The status of Dative case in the Moksha case paradigm

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the structure of the Moksha case system and its implications for linguistic theory. Based on their morphological properties, Moksha (Uralic) cases are divisible into two groups, which seem to correspond to structural and inherent cases. Dative, however, presents a puzzle: distributionally, it behaves as an inherent case, but morphologically it patterns with the structural ones. To resolve this discrepancy, I argue that inherent cases are always headed by a P, providing a finer classifi cation of P heads (relational vs. non-relational) based on their morphosyntactic properties. Synchronically, inherent “case” markers are bound counterparts of free-standing postpositions and relational nouns. Diachronically, the latter grammaticalize to the former. The nature of a free-standing element gives rise to two diff erent patterns once it is grammaticalized into a case marker, and thus the case marker continues to echo either the relational nature (< relational noun) or non-relational nature (< postposition) of the element it came from. Dative is a non-relational P head that assigns structural genitive to its complement, explaining why the morphological behavior is the one found with structural cases. On the other hand, other inherent cases are relational P heads, which take bare complements.