2008/10/01 by Helen de Hoop, Andrej Malchukov · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology
paper · doi:10.1162/ling.2008.39.4.565
openalex publication_date 2008/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
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 discourse prominence of the case-bearing arguments is shown to be of utmost importance for case-marking and voice alternations. The analysis of the case-marking patterns that are found crosslinguistically is couched in a bidirectional Optimality Theory analysis.