Abstract
Case marking has long resisted rationalization in terms of language-external systems of cognition, representing a classical illustration in the generative tradition for an apparently purely ‘formal’ or ‘syntactic’ aspect of grammatical organization. I argue that this impasse derives from the prevailing absence of a notion of grammatical meaning, i.e. meaning unavailable lexically or in non-linguistic cognition and uniquely dependent on grammatical forms of organization. In particular, propositional forms of reference, contrary to their widespread designation as ‘semantic’, are arguably not only grammar-dependent but depend on relations designated as structural ‘Cases’. I further argue that these fail to reduce to thematic structure, Person, Tense, or Agreement. Therefore, Case receives a rationalization in terms of how lexical memory is made referential and propositional in language. Structural Case is ‘uninterpretable’ (bereft of content) only if a non-grammatical notion of meaning is employed, and sapiens-specific cognition is (implausibly) regarded as unmediated by language.
Highlights
An appeal to a pre-linguistic mode of thought to explain the semantics we find expressed in human languages will only partially help: we need the kind of thought that uniquely goes with language, and that kind is, empirically, inseparable from language and never found without it
As we look empirically at what forms of reference exist, in both the nominal and clausal cases, we see them systematically co-varying with forms of grammatical complexity and ordered in hierarchies, which Case assignment, systematically enough, appears to track
As grammar starts acting on lexical concepts, phasal units are generated that come with referential potentials that depend on their respective degrees of completeness
Summary
Obligatory marking for the so-called ‘structural’ Cases, Nominative (NOM) and Accusative (ACC), has posed significant challenges in terms of its rationalization in language-independent terms. The state of the art in GB/Minimalism, which is my point of departure here, is summarized in Section 2.2 In Section 3, I suggest a principled distinction between the lexico-conceptual organization of meaning and its referential use In any such use, lexical concepts, retrieved from semantic memory, enter units of grammatical organization, which I identify here as the three ‘phases’ of a derivation of recent Minimalist theory (Chomsky, 2001, 2008): in essence, a nominal, verbal and clausal phase. The very existence of some kinds of meaning depends on grammatical forms of organization – the grammaticalization of the hominin brain – and it is absent otherwise This view is precisely challenged by evidence that apparent core principles of grammar such as the Case filter do not seem to have an independent cognitive or semantic rationale.
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