No abstract

Evidence from the Lithuanian active existential construction shows that Lithuanian has a type of VoiceP that assigns structural accusative case in the absence of a syntactically projected implicit argument in SpecVoiceP. This construction is a violation of Burzio’s (1986) Generalization and its later versions (Marantz 1991; Kratzer 1994, 1996; Woolford 2003; McFadden 2004; Legate 2014; i.a.). This paper offers a revised version of Burzio’s Generalization by proposing that while accusative case must be assigned by a thematic Voice, the assignment of accusative case by Voice may vary independently from the selection of a specifier.

Dative case on indirect objects (IO) in Lithuanian is preserved under passivization, which is not the case with dative direct objects (DO) of monotransitive verbs, suggesting that the two datives are not alike. Although DAT-to-NOM conversion is taken as an indicator of structural case, we show that DO datives behave differently from DOs bearing structural accusative in that the former exhibit inherent case properties as well (see also Anderson 2015). We develop an account for the contrast between the two datives by using two types of derivational mechanisms: structure-building features, triggering Merge, and probe features, triggering Agree (Heck & Müller 2007; Müller 2010). This study demonstrates that structural vs. non-structural conversion can be dependent on not only how case is assigned but also on the Voice system of a language (in line with Alexiadou et al. 2014). We argue that the DO dative in Lithuanian is in fact non-structural. Even though the result of DAT-to-NOM conversion is structural nominative case, the derivation is different from that of structural ACC-to-NOM conversion.

This study examines the properties of VoiceP and impersonal pronouns by contrasting two constructions in Lithuanian: the ‐ma/‐ta impersonal and the canonical passive. I argue that, while these two constructions overlap morphologically, they are syntactically distinct. The ‐ma/‐ta impersonal is related to the ‐no/‐to construction in Polish and in Ukrainian. Although it patterns with the Ukrainian ‐no/‐to passive in allowing an auxiliary, it behaves like an active VoiceP with a null projected initiator in a thematic‐subject position, a pattern found in the Polish ‐no/‐to impersonal and other impersonals crosslinguistically. I show that the Lithuanian passive lacks a syntactically realized initiator and selects for a type of Voice without a specifier. I also analyze the properties of the impersonal pronoun of the ‐ma/‐ta impersonal, demonstrating that it is a bare N that lacks inherently specified ɸ features (number, gender, and person) and has no case. This finding supports existing proposals that treat impersonal pronouns in different languages as defective.

This study examines gender representation and defaults in Lithuanian by investigating the inflection on predicative adjectives (PAs). We provide novel evidence for two types of defaults in the representation of gender, masculine being the unmarked gender, and neuter being the absence of gender. It is demonstrated that neuter PAs appear when the subject lacks gender features accessible for agreement with the PA, which we refer to as non-agreement. In contrast, masculine PAs appear when the PA agrees with a subject bearing an unmarked gender feature. We analyze masculine and feminine as sharing a feature [GEND] that originates on n, the locus of gender features (following Lecarme 2002; Lowenstamm 2008; Kramer 2015; 2016), with the default gender – the masculine – bearing only this feature, and the more marked gender – the feminine – having an additional feature [FEM]. Neuter corresponds to the absence of these features. By placing gender features on the nominalizing head n, our account explicitly relates the distribution of gender inflection to nominal syntax and agreement.