Stefan Keine

Case and agreement from fringe to core : a minimalist approach

This book develops a unified theory of non-canonical case and agreement patterns that have remained elusive so far. Drawing from a wide range of typologically non-related languages, it sets forth the claim that the phenomena under discussion involve abstract deletion operations which interact with other grammatical operations in intricate but highly systematic ways. This interplay is shown to give rise to seemingly non-related surface phenomena, thus integrating these phenomena within a more general framework of argument encoding.

Non-zero/non-zero alternations in differential object marking

This article presents an extension of the theory of differential argument encoding developed in Aissen (1999, 2003). It is based on the empirical observation that the yes/no alternations envisaged in Aissen’s system are only part of a much broader less/more pattern. We maintain Aissen’s hypothesis that the effects of differential argument encoding can be derived from harmonic alignment of markedness scales, but we argue that differential encoding should best be viewed as a purely morphological phenomenon (rather than as a syntactic phenomenon, as in Aissen’s approach). More specifically, we suggest that harmonic alignment of scales may bring about impoverishment operations that reduce syntactic inputs for morphological realization (see Halle a Marantz (1993)). The result is a unified account for differential argument encoding that comprises alternations between two or more overt markers, which fall out of Aissen’s systems. The empirical evidence for our approach comes from Hindi, Mannheim German, Trumai, and Cavinena.

Tense and the Realization of the Feminine Plural in Hindi-Urdu

This chapter examines the realization of the plural feature in the context of the feminine feature in Hindi-Urdu. We argue that the plural feature is only realized in the presence of a feminine feature if this plural feature is in the context of finite tense. Our analysis gives a detailed treatment of agreement morphology in Hindi-Urdu and provides an independent way of characterizing finiteness in the language.