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Grammatical Case in Estonian Merilin Miljan A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh September 2008 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is of my own composition, and that it contains no material previously submitted for the award of any other degree. The work reported in this thesis has been executed by myself, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. Merilin Miljan ii Abstract The aim of this thesis is to show that standard approaches to grammatical case fail to provide an explanatory account of such cases in Estonian. In Estonian, grammatical cases form a complex system of semantic contrasts, with the case-marking on nouns alternating with each other in certain constructions, even though the apparent grammatical functions of the noun phrases themselves are not changed. This thesis demonstrates that such alternations, and the differences in interpretation which they induce, are context dependent. This means that the semantic contrasts which the alternating grammatical cases express are available in some linguistic contexts and not in others, being dependent, among other factors, on the semantics of the case- marked noun and the semantics of the verb it occurs with. Hence, traditional approaches which treat grammatical case as markers of syntactic dependencies and account for associated semantic interpretations by matching cases directly to semantics not only fall short in predicting the distribution of cases in Estonian but also result in over-analysis due to the static nature of the theories which the standard approach to case marking comprises. On the basis of extensive data, it is argued that grammatical cases in Estonian have underspecified semantic content that is not truth-conditional, but inferential, i.e. it interacts with linguistic context and discourse. Inspired by the assumptions of Relevance Theory (Wilson & Sperber 1993, 2002, 2004) and Dynamic Syntax (Cann et al 2005), it is proposed that grammatical cases in Estonian provide procedural information: instead of taking cases to encode grammatical relations directly, and matching them to truth-conditional semantics, it is argued that it is more useful and explanatory to construe case marking in Estonian as providing information on how to process the case-marked expression and interpret it within an immediate discourse (or sentence). This means that grammatical cases in Estonian are seen to encode a heavily underspecified semantics which is enriched by pragmatic processes in context. In this way, certain problematic constructions in Estonian, such as transitive clauses in which the object is marked by either genitive or nominative, depending on number (often referred to as the accusative in the relevant literature, e.g. Ackerman & Moore 1999, iii 2001; Hiietam 2003, 2004) and constructions in which the nominative occurs on the object both with singular and plural nouns, are shown to have a unitary explanation. iv Acknowledgments No matter what topic one exploits, what sources one uses, or how capable one is, the only thing that matters in the end is how good a supervisor one has. I feel extremely privileged to have had Dr. Ronnie Cann as my main supervisor. I have gained enormously from his insight into language (and it is only my fault if have not been able to make the most of it). Therefore I wish to express my deepest gratitude to him for his encouragement, for his time, and for his interest in cases and case marking. His patience and sense of humour deserve an extra mention, as well as the skill to help one back on track when one is feeling hopelessly lost and stuck. I am also deeply grateful to Prof. Caroline Heycock, my second supervisor, for her time and comments on drafts of this thesis. Her attention to detail and the ability to ask clarifying questions is hugely impressive and most appreciated in this thesis. I would like to thank one of my former supervisors, Dr. James P. Blevins, for making me curious about case-marking in Estonian and for being a genuine fan of the Estonian language. He definitely deserves an award for being the best promoter of Estonian in the world. I find it extremely amusing that all the students in his class regard Estonian language speakers as geniuses just because they happen to have Estonian (with its 14 cases and several case alternations) as their first language. I wish also to thank Dr. Urmas Sutrop at the Institute of the Estonian Language for sharing his opinions on several language matters, for pointing out literature in fields of linguistics I hardly knew anything about, and for discussions about the accusative case. There are many other people at the Institute of the Estonian Language to whom I am indebted, especially Heete Sahkai, Külli Kuusk, Jane Lepasaar, Maria-Maren Sepper and Iris Metsmägi. I am grateful to Iris Metsmägi for providing me an insight into the debates in the studies of Uralic languages. I also owe my gratitude to Katrin Hiietam for generously taking time to explain her views on case marking in Estonian, and to Pille Petersoo, Marika Traat, Age Osik, and Kadri Hein, for sharing their native speaker intuitions with me and doing several tests. A big Thank You goes to all these people who were kind enough to participate in my pilot study (too many to list here!) and who provided detailed comments on their responses. I am also grateful to the participants at the Aspect and v Definiteness Conference in Estonia in 2006, whose feedback has been greatly appreciated and taken into account in this thesis. I am particularly thankful to Östen Dahl for his scrutinising comments and questions. This work has also greatly benefited from the discussions in the Syntax and Semantics Research Group at the University of Edinburgh. I hereby wish to express my gratitude for invaluable discussions, feedback, suggestions and comments. I also wish to thank Dr. Diane Nelson and Dr. Peter Ackema for their insightful comments. Thank you to the G.04 club – Catherine, Anna, Evia, Frances, Kate, Rachel, Mako, Oliver, Tetsu, and formerly Robert – thank you for sharing the true PhD experience, thanks for the fun and chat and support! Catherine Dickie serves a special mention here for making such an excellent job of proofreading the entire thesis and helping out innumerable ways! I would have been definitely less social without the well-known PhD Unsocials of the Informatics Department. These people do know how to relax and have fun, and unlike the name suggests, are the most sociable people in Edinburgh with an amazing ability to turn any event into the event of the year. Thanks for the cheese fondue nights, Christophe, many thanks to Gaya for organising a successful sequence of mouth-watering Death by Dessert championships; thanks Jorge, Marisa and Mariola for many great times. To Edinburgh University Hill Walking Club – thanks for the adventurous company out in the Scottish hills and for helping me to endure the horizontal rain, and also for fun in taking shortcuts down along the snowy slopes on waterproofs. Likewise, Edinburgh University Ballroom Dancing Society – thanks for the tangos and waltzes and fancy balls. I also owe a thank you to the staff at Edinburgh University Sports Centre, especially to the swimming pool people. Thanks to my parents for their constant encouragement and support and for inspiring the enthusiasm for learning. Dominik, this thesis is dedicated to you – for your understanding and patience and help in innumerable ways. Thanks for putting up with me in the moments of despair and staying with me. My PhD studies have been funded by the Archimedes Foundation, and this financial support is gratefully acknowledged. vi List of Abbreviations ACC accusative case TERMIN terminative case ABLAT ablative TRANSL translative case ADESS adessive case ALLAT allative case ASP aspect COND conditional DEF definite article DIM diminutive ELAT elative case EMP emphatic particle GEN