Abstract
I show that case syncretism obeys the same *ABA restriction previously observed in case-sensitive suppletion: no Vocabulary-Insertion rule can apply to both an inherent case and an unmarked core case (nominative/absolutive) without also applying to another core case (accusative/ergative). The case hierarchy that these effects motivate is one where the ergative is consistently put in the same box as the accusative, separately from all inherent cases. This offers a new kind of argument in favor of dependent-case theories, whereby accusative and ergative are both structurallyassigned to nominals that stand in an asymmetric c-command relation to another as-yet-caseless nominal nearby.
Highlights
1 Introduction Recent years have witnessed intensive research on so-called *ABA patterns—cross-linguistic patterns whereby, given a particular arrangement of forms in a certain type of paradigm, the first and third form may share some morphological property “A” only if the second form shares property “A”. One such pattern has recently been discussed by Smith et al (2018), who propose (1) as a universal *ABA restriction on the distribution of root allomorphs in case-sensitive suppletion
Following Bobaljik (2012), whose logic I review in detail in Section 2, Smith et al (2018) interpret (1) as evidence for a universal containment hierarchy like (2), such that the representation of every inherent case must contain that of a marked core case, which latter must in turn contain the representation of an unmarked core case
A simple approach to syncretism—in terms of missing dedicated exponents “filled in for” by their closest match—predicts that the containment hierarchy in (2) should constrain possible case syncretisms, too. This is because, absent a dedicated affix for an inherent case, (2) will always ensure that the accusative/ergative affix be a closer match for that inherent case than the unmarked-case affix would be
Summary
Recent years have witnessed intensive research on so-called *ABA patterns—cross-linguistic patterns whereby, given a particular arrangement of forms in a certain type of paradigm, the first and third form may share some morphological property “A” only if the second form shares property “A” (see Bobaljik 2012 and much related work). (9) Pāṇinian ordering, or Elsewhere Principle (cf Kiparsky 1973: 94) If rules of exponence R1 and R2 may each apply to terminal node N as per (8), and the contexts for application of R2 are a subset of the contexts for application of R1, R1 applies and R2 does not Assuming this background, together with the containment relations in (6)–(7), we can show what blocks ABA patterns by trying to derive one—for example, pseudo-Georgian abs is ~ erg ma-n ~ dat **is-s(a). Art. 73, page 5 of 28 latter scenario, we end up with a disuppletive pattern ABC.5 In the former, assuming no exponence rules other than (10), the two allomorphs is and ma- should compete to realize the pronoun in the dative, under the assumption that the dative contains erg; but the Elsewhere Principle should let the more specific ma- win again, resulting in ABB. I briefly discuss each of these cases in turn in Subsections 4.1–4.3
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