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Description:
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This dissertation addresses the question of the mapping from syntactic
structures to morphological cases. The central question regards the
relationship between cases and adpositions in those contexts in which they
overlap, and how recognition of this relationship can be integrated into a
consistent treatment of cases. The analysis is couched in terms of the
Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1981, Chomsky 1986, Chomsky
1995), with the mapping between morphology and syntax working along the
lines of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993).
The working hypothesis is that at least some cases and adpositions are
syntactically identical, differing at the post-syntactic morphological
level. The main observation is that several syntactic subdivisions can be
made, both amongst cases (variations in the form of the noun), and amongst
adpositions (separate words adjacent to the noun), relating them to the
categories P, D and φ (a projection for number and person features). At the
same time some cases and some adpositions perform the same functions: the
same set of divisions can be made amongst cases as amongst adpositions.
From a syntactic perspective, case is an epiphenomenon, relating to several
separate nominal categories. In the morphology, case becomes identifiable
as differing from adpositions in many languages, cases forming part of
another word and adpositions standing as separate words, as idenitified on
language-specific diagnostics for wordhood.
Nothing in the Principles and Parameters approach to Case predicts the
overlap between case and adpositions or the range and variability of cases.
The existing possible solutions for such overlap have not been integrated
into the standard approach to case. This dissertation seeks to fill this
gap, proposing an integrated approach. The overlap of cases and adpositions
is explained by their spelling out the same range of categories in syntax,
forming part of the extended projection of the noun, the difference being
derived at the morphological level.
The analyses presented focus largely on Hungarian and Finnish for detailed
argumentation and exemplification of the mapping from syntax to morphology
that results in paradigms of syntactically non-equivalent objects.
The dissertation is of relevance to scholars working on the noun phrase or
the adposition phrase and their extended projections, and particularly
those with an interest in case from a syntactic or morphological perspective.
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