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Case and word order in Lithuanian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2006

STEVEN FRANKS  and
JAMES E. LAVINE
STEVEN FRANKS
Affiliation:
Indiana University
JAMES E. LAVINE
Affiliation:
Bucknell University
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Abstract

This paper examines the unusual case and word order behavior of objects of infinitives in Lithuanian. In addition to lexically determined case idiosyncrasy, Lithuanian exhibits syntactically determined case idiosyncrasy: with infinitives in three distinct constructions, case possibilities other than accusative obtain. These cases (dative, genitive, and nominative) depend on the general clause structure rather than on the particular infinitive. Moreover, unlike ordinary direct objects, these objects appear in a position preceding rather than following the verb. It is argued that they move to this position in order potentially to be accessible for Case assignment by some higher Case-assigning head. In this way we unify the two superficially unrelated properties of non-canonical word order and Case. This movement, however, is not feature-driven in the sense of standard minimalist Case-licensing mechanisms. We characterize it as ‘agnostic’ in that it applies to an object with unvalued Case features, if that object reaches a point in the derivation where it has no recourse but to move because failure to do so would be fatal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 239 - 288
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

An early version of this paper was presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages as ‘Case marking on objects of infinitives in Lithuanian’. Later instantiations were presented at the following universities, in chronological order: Indiana, Groningen, Venice, Ljubljana, Maryland, Connecticut, MIT, Pennsylvania, and Princeton; we appreciate the helpful comments of these audiences. Some of the nominative object material is also treated in Lavine & Franks (2005). We wish to thank William Schmalstieg for discussion of these data and for supplying numerous examples, Axel Holvoet of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language in Vilnius and Virginija Vasiliauskienė of Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas) for, respectively, obtaining and providing many useful judgments, and offering valuable suggestions on how to approach these judgments, and Dalia Cidzikaitė, Evelina Gužauskytė, Teresė Gužauskienė, and Jolanta Mickutė for checking our examples and providing needed additional discussion. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge two anonymous JL referees and Bob Borsley for comments leading to many improvements in the present version of the paper. All errors in the interpretation and analysis of these data and comments remain our own.