The rise and fall of a Person-Case Constraint in Breton
Language
en
Article de revue
This item was published in
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 2023
Springer Verlag
Date
2023English Abstract
This work explores the coupling of person-split nominative objects with anomalous subjects, or Jahnsson's Rule. In Breton, split-nominative objects spread from an Icelandic-like combination with oblique subjects of ...Read more >
This work explores the coupling of person-split nominative objects with anomalous subjects, or Jahnsson's Rule. In Breton, split-nominative objects spread from an Icelandic-like combination with oblique subjects of unaccusatives, to Finnish-like ones with subjects of transitives in constructions like the imperative, and then retreated piecewise. The developments admit of motivations external to (I-)language, such as frequency entrenchment [Haspelmath 2004], but are bounded by the coupling of Jahnsson's Rule, and disfavour external sources for it like ambiguity avoidance [Dixon 1994]. An approach is explored through constraints on φdependencies, their relationship to case and licensing, and their interaction with grammaticalisable partial φ-specification, building on work on the Person-Case Constraint [Anagnostopoulou 2003]. The anomalies of the restricting subject are analysed as person-only specification, and extended from obliques to pronouns minimal in absence number + n/N, such as imperative pro [Zanuttini et al. 2013] and human impersonals [Malamud 2012]. The effect on the split-nominative in ineffability or accusative of the restricted persons is analysed through the integration of dependent case into Φ/Case theory [Kalin 2018] but the developments under study lead to recasting of apparent syntactic variation through externalisability [Coon and Keine 2020].Read less <
English Keywords
Person-Case Constraint
Jahnsson's Rule
person restrictions
agreement
case
licensing
parameters
externalisation
diachronic syntax
Breton
Finnish
Icelandic
Origin
Hal importedCollections