Abstract
A correlation between articles and Case has long been noted based on diachronic evidence. Beyond articles, evidence supports that this correlation extends further to clitics and the determiner system (the D-system) at large. The D-system in turn supports referential functions in grammar and is closely correlated to Person. The aim of the present article is to link support for these facts to the broader foundational question and independent recent theories of the function of Case as governing referential meaning in grammar at the level of clauses. This link is supported by specific evidence from the use of Accusative and Partitive clitics in Romance, which play the same roles strong Accusative vs. weak Partitive Case play in Finnish, which lacks articles, and similar patterns in languages such as Turkish, Russian, and Latin. Case therefore arguably determines the referential function of (pro-) nominals as part of event structures, whether synthetically or else analytically via the left periphery of the NP. This explains the historical links between Case and the D-system, which we further argue evidence from Greek has been incorrectly argued to contravene.
Highlights
Languages appear to differ widely, yet the logical space of possible variation appears limited by general principles universal in our species, an idea often known as the Uniformity Principle (Chomsky 2001: 2)
We close in on our specific hypothesis about the cause in question, based on the fact that, while D is already widely assumed to play a role in the referentiality of nominals (Longobardi 1994), Case has recently been argued to play a role in generating expression with referential meaning at the event level as well (Hinzen 2014, 2018; Hinzen & Sheehan 2015; Martin, Schröder & Hinzen 2020). This view contravenes the much more common one that Case is an ‘uninterpretable’ feature, which has to be ‘checked’ in order for a derivation to converge at the semantic interface (Chomsky 1995), and is decoupled from the ‘interpretable’ bundle of j-features (Den Dikken 2011: 873; see Adger & Harbour 2008; or Pesetsky & Torrego 2001). This common view raises an immediate question, : If Case is not interpretable or referentially relevant, why would at least part of the Latin case system evolve into a D-system that is essentially designed for referential function? In line with this, we argue that Latin Case fulfilled the referential functions of the Romance D-system, connecting the three notions of Case, D, and referentiality in a single explanatory schema
What are we to make of the evidence presented? First, it is clear that the same macroobservation we made for Latin and the Ibero-Romance languages still stands empirically for the change between Homeric and Classical Greek; it is still questionable whether the correlation between loss of Case and rise of D goes beyond what we call an accidental correlation
Summary
Languages appear to differ widely, yet the logical space of possible variation appears limited by general principles universal in our species, an idea often known as the Uniformity Principle (Chomsky 2001: 2). This view contravenes the much more common one that (structural) Case is an ‘uninterpretable’ feature, which has to be ‘checked’ in order for a derivation to converge at the semantic interface (Chomsky 1995), and is decoupled from the ‘interpretable’ bundle of j-features (gender, number, person, ...) (Den Dikken 2011: 873; see Adger & Harbour 2008; or Pesetsky & Torrego 2001). According to the DP hypothesis we assume here (Szabolcsi 1983; Abney 1987; Longobardi 1994; Lyons 1999), full nominals
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
