constructional perspective”) focuses on constructions used with the Latvian verb
(pie)trūkt “lack, miss”. Comparing two competing syntactic patterns attested with
this verb with the nominative and with the genitive of the lacking entity (‘lackee’),
the author concludes that the latter type, prescribed by normative grammar and
dominating in formal style (in written texts), has a lesser degree of entrenchment
and therefore less chance to survive, ousted by the former (nominative) construc-
tion, common in the colloquial language. Turning to historical matters, Berg-
Olsen rightly notices that the nominative constructions must be an innovation
(which is corroborated, in particular, by the predominance of the genitive pattern
in the closely related, but more conservative, Lithuanian), but her evaluation of the
linguistic situation in the corresponding geographic area is not free from inaccura-
cies. It is not quite correct to ascribe the lesser conservatism of Latvian to Balto-
Finnic inuence and/or substrate: Lithuanian undoubtedly also owes some of its
features to Finnic inuence (suce it to mention the emergence of new locative
cases in Old Lithuanian, still preserved in some archaic dialects, e.g. Mathiassen
1996: 38; Kulikov 2009: 443f., 456). e expansion of the nominative type must be
due to German inuence (as hesitantly suggested in a footnote, p. 196).
Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson (“Verb classes and dative objects in Insular Scandina-
vian”) demonstrates the neat correlation between semantic classes of verbs, con-
vincingly arguing that the tendency to replace dative with accusative is, quite in
accordance with our expectations, particularly strong for objects which are closer
to the patient prototype. is tendency is especially clear in Faroese, in contrast
with more conservative Icelandic.
© 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved