Why do obliques not become genitives

Consider first the case of nominalizations. The reasoning branches into two separate issues. The first issue is connected to the fact that nominatives and accusatives can turn into a genitive. The second line of reasoning deals with the fact that datives and other oblique cases cannot turn into genitives. I tackle these points in turn.

Consider the sentence (17a). In the previous section, I have proposed that the KP* ‘the grass’ is in a derived (structural object) position, and it has been first merged bearing the instrumental case (as the Figure of the PP ‘on the truck’). The instrumental can be seen on the surface in (17b), where the KP*

‘the grass’ has stayed in situ, and the object position was filled by the original Ground. The shift from the base-generated instrumental to the structural accusative is an instance of Peeling.

(17) a. Karel

‘Karel has loadedthe grass on the truck.’

b. Petr Peter loaded the truckwith the grass.

Above, I have assumed that the shift from the instrumental to the accusative is due to a single movement step without any intermediate touch-down; the accusative was proposed to sub-extract directly from within the original in-strumental. Consider, however, what happens in nominalizations, see (18).

Here, the KP* ‘the grass’ surfaces in the genitive:

(18) naloˇzen´ı

‘the loadingof the grass on the truck’

In order to get a handle on such data, I am led to propose that what we took originally to be a single step of movement, breaks down into two independent steps. In step one, the genitive sub-extracts from within the instrumental, and in step two, the accusative sub-extracts from within the genitive. The derivation is shown in (19):

(19) Acc

B Nom

A DP

the grass S-Acc

...

GenP

C Acc

B

A DP

the grass

S-Gen vP⇒ load ... v^′

v⁰ VP

V PP

InsP

E DatP

D GenP

the grass P^′

P NP*

the truck

I have placed the genitive position S-Gen above the little vP. However, I do not assume that vP is necessarily present in nominalizations, and it is in all likelihood absent in simple nouns (which assign genitive as well). The ordering is thus not taken to mean that the projection of the genitive position S-Gen presupposes the presence of all lower projections (these can simply be missing).¹²

With the derivation (19) in place, the simplest approach to nominalizations like (18) is to say that the nominalization arises as a result of the attachment of the nominalizer -ing between the genitive and the accusative position, as shown in (20):

12This presupposes that gaps in the functional sequence are allowed. A question then arises whether also gaps in the functional sequence of case are allowed. I tackle the question in§9.3 in more detail, arguing that gaps in the case sequence are empir-ically unattested. In sum, then, there are regions of the fseq where projections can be missing, and regions where they cannot.

(20) -ing

GenP

C Acc

B

A DP

the grass

S-Gen vP⇒ load ... v^′

v⁰ VP

V PP

InsP

E DatP

D GenP

the grass P^′

P NP*

the truck

This proposal derives from a prominent approach to nominalizations going back to Abney (1987), and further developed in a number of works; see Lundquist (2008) for a recent summary from the nanosyntactic perspective. In Abney’s theory, nominalizations are derived from an underlying verbal struc-ture by attaching the nominalizing morpheme-ingon top. The morpheme can attach either to V, VP or IP, producing various degrees of verbal behavior of a given nominalization. Thus, I essentially follow Abney in proposing that the nominalizations which have genitive objects are derived by the attachment of -ing in a position above S-gen, but below S-Acc, which makes higher verbal positions (among them S-Acc) go missing.¹³

To recapitulate, the idea in a nutshell is that arguments which end up nominative or accusative in a finite sentence pass prior to this through a gen-itive position, a possibility opened by the Peeling proposal. Under this view, we can understand the emergence of the genitive marking in a nominalization along the lines of an Abneyan proposal: since in nominalizations, higher ver-bal projections (among them S-Nom and S-Acc) can be missing, this forces the arguments to actually surface in the lower genitive position. This delivers the result that arguments marked by nominative or accusative can turn into a genitive in nominalizations.

This line of analysis, which combines the Peeling approach to case and

13Taraldsen (2008b) follows a similar line of reasoning, but draws a slightly different picture. He proposes instead that an accusative position is present in nominalizations, but it is occupied by a silent pronominal (which the VP is a predicate of). This has the same effect on case assignment as making that position disappear.

a “structure-trimming” approach to nominalizations, delivers also the second part of the generalization, namely that cases which are bigger than genitive (e.g., the dative) cannot turn into a genitive in nominalizations.

The reasoning starts from the analysis of obliques bigger than genitives in finite sentences. In the current framework, such oblique marking is analyzed as a sign of the fact that the KP* is unable to move to the position which k-selects an accusative (the direct object position). Because of this, it surfaces either in the base position, or in some intermediate position. Crucially, such a KP* has not moved through a genitive position in the finite sentence; this is a consequence of the Peeling approach, as highlighted in (16). (If it had moved through a genitive position, it would have to end up smaller than genitive, contrary to the initial assumption that we are looking at an oblique.)

As a result, a KP* bigger than genitive will not turn into a genitive in nominalizations. The reason is that no such option has been available to them in the finite sentence to begin with. And trimming the verbal structure by attaching-ing will not lead to new derivational options.

Summing up: a theorem of Peeling concerning permissible case shifting, see (16), combined with an Abneyan view on nominalizations, derives the observed interaction between k-selection and the representation of case in the domain of nominalizations. In particular, KP*s smaller than the genitive can turn into one under trimming of the finite sentence, but KP*s bigger than the genitive are not allowed to do that.