Not so exceptional case marking in English

Abstract

Not so exceptional case marking in English 51 of such terms. Using such names has often been assumed to be a positive way to compare and contrast different case systems in the world's languages. With their use, for example, we can see similarities between the Hungarian subject of a finite clause, which carries no case morphology, and the equivalent element in Japanese, which is marked for case. This is because both languages have a nominative-accusative system, assigning one case (morphologically unmarked in Hungarian but marked in Japanese) to grammatical subjects and a different one to the object (marked in both languages) 2 .(2) a János- meghív-t-a Mari-t. János-NOM invite-PAST-3S. Mari-ACC 'John invited Mary.' b Mari- alsz-ik. Mary-NOM sleep-3S. 'Mary is sleeping.'(3) a Inu-ga mizu-o no-mu. dog-NOM water-ACC drink-PRES 'The dog drinks water.' b Shojo-ga aru-ku girl-NOM walk-PRES 'The girls walks.'In turn, we can then contrast these languages with those which have an ergativeabsolutive system, such as Basque, where the subject of the intransitive clause is assigned the same case as the object (absolutive), while the subject of the transitive gets another case (ergative).(4) a Jon-ek sagar bat jan du. John-ERG apple a.ABS eat have.(3S.ABS.)3S.ERG 'John has eaten an apple.' b Mahai-a apurtu da. table-DET.ABS break be.3S.ABS 'The table broke.' 2 Baker (2015) claims that Japanese is a marked nominative language, which in his system is a distinct case system characterised by a negative condition on the assignment of dependent case (assign dependent case to a DP which is NOT c-commanded by another DP in the same domain). In such a system, 'nominative' is the dependent case and 'accusative' is unmarked. However, while there are languages in which nominative is morphologically marked and accusative is unmarked, in Japanese both nominative and accusative are marked.