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Article published In:
Evolutionary Linguistic Theory
Vol. 1:2 (2019) ► pp.175–196

Non-canonical case marking on subjects in Russian and Lithuanian

An interface approach

| University of Trento

In case-marking languages with nominative-accusative alignment the subject of a sentence is usually marked by nominative case. In some of these languages, however, the subject of a number of verbs is either consistently or alternately marked by another, non-nominative case. Such non-canonical case marking has often been approached in the linguistic literature as a phenomenon at the interface between syntax and semantics. Yet the predictions of this kind of approach seem more probabilistic than regular. This paper offers a new perspective to analyse the phenomenon, which encompasses the role of information structure in case marking. Drawing on Silverstein’s (1976) theory of differential subject marking and Dalrymple & Nikolaeva’s (2011) approach to differential object marking, it is argued that non-canonically case-marked subjects can be better analysed as instances of either non-topical subjects or subjects lacking one or more semantic features typical of topicality. The approach outlined in the paper is tested on a number of constructions in Russian and Lithuanian. It is shown how, in both languages, the analysed instances of non-canonically case-marked subjects exhibit a complex interplay among grammatical, semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors.

Keywords: non-canonical case marking, differential subject marking, differential object marking, Russian, Lithuanian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Differential subject marking
  • 3.DSM and its semantic features
  • 4.The proposal
  • 5.The data
    • 5.1Russian
    • 5.2Lithuanian
  • 6.Discussion and some speculations
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 January 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00010.mag
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