Larson, Richard - Adjectives and Case Concord

Author: Richard Larson

Title: Adjectives and Case Concord

Date: Friday, April 19, 2019

Location: Tucson, AZ, USA

Abstract: Traditional grammar regards the case-marking observed in examples like (1a) from Icelandic as non-uniform. Whereas NOM(INATIVE) case is said to be “governed” on the noun (kennigar) or “assigned” to it, NOM is described as “concordial” on the quantifier (allɑr), the demonstrative (þessɑr), the numeral (þrjár) and the adjective (nyju) (1b).

In this talk I sketch an analysis of case within the feature theory of Pesetsky & Torrego (2007), looking at various schematic possibilities it makes available, under the idea that nouns (Ns) are valued for case whereas adjectives are concordial for it. I then go on to explore two potential situations in DP: one wherein the nouns of a language behave concordially, in other words, behave like adjectives with respect to case, and a second situation one wherein the adjectives of a language behave non-concordially, in other words behave like nouns with respect to case. I argue that both situations are instantiated empirically in Iranian languages, as evidenced by the distribution of the so-called Ezafe and Reverse Ezafe morphemes, which I take to be a diagnostic for nominality, following the work of Samiian (1983, 1994) and Larson and Samiian (2018).