Case and morphosyntactic alignments

[The Peloric Orchid]

Hey everyone,

I'm having a debate with a friend about the specific meaning of what it means when a language has case. Her argument is that languages that don't mark for case can still have it because they can still have thematic roles which can have labels like nominative and accusative which you can derive from word order. My argument is that these reflect morphosyntactic alignments, so all languages have morphosyntactic alignment but unless its marked there's no case. I was wondering if any of you guys with a stronger linguistics background could shed some light?

Thanks!

[ObsequiousNewt]

From my experience, the definitions of terminology like "case" really depend on the language in question.

[Yng]

Her argument is similar to that proposed by Deep Case Grammar. Generally speaking, though, when we talk about language having case we are referring specifically to morphologically marked noun forms triggered by specific morphosyntactic roles. It is comparatively rare even to refer to languages which use e.g. particles or clitics to mark this sort of thing as having 'case' (cf English, where 's can be argued as marking noun phrases - as opposed to nouns - for case but is usually not described that way).

[Miekko]

You're probably both right - you're essentially talking about different things to which we happen to stick the same label.

[roninbodhisattva]

I'd say that the way one thinks about a language having case or not is highly dependent on ones theoretical background. In Chomskyan theories the settlement of the argument is basically...you're both right.

Basically, these approaches separate 'case' in the sense that you're talking about, morphological case, from Case (with a capital C) which is a theoretical implementation of the idea that all arguments (DPs/NPs, etc) must be licensed somehow. There are positions in which an argument DP receives case and those in which it does not. A DP without Case isn't licensed and causes ungrammaticality. In mainstream minimalist syntax, Case licensing is thought to be a universal requirement, hardwired into the grammar. Or at least the requirement is. It's the way that languages go about licensing/assigning Case to DPs and the overt manifestation of that licensing that creates differences we see in morphological case systems.

I'd also like to point out that thematic roles are a differential theoretical device than Case. Thematic roles are semantically determined by a predicate, etc. Case is generally thought to be structural, assigned in certain positions or by certain heads. So, T may always assigns nominative to the subject, but the subject will have a different thematic role based on its predicate.

So like Miekko says, you're basically talking about different things with the same label. They have (unfortunately in my opinion) been conflated under the same name.