Basic English Syntax with Exercises

accusative Case

1.3.5.1 Inflections

This distinction is traditionally called a Case distinction, which has to do with the forms that certain nominal arguments appear in. In English there are not many Case distinctions to be seen as it is only the pronouns which have Case forms, but in other languages there can be more such distinctions made (think of Hungarian János, Jánost, Jánosnak, etc.). The he form of the pronoun (similarly, she, I, we, they) is called the nominative case form, while the him form (her, me, us, them) is the accusative case form. Note, finite clauses must have nominative elements in the relevant position, whereas, if the position is filled at all in non-finite clauses, it must be by an accusative element:

1.3.5.4 Complementisers

The remaining set of categorial features that has not been assigned to a category is [+F, –N, –V], that is ‘functional prepositions’. One argument for treating complementisers as functional prepositions is the fact that at least one of them, for, has certain prepositional properties (it is sometimes called the prepositional complementiser). Note that prepositions take nominal complements that are always in the accusative Case, and never in the nominative:

1.3.5.4 Complementisers

Although the complement of complementisers (the part of the expression that follows it) seems to be clausal rather than nominal, the nominal element that follows the complementiser for is always accusative and indeed seems to depend on the complementiser to its presence in that if the complementiser is absent, then so must the nominal be:

2.2.1 The subject

Another aspect of the subject that shows up in finite clauses concerns the form of the subject itself. Previously we introduced the notion of Case, which is morphologically apparent only on pronouns in English. The subject of the finite clause is the only position where a nominative pronoun (I, he, she, we, they) can appear. In all other positions English pronouns have the accusative form (me, him, her, us, them – you and it are the same in nominative and accusative):

2.2.2 The object

Presumably this is one of the reasons why verbs which have clausal complements have traditionally been considered as transitive verbs. There are, however, a number of differences between clausal and DP complements. One is that clauses obviously do not appear in accusative Case. However, given that it is only the pronouns in English that demonstrate Case distinctions, this is not surprising. Another difference is that not all clausal complements can undergo passive movement:

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

In chapter 2 we mentioned the grammatical notion of Case, pointing out that certain pronouns in English have different Case forms. Nominative pronouns include he, she, I and we while accusative pronouns are him, her, me and us. What determines which form the pronoun appears in is apparently its S-structure position. If a pronoun is the subject of a finite clause it will be nominative, anywhere else it is accusative (we ignore the possessor position inside the DP which is associated with genitive Case: his, her, my and our):

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

In (84a) the clause is finite as tense is marked on the auxiliary verb. The subject he is in the nominative form, not the accusative him. However, the object of the verb help, her, is in the accusative not the nominative she. In (84b), while the main clause is finite and has a nominative subject, I, the embedded clause is non-finite. This clause has an accusative subject him. The object of the preposition in this clause is also accusative, us.

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

The pronoun is in the subject of a finite clause and so naturally is in the nominative. However, as this clause is passive, the pronoun originates from the object position at D-structure. But this fact does not seem to have any bearing on the case of the pronoun: the pronoun is nominative not accusative as a non-moved object would be. Clearly, then, it is the position that a pronoun sits in at S-structure that determines its case. We might claim therefore that there are positions which are Case positions, specifically nominative positions and accusative positions, and there are positions which are not Case positions.

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

But if there are nominative and accusative case positions, what are we to say about the non-pronominal DPs that sit in these positions as no other DP demonstrates morphological Case distinctions? There are two things that we might say. One is that Case positions are only Case positions when occupied by a pronominal DP. This would be rather difficult to arrange however, as it appears that apart from the fact that Cases are only visible on pronominals, what defines Case positions is fairly general: the subject of a finite clause is nominative, the object position of a verb or preposition is accusative and the subject position of a non-finite clause is accusative. It is not clear how to include the presence of the pronominal into the definition of a case position.

