LINGUIST List 8.610

Sat Apr 26 1997

Qs: Ebonics, Case marking & agreement

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <ljubalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. English Department - University of Novi Sad, ebonics
2. Daniel L. Everett, Case marking in the absence of agreement

Dear linguists, a friend of maine is working on problems with
translation of black English into Serbian. She would be very grateful
if she could get all or most of the articles on Ebonics. 

Greeting to all, 
OZAunsff.ns.ac.yu

It is *usually* the case that verbs will agree with subjects before
objects and that objects will be case marked before verbs, expressed
informally via the implications in (i) and (ii):

(i) object agreement ---> subject agreement
(ii) overt nominative case marking ---> overt objective case marking

Does anyone know of studies that look at implication (ii) in languages
without any verb agreement morphology, i.e. without subject OR object
agreement? That is, does (ii) hold if the language lacks agreement?

Also, in languages which have been claimed to violate (i), is (ii) also
violated?

Please reply to me directly if you have any information on these
questions and I will post a summary of responses.

Thanks,

- DLE


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Dan Everett
Department of Linguistics
University of Pittsburgh
2816 CL
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Phone: 412-624-8101; Fax: 412-624-6130
http://www.linguistics.pitt.edu/~dever