genitive case ILLAT illative case IMP imperative IMV impersonal INESS inessive case INF infinitive NEG negation marker NOM nominative OBJ object PASS passive PL plural PPL participle PRES present PROG progressive PRTV partitive PST past PTC particle REFL reflexive SG singular SUBJ subject vii Contents DECLARATION...................................................................................................................................II ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................................III ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.....................................................................................................................V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................................................VII 1 INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................................1 2 ESTONIAN DATA: MORPHOLOGICAL CASE DISTINCTIONS.............................................8 2.1 THE ESTONIAN CASE SYSTEM.........................................................................................................8 2.1.1 Word order in Estonian........................................................................................................11 2.2 ALTERNATIONS IN OBJECT MARKING............................................................................................13 2.2.1 An alternative account of object case alternation: The Transitivity Hypothesis..................18 2.3 ALTERNATIONS IN SUBJECT MARKING..........................................................................................21 2.3.1 Existential sentences............................................................................................................22 2.4 ALTERNATIONS IN SUBJECT AND OBJECT MARKING IN THE CB AREA...........................................26 2.4.1 Nominative object................................................................................................................29 2.5 OBJECT-LIKE ADVERBIALS............................................................................................................31 2.6 THE EXPRESSION OF ASPECT IN ESTONIAN....................................................................................35 2.7 SUMMARY....................................................................................................................................37 3 THE ACCUSATIVE HYPOTHESIS..............................................................................................38 3.1 THE ISSUE OF ACCUSATIVE IN ESTONIAN......................................................................................38 3.2 EXAMINATION OF THE ACCUSATIVE HYPOTHESIS........................................................................41 3.2.1 The synchronic point of view...............................................................................................41 3.2.2 The diachronic perspective..................................................................................................44 3.2.2.1 The status of the postulated accusative case in proto-Uralic........................................................45 3.2.2.2 What motivates the reconstruction of accusative *-m?................................................................49 3.3 ARGUMENTS FOR THE ACCUSATIVE CASE IN ESTONIAN (HIIETAM 2004)......................................52 3.3.1 The genitive which marks the direct object is not a true genitive........................................53 3.3.2 Nominative which marks the direct object is not a true nominative....................................57 3.3.3 Agreement............................................................................................................................61 3.3.4 Definite objects have always had a distinct case marking in Estonian................................64 3.4 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................65 4 WHAT IS GAINED BY POSITING ACCUSATIVE CASE IN ESTONIAN?............................66 4.1 WHERE WOULD THE PROPOSED ACCUSATIVE APPEAR?.................................................................66 4.2 THE ISSUE OF NOMINATIVE...........................................................................................................81 4.2.1 Nominative and the question of grammatical relations.......................................................81 4.2.1.1 Nominative in existential construction.........................................................................................90 4.2.1.2 Nominative in intransitive clauses and the question of split-S ergativity.....................................93 4.2.2 The status of nominative......................................................................................................97 4.3 THE ISSUE OF PARTITIVE CASE....................................................................................................101 4.4 CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................105 5 SEMANTICS OF ESTONIAN GRAMMATICAL CASES........................................................106 5.1 ASPECTUAL INTERPRETATIONS ARE INFERENTIAL......................................................................107 5.1.1 Verbal properties and event structure................................................................................107 5.1.2 Case and aspectual interpretations....................................................................................113 5.2 CASE MEANING AND CONTEXT DEPENDENCY..............................................................................125 5.2.1 Case meaning is inferential................................................................................................127 5.2.2 Native speakers’ judgements of case marking...................................................................134 5.3 THE ROLE OF GRAMMATICAL CASE IN ESTONIAN........................................................................140 5.3.1 Semantics of the partitive...................................................................................................143 viii 5.4 CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................153 6 GENITIVE/NOMINATIVE: CASE VS. NO CASE.....................................................................155 6.1 NOMINATIVE IS NO CASE.............................................................................................................155 6.1.1 Nominative plural..............................................................................................................160 6.1.2 Nominative and its interpretations.....................................................................................164 6.2 GENITIVE....................................................................................................................................172 6.2.1 Morphological genitive as an oblique case in Estonian....................................................176 6.2.2 Semantics of the genitive....................................................................................................181 6.3 CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................189 7 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS..............................................................................................191 BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................................200 APPENDIX 1......................................................................................................................................209 APPENDIX 2......................................................................................................................................211 EXPERIMENT 1: RESULTS.................................................................................................................211 EXPERIMENT 2: RESULTS.................................................................................................................221 ix