Case-Marking in Estonian Pseudopartitives

Case-marking in Estonian pseudopartitives

The examples in (1) and (2) exemplify what I will call PSEUDOPARTITIVES in Estonian. (1) hargi-täisN1 pitchfork-ful põhkuN2 straw.PAR ‘a/the pitchforkful of straw’ (EKSS, entry for hargitäis) (2) parvN1 flock pääsukesiN2 swallow.PL.PAR ‘a/the flock of swallows’ (Nemvalts, 1996:69) Key aspects of the pseudopartitive construction: • One noun (N1) serves a quantifying or measuring role (broadly sp...

Case Matching in Estonian Pseudopartitives

For comments and suggestions at various stages in this work’s development, I would like to thank Mark Baker, Amy Rose Deal, Jorge Hankamer, Ruth Kramer, and James McCloskey. Thanks as well go to the Estonians whose judgments and insights have helped shape this paper, especially Leelo Kask and Mervi Kalmus. Thanks as well go to a Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Institute for Humanities Res...

Case marking and alignment

In (1) the syntactic functions of S (gizona ‘man’ in 1a) and O (mutila ‘boy’ in 1b) are identically coded, while in (2) it is S (muzhchina ‘man’ in 2a) and A (muzhchina in 2b) that are identically coded. That is, the two languages differ in whether S is aligned with A or O. Henceforth we refer to syntactic functions such as A, O, and S as argument roles. Argument structure has to do with the nu...

Case marking strategies

Two strategies of case marking in natural languages are discussed. These are defined as two violable constraints whose effects are shown to converge in the case of differential object marking but diverge in the case of differential subject marking. The strength of the case bearing arguments will be shown to be of utmost importance for case marking as well as voice alternations. The strength of ...

Verbal Morphology , Case Marking