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

One reason to believe that case positions are generally defined but just morphologically distinguished on certain elements is the fact that case is not distinguished on all English pronouns. For example there is no distinction between nominative and accusative for the pronoun it:

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

The third person singular masculine pronoun demonstrates a Case distinction between subject and object position in (86), but not the pronoun it. It would be extremely difficult to account for why Case positions are only defined in the presence of pronouns, except for it and would be much better to say that the Case position is defined in the presence of it but this pronoun does not realise the distinction overtly. In other words, it is the nominative form of this pronoun and it is the accusative form. But once we have accepted this as a possibility it is reasonable to accept it for all other nominal elements as well.

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

One way to view this situation is to separate two notions of Case. One notion of Case, relating to the traditional view, is that Case has to do with the form a nominal element takes dependent on its position or, in some languages, its function in a sentence. We can call this phenomenon Morphological case. The other view of Case is that this is something a DP gets simply by occupying a certain structural position, whether or not it is realised overtly. We call this Abstract Case, or just Case (spelled with a capital). From this perspective then, any DP that occupies the subject position of a finite clause has nominative Case irrespective of whether that DP looks different from what it would if it were sitting in an object position and bearing accusative Case.

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

In (87) we have a series of pronominal subjects of non-finite clauses. In the one grammatical case the subject is accusative, demonstrating that this is an accusative position. The ungrammaticality of the nominative pronoun in (87b) is therefore understandable. That (87c) should be ungrammatical is interesting as here we have an accusative pronoun. In this case the complementiser for is absent, indicating that this element is in some way responsible for the accusative case in (87a) in which it is present. This is understandable as this complementiser is similar to a preposition, and in fact is often called the prepositional complementiser, and as we know, the complement of prepositions is in the accusative. To account for this let us assume that Case is rather like Θ-roles and is assigned by certain elements to certain positions. The prepositional complementiser therefore assigns accusative Case to the subject of the non-finite clause that it introduces:

3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

Although this might explain why the subject has accusative Case in (87a) and cannot have nominative Case in (87b), by itself it does not account for why (87c) and (d) are ungrammatical. To understand what is going on here we must attend more closely to the facts. Firstly the element that we have assumed to assign accusative Case to this position is absent and so we might assume that no accusative Case is assigned in these circumstances. Presumably whatever it is that assigns nominative Case is not present in a non-finite clause. Therefore in this situation it seems that neither accusative nor nominative case are assigned to the subject position.

4.2.2 The Specifier of the DP

This behaviour is consistent with the claim that this morpheme does not attach itself to any word, but to the whole phrase. Note this is not the way that Case morphemes behave in other languages. In Hungarian, for example, the accusative case morpheme –t is attached to the noun inside the DP, not to the last element in the DP:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

The object of the verb is associated with accusative Case and hence must be in a Case position. But the object of the noun is not associated with any Case; indeed nouns in general cannot take bare object. We can account for these observations if we simply assume that the complement position of a noun is a Caseless position. Given the Case Filter introduced in the previous chapter, it follows that DPs are not allowed to occupy such a position at S-structure. There is nothing to prevent a noun from taking a DP complement at D-structure, however, and thematically it seems to be the case that many nouns do have DP arguments which all surface as PPs headed by the meaningless preposition of. We might therefore assume that this preposition is inserted into the structure at S-structure so that the Case Filter may be satisfied.

5.2.1 Unaccusative verbs

The position to which the subject moves is typically a nominative position and so we might assume that the movement has something to do with placing this argument in a Case position. The reason why these verbs are called ‘unaccusative’ is because unlike with transitive verbs, which share the possibility of having theme arguments, the theme of the unaccusative cannot normally remain inside the VP to receive accusative Case.

5.2.2 Light verbs

This is identical to what happens with unaccusative verbs (compare (31) with (22)): the theme subject receives no Case in its original VP internal position and hence has to move to the nominative subject position. So how does the theme get Case in (30)? The obvious difference is the presence of the light verb and therefore we might assume that it is this verb that is responsible for assigning accusative Case to the theme:

5.2.3.1 Potential problems

There is a fairly robust generalisation, named after the linguist who first noted it, Luigi Burzio, that verbs which assign no Θ-role to their subjects, do not assign accusative Case to their objects. While Burzio’s Generalisation may offer a description of what is going on in these cases, it is an unfortunate fact that the generalisation has little in the way of explanatory content: why it should be that verbs that have no subjects cannot assign accusative Case is entirely mysterious from this perspective.

