Competition and Variation in Natural Languages: The Case for Case (Perspectives on Cognitive Science)

375 Pages·2005·1.79 MB·English

by  Mengistu Amberber

COMPETITION AND VARIATION IN
NATURAL LANGUAGES
THE CASE FOR CASE
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Previous books published in the Perspectives on Cognitive Science series:
Creativity,Cognition and Knowledge — An interaction
Terry Dartnall
Language Universals and Variation
Mengistu Amberber and Peter Collins
Perspectives on Cognitive Science,Vol 2 — Theories,Experiments,and Foundations
Janet Wiles and Terry Dartnall
Perspectives on Cognitive Science,Vol 1 — Theories,Experiments,and Foundations
Peter Slezak,Terry Caelli and Richard Clark
Representation in Mind:New Approaches to Mental Representation
Hugh Clapin,Phillip Staines and Peter Slezak
Perspectives on Cognitive Science
Series editor: Peter Slezak
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COMPETITION AND
VARIATION IN NATURAL
LANGUAGES
THE CASE FOR CASE
EDITED BY
MENGISTU AMBERBER
Linguistics Department, The University of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia
HELEN DE HOOP
Linguistics Department, Radboud University Nijmegen,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2005
Amsterdam – Boston – Heidelberg - London – New York – Oxford
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iii
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Contents
Volume Editors vii
List of Contributors ix
Preface xi
1. Competition and Variation in Natural Languages:The Case for Case 1
Mengistu Amberber and Helen de Hoop
2. Some Participants are More Equal than Others:Case and
the Composition of Arguments in Kuuk Thaayorre 9
Alice Gaby
3. Head Marking and Dependent Marking of Grammatical
Relations in Yurakaré 41
Rik van Gijn
4. Case Pattern Splits,Verb Types and Construction Competition 73
Andrej L. Malchukov
5. Limits to Case —A Critical Survey of the Notion 119
Andrew Spencer and Ryo Otoguro
v
vi Contents
6. Case as Feature Checking and the Status of
Predicate Initial Languages 147
Lisa deMena Travis
7. The Case of Basque:An Accusative Analysis for an Ergative System 179
Mario van de Visser
8. Noun Phrase Resolution:
The Correlation between Case and Ambiguity 205
Peter de Swart
9. Changes in Case Marking in NP:
From Old English to Middle English 223
Cynthia L. Allen
10. The On-line Resolution of Subject–Object Ambiguities
with and without Case-Marking in Dutch:Evidence
from Event-Related Brain Potentials 251
Monique Lamers
11. Differential Subject Marking in Amharic 295
Mengistu Amberber
12. Differential Case-Marking in Hindi 321
Helen de Hoop and Bhuvana Narasimhan
Author Index 347
Subject Index 353
Language Index 359
Volume Editors
Mengistu Amberber (Ph.D., McGill ) is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the
University of New South Wales, Sydney. His main research interest is the (lexi-
cal) semantics–syntax interface, with particular reference to transitivity and
valence. He is the author of Verb Classes and Transitivity in Amharic (Lincom
Studies in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics, 06, 2002), and (with P. Collins) editor of
Language Universals and Variation(Praeger,2002). His other recent publications
include: ‘The grammatical encoding of Thinking in Amharic’, Cognitive
Linguistics 14-2/3 (2003); and book chapters: ‘Testing emotional universals in
Amharic’(in Emotions in Crosslinguistic Perspective,Mouton de Gruyter,2001),
‘Valency-changing and valency-encoding devices in Amharic’ (in Changing
Valency:Case Studies in Transitivity,Cambridge University Press,2000). He has
also published in the Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society and the West
Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics.
Helen de Hoop (Ph.D., University of Groningen) is an Associate Professor in
Linguistics at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her research
interests include case,interpretation,and Optimality Theory. Since 2002 she is the
principal investigator of the PIONIER research project Case cross-linguistically
which integrates theoretical,typological,and processing approaches to the syntax
and semantics of case (financed by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation of
Scientific Research). She is also a co-project leader of the research project
Conflicts in Interpretation,financed by the Cognitive Science program of NWO.
Her Ph.D. dissertation Case configuration and noun phrase interpretation appeared
in the Garland series Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics in 1996. She has
recently published (co-authored) articles in the journals Linguistics and
Philosophy,Journal of Semantics,and Lingua,and together with Reinhard Blutner
and Petra Hendriks she co-authored a book entitled Optimal Communicationthat
will appear with CSLI,Stanford,in 2005.
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Contributors
Cynthia L. Allen School of Language Studies, Australian National
University,Canberra,Australia
Mengistu Amberber Linguistics Department,School of Modern Language
Studies,The University of New South Wales,Sydney,
Australia
Alice Gaby Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
Rik van Gijn Department of Linguistics, Radboud University
Nijmegen,Nijmegen,The Netherlands
Helen de Hoop Department of Linguistics, Radboud University
Nijmegen,Nijmegen,The Netherlands
Monique Lamers Department of Linguistics, Radboud University
Nijmegen,Nijmegen,The Netherlands
Andrej L. Malchukov Department of Linguistics, Radboud University
Nijmegen,Nijmegen,The Netherlands
Bhuvana Narasimhan Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,
Nijmegen,The Netherlands
Ryo Otoguro Department of Language & Linguistics, University
of Essex,Colchester,UK
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