Abstract for Thomas Leu's talk

More syntax, less syncretism: datives and adjectival agreement in German
Thomas Leu (New York University)
February 27, 2007 (Tuesday)
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM; Room 7102, The CUNY Graduate Center

In previous work (GLOW 2006, available online at: http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000392) I proposed a rather simple and independently supported analysis of the distribution of strong adjectival agreement in Swiss German and German, which actually fails to account for dative and genitive forms of adjectival agreement . Rather than abandoning the proposal, I will argue that the traditional categorization of certain morphemes as dative and genitive ``adjectival agreement'' is mistaken. This takes the problematic morphemes out of the scope of the analysis of adjectival agreement. Such a move is independently motivated. I will show that these (dative) morphemes exhibit an astounding syntactic parallelism with possessor morphemes in Swiss German. Taking this parallelism seriously, I propose that all datives (in Swiss German and German) involve a complex structure of the kind also found in possessives. Concretely, I propose that the overt noun in a dative noun phrase is in a sort of possession relation with a silent functional possessee nominal (and analogously for genitives). In addition to redeeming my earlier analysis of the distribution of adjectival agreement, the proposal allows us to view the bulk of syncretism in (Swiss) German adjectival agreement as an artifact of mistaken categorization.