5.2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

Let us consider further aspects of the analysis of the ergative verbs. In the causative construction, the agent is the subject and moves to the nominative position in finite clauses. However the theme stays put inside the VP. In the non-causative, unaccusative form, however, the theme is the subject and moves to the nominative position. Thus in the causative construction the theme must be assigned Case in its original position and this position must be Caseless in the absence of the causative light verb. This clearly points to the light verbs as being responsible for the accusative Case of the theme, just as we claimed for the overt causative structure:

5.2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

The observation that the post-verbal DP is limited to indefinites has led to the claim that neither nominative nor accusative Case is assigned to this position, but a special Case which can only be born by indefinite DPs. Belletti (1988) proposed that partitive Case is incompatible with definite DPs for semantic reasons and therefore only indefinites can bear it. Thus if we assume that partitive Case is assigned to the post-verbal position in there constructions, we can account for why only indefinite DPs can appear in this position. The problem with this is that under these assumptions it is not entirely clear why we have a there expletive and not an it. It would seem then that the key to the proper analysis of this construction is the link between the there subject and the Case marked indefinite DP in the post-verbal position.

5.2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

Obviously, this light verb is not the same as the one we get in the causative construction as there is no causative interpretation here and no agent Θ-role assigned. In fact, this verb does not appear to have much of a meaning at all. But this might be an advantage in accounting for the other properties of the there construction. Recall Burzio’s generalisation: only a verb which assigns a Θ-role to its subject assigns an accusative Case. The causative light verb fits this restriction well: it assigns an agent Θ-role to its subject and an accusative Case to the theme in the specifier of the VP. If the abstract light verb in the there construction is restricted by this, then the fact that it assigns no Θ-role to the there subject, accounts for why we do not find simple accusative DPs in the theme position.

5.2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

Now let us suppose that this connection between the light verb and its restricted subject, although it is not enough to license accusative Case, is strong enough to license a Case that can be born by indefinites (perhaps partitive). We then have an explanation for why the post-verbal theme is restricted to indefinite DPs. All in all then, the supposition of a (very) light verb in the there construction leads to quite an explanatory account of many of its properties.

5.2.4.1 Evidence from passives

Even under a less strict view of the UTAH than we are attempting to keep to here, one would like to assume that the object is generated in the same place in active sentences and their passive counterparts. This has been the assumption since the beginning of generative grammar in the 1950s. Thus, the object is generated in object position in the passive, but moves to the subject position. Presumably the only reason it would do this is to get Case. Thus while in the active structure the object gets Case in object position, this ceases to be a Case position in the passive and hence not only does a passive verb lose its subject, it also loses the accusative Case assigned to its object. Again, these are fairly standard assumptions about the analysis of the passive which have been proposed since the 1980s.

5.2.4.1 Evidence from passives

Interestingly, the passive is a construction which conforms to Burzio’s generalisation: the verb stops assigning a Θ-role to its subject and loses the ability to assign accusative to its object. But Burzio’s generalisation is a description of a state of affairs, it is not an explanation of that state of affairs. What we need is something that links the two properties. In previous examples we have seen a way to link the Θ-role assignment to the subject and the accusative Case assignment to the object: through the light verb which is assumed to do both:

5.2.4.1 Evidence from passives

If the light verb ceased to be there, both the agent Θ-role and the accusative Case would be lost in one step. What would be left is the main verb with its patient argument which would lack Case and hence have to move to subject position:

