[en] The rise and fall of a Person-Case Constraint in Breton

Type de document

Auteur(s)

Est une partie de

Mots clés en

Humanities and Social Sciences
Person-Case Constraint
Jahnsson's Rule
person restrictions
agreement
case
licensing
parameters
externalisation
diachronic syntax
Breton
Finnish
Icelandic

Date de publication

Langue du document

Anglais

Editeur

Springer Verlag

Résumé

[en] This work explores the coupling of person-split nominative objects with anomalous subjects (Jahnsson’s Rule (JR), Person-Case Constraint (PCC)). In Breton, split-nominative objects spread from an Icelandic-like combination with oblique subjects of unaccusatives, to Finnish-like combinations with subjects of transitives in constructions like the imperative, and then retreated piecewise. These changes admit of externalist sources, such as frequency entrenchment and analogy over clitic forms, but are bounded by persistent coupling of split-nominative objects with anomalous subjects, and disfavour external sources for it like ambiguity avoidance. An approach is set out through constraints on φ-dependencies, their relationship to case and licensing, and their interaction with grammaticalisable partial φ-specification, building on other work on JR/PCC. The anomalies of the restricting subject are analysed as person-only specification, and extended from quirky obliques to pronouns minimal in absence of number + n/N : imperative pro and human impersonals. The ineffability or accusative of the restricted persons is analysed through the integration of dependent case into Φ/Case theory but apparent syntactic variation is modelled through externalisation.

Nom de la revue

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

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Source

HAL

Type de ressource

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Citation bibliographique

Milan Rezac. The rise and fall of a Person-Case Constraint in Breton. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 2024, 42 (3), pp.1233-1306. [10.1007/s11049-023-09598-x]. [hal-03926945v2]

Citer cette ressource

[en] The rise and fall of a Person-Case Constraint in Breton, dans Études nordiques, consulté le 7 Avril 2025, https://etudes-nordiques.cnrs.fr/s/numenord/item/18279