On the Symmetry of Case in Conjunction

Abstract

In this article, I argue that all of the conjuncts in nominal conjunction always bear the same case. Apparent counterexamples, where conjuncts seem to differ in morphological case marking, are due either to a misanalysis of the underlying syntactic structure or to superficial morphological processes that create the impression of a difference in case marking. Once we control for phenomena of this sort (namely &P clitics, suspended affixation, and allomorphy), we find that case marking in nominal conjunction is always symmetric. This finding is in stark contrast to the phenomenon of ϕ agreement, which is known to exhibit asymmetries in conjunction. I show that the Chomskyan account of case assignment, according to which case arises only as a reflex of ϕ agreement, cannot account for this mismatch without stipulative assumptions. The pattern follows straightforwardly, however, if we assume that case assignment proceeds on the basis of syntactic structure while ϕ agreement can be either syntactic or postsyntactic. Finally, I show that the generalization established can be used as a simple diagnostic to distinguish syntactic case-marking alternations from morphological ones.

Closest Conjunct Agreement

“…Finally, we can ask what kind of features other than φ-agreement features can participate in clausal processes without being mediated by the coordination head. Weisser (2017) claims that once one controls for processes such as allomorphy and ellipsis, we find that case marking is always symmetric on all of the conjuncts in coordination. This is somewhat surprising given that φ-agreement probes in the clause can target specific conjuncts.…”

“…Weisser (2017) note that Hindi disallows conjuncts mismatching in specificity. It is another open question whether these requirements should be derived by positing the respective features on the coordination head.…”

Resumption in Igbo: Two types of resumptives, complex phi-mismatches, and dynamic deletion domains

“…6.4.1, example (51) (which do not realize case), and add the NOM-allomorphs in (69g-h). 42 An alternative for &P is to have the &-head assign case to each of its arguments, a strategy available in some languages, see Johannessen (1998); Stassen (2000); Weisser (2020). Since we argued that the NOM-forms as contextual allomorphs of the ACC-forms, the former also do not realize abstract case features.…”

Subordination and binary branching

“…Unbalanced case has received relatively little attention. A recent article, Weisser 2020, shows that, in certain coordinate structures that appear asymmetric on the surface, underlying case is in fact symmetric. For various other classes of data, Przepiórkowski 2022 argues that genuine mismatches in case can be observed; crucially, however, these do not motivate a structural asymmetry between conjuncts.…”