5.2.4.3 Agent and experiencer subjects

However, an obvious disadvantage of (87b) is that the theme is placed in the complement position which is counter to what we have previously discovered. If the theme goes in the specifier of the thematic verb, then there is no alternative than to include the experiencer in a higher position which would mean adding an abstract light verb. A further disadvantage of (87b) is that transitive verbs with experiencer subjects can be passivised. We have analysed passivisation as a process which removes the light verb responsible for the assignment of the Θ-role to the subject and the Case to the object, replacing it with the passive morpheme. If there is no light verb responsible for assigning the experiencer Θ-role, it is not at all clear how these verbs could undergo passivisation: what would the passive morpheme replace and why would the experiencer Θ-role and accusative Case go missing? Moreover, the passivisation of these verbs casts doubt on the assumption that they have a simple event structure. Passivisation of agentive verbs by getting rid of the agentive light verb turns a verb with a complex event structure into one with a simple one:

5.2.6 Multiple complement verbs

The verb movement is as we have seen before. As both light verbs are bound morphemes, both will need supporting and so the verb will move from one to the other forming a complex head adjunction structure in the top head position. As far as Case relationships are concerned, the subject DP is in a Caseless position and hence will move to the clause subject position to get nominative Case. The indirect object gets accusative from the upper light verb in the position it moves to and the direct object gets Case from the lower light verb without moving. The word order is as predicted with the verb preceding both the objects and the indirect object moved in front of the direct object.

5.2.8 Verbs with clausal complements

But why would the clause have to move backwards in a structure like (148)? Note that the clause occupies a position to which Case is assigned: the light verb assigns accusative Case to the specifier of the VP. There is an old idea, dating back to Stowell (1981), that clauses avoid Case positions. While it might seem that clauses occupy similar positions to DPs, there are a number of reasons to think that this is not so. For example, we do not get clauses in the complement position of prepositions, a position to which Case is assigned:

6.1 The structure of IP

As we can see in (12) the subject of the non-finite clause appears in the accusative. There is a further possibility with non-finite clauses which is not available with finite clauses and that is to have a missing subject:

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

We have said that the light verb which is responsible for assigning the Θ-role to the subject is responsible for assigning Case to the object. This seems to be the locus of Burzio’s generalisation that verbs which assign a subject Θ-role assign an accusative Case. Hence the object is in a Case marked position and need not move away in order to get Case. Consider the subject: why is it not in a Case position? Note that the verbal element above the subject, the tense in this case, does not assign any Θ-roles and hence its specifier position is empty at D-structure. Clearly this is unlike the light verb. We may propose therefore that tense is not an accusative Case assigning head. But why doesn’t the light verb assign Case to its subject? One might attempt to answer this by claiming that the light verb has to assign Case to the object and assuming that accusative Case can only be assigned to one place. While this seems reasonable, it doesn’t explain why the light verb taking an intransitive verb does not assign Case to its subject:

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

There are a number of possible ways to account for these observations. The simplest is to assume that Case assignment is directional and that accusative Case in English is assigned to the right. Thus, the light verb will be able to assign Case to the object as the object appears to the right. However the light verb will not be able to assign Case to the subject as the subject is in the specifier position and specifiers are to the left of the head.

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

This is too simple, however, as it is not the case that a light verb can assign Case to any element on its right. Consider a more complicated case in which we have a verb with a clausal complement. The light verb of this verb will be to the left of the complement clause and hence to the left of the subject of that clause. But it cannot assign accusative Case to this subject, allowing it to stay inside its own subject position:

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

This must be a Case position as the sentence is grammatical with the subject sitting in it and therefore the Case Filter must be satisfied. If we assume that it is the inflection which is responsible for assigning the Case we account for why this is the landing site for this movement. Moreover, we also account for the difference between the subjects of finite and infinite clauses. Recall that while the subject of the finite clause has nominative Case, the typical Case for the subject of the non-finite clause is accusative:

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

Presumably the agreement element is different in both these cases. For one thing, modal auxiliaries can appear in the agreement position of finite clauses, but not of non-finite clauses. Moreover, finite inflection selects for a finite tense headed phrase as its complement while the one in (63b) clearly selects for a non-finite complement. I will not have anything to say about the accusative Case of the subject of the non-finite clause at present, leaving this for future discussion. Instead, we will concentrate on the finite inflection, which assigns nominative to the subject.

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

Furthermore, this case is assigned by a functional element, something that is not involved in Θ-role assignment. For accusative Case the Case assigner necessarily Θ-marks its subject in order to be able to assign accusative Case. But the same is not true for the inflectional assigner of nominative Case.

