The dative: An oblique case. Vogel, R. & Steinbach, M. Linguistische Berichte, 1998(173):65 – 90, February, 1998.
abstract   bibtex   
A unified syntactic analysis of free & subcategorized dative objects in German treats all dative objects as syntactic adjuncts that have argument status in the semantics only. To isolate restrictions on word order affecting dative objects, thetic sentences containing only indefinite determiner phrases (DPs) are examined, revealing a constraint that animate objects precede inanimate ones in unmarked order; where both objects have the same animacy status, both orders are unmarked. As the unmarked relative order of structural cases has no sensitivity to cognitive constraints & datives are shown to occupy the traditional A'-positions of government & binding theory, it is argued that dative is not a structural case in German; further evidence that dative objects are adjuncts is adduced from the identical syntactic behavior of free & subcategorized dative objects, their multiple occurrence, & a restriction of coherent infinitive complements to dative-assigning transitive verbs. The binding theory of Tanya Reinhart & Eric Reuland (1993 [see abstract 9403125]) is modified to account for binding properties of dative objects, reviving an early distinction between structural & oblique case. References. Adapted from the source document
@article{vogel_dative:_1998,
	title = {The dative: {An} oblique case},
	volume = {1998},
	issn = {0024-3930},
	abstract = {A unified syntactic analysis of free \& subcategorized dative objects in German treats all dative objects as syntactic adjuncts that have argument status in the semantics only. To isolate restrictions on word order affecting dative objects, thetic sentences containing only indefinite determiner phrases (DPs) are examined, revealing a constraint that animate objects precede inanimate ones in unmarked order; where both objects have the same animacy status, both orders are unmarked. As the unmarked relative order of structural cases has no sensitivity to cognitive constraints \& datives are shown to occupy the traditional A'-positions of government \& binding theory, it is argued that dative is not a structural case in German; further evidence that dative objects are adjuncts is adduced from the identical syntactic behavior of free \& subcategorized dative objects, their multiple occurrence, \& a restriction of coherent infinitive complements to dative-assigning transitive verbs. The binding theory of Tanya Reinhart \& Eric Reuland (1993 [see abstract 9403125]) is modified to account for binding properties of dative objects, reviving an early distinction between structural \& oblique case. References. Adapted from the source document},
	language = {English},
	number = {173},
	journal = {Linguistische Berichte},
	author = {Vogel, Ralf and Steinbach, Markus},
	month = feb,
	year = {1998},
	keywords = {Argument Structure, Binding, Case, Case Marking, German, Government Binding Theory, Word order, article},
	pages = {65 -- 90}
}

Downloads: 0