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

There are two basic positions linguists take with respect to these observations. One is to assume that nominative and accusative Case are similar and the other assumes that they are fundamentally different. From the first perspective the challenge is to come up with restrictions which define the conditions under which Case can be assigned generally. For example, there are three positions to which we have seen a Case assigned: the specifier of the inflection; the specifier of the complement, and the complement position itself:

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

The other point of view observes that it does not seem to be mere coincidence that the two instances of rightward Case assignment in (65) happen to involve accusative Case while the leftward Case assignment involves nominative. The assumption is then that there are two different processes at work here. For nominative the relevant relationship is supposed to be specifier–head agreement, something we mentioned in the previous chapter. The idea is that the finite inflectional element can assign nominative Case to whatever it agrees with, and this will be its specifier. For accusative Case however, government is the relevant relationship, though defined in a slightly different way as it is no longer required to extend to the subject. Informally, this version of government can be defined as:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

One difference between the finite embedded clause and the non-finite one is that the former has a nominative subject and the latter an accusative one. We saw in chapter 5 how the finite inflection is responsible for assigning nominative Case to its specifier. A relevant question is where the accusative Case of the non-finite subject comes from: does the non-finite inflection assign accusative Case? The answer would appear to be no because not all infinitival clauses can have an accusative subject, and if the non-finite inflection were able to assign accusative Case, we would expect an accusative subject to be a permanent possibility, just like the nominative subject is always possible in a finite clause:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

Moreover, in some non-finite clauses the subjects Case is dependent on the complementiser rather than the inflection. This can be seen by the fact that without the complementiser an accusative subject cannot appear:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

But if this is true, where does the accusative Case on the subject of the non-finite clause in (6b) come from? We know that accusative Case is assigned by light verbs in other situations, could the accusative Case come from a light verb in this structure? Consider the structure in more detail. The verb believe has an experiencer subject and hence there is a light verb which assigns this Θ-role. The clausal complement of the verb sits in its specifier position and the verb will move to support the light verb:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

While in principle this might be possible, it does place the Case assigning light verb and the DP to which it assigns Case in rather distant positions. This would not be advisable as on the whole it appears that Case assignment is a local affair and thus there are limitations on how distant the Case assigner and assignee can be. In particular, if the situation pictured in (9) were accurate, we would expect any light verb to be able to assign an accusative case to the subject of a clause appearing in the specifier of its VP complement. But this is not so:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

Note that this has nothing to do with the finiteness of the complement clause, (10b) is just as ungrammatical as (10a) and the latter involves a non-finite clause. There is clearly a difference between verbs like believe which can take non-finite complement clauses with accusative subjects and verbs like hope which cannot. One observable difference between them is that hope can take a non-finite complement clause with a complementiser, but believe cannot:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

Recall from chapter 6 that the notion of government, which is relevant for Case assignment, imposes a restriction on what can be governed in that an element can govern ‘up to a point’. We left undefined what that point was in our previous discussion, but now it is important to be more precise. There are a number of ways that we might think of doing this, but one of the most intuitive is to suppose that certain nodes in a tree form barriers to government in that they ‘protect’ their constituents from government from the outside. Thus a governor may be able to govern up to a barrier, but not through a barrier. We know that a light verb can assign Case to the specifier of the VP, as this is the normal configuration in which accusative Case is assigned:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

In conclusion, we can see that there is a class of verbs which subcategorise for exceptional non-finite IP complements. These clauses have subjects which are dependent on the light verb of the governing verb for their Case. Therefore these subjects bear accusative Case. Moreover these subjects are affected by the passivisation of the governing verb which robs them of their Case assigner. Hence they will undergo a movement to the subject position of the higher clause, just like the object of the passive verb does.

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

Here we have a complement clause which is non-finite and has an overt subject. The fact that this subject can be replaced by an accusative pronoun him shows that the subject is in an accusative position, just like we get with an exceptional verb. However, unlike exceptional verbs, this verb cannot passivise: