Theories of Morphological Case and Topic/Focus

This edited book brings together studies on morphological case in Japanese, English, and Bantu languages, among others, from morphosyntactic, semantic and historical perspectives. Languages are divided into two types in terms of case: nominative-accusative languages and ergative-absolutive languages. Even if we limit our attention to nominative-accusative languages, morphological case on subjects and objects can vary across languages or even within a single language, either synchronically or diachronically. For instance, certain stative predicates in Japanese allow their subjects and objects to be marked with dative and nominative case, respectively, and subjects in adnominal clauses in Japanese can be marked with genitive case; moreover, genitive subject marking in adnominal clauses has decreased over the past few centuries. Licensing relationships between predicates and cases can also have idiolectal, dialectal, and/or geographical micro-variations and intergenerational and/or diachronic micro-change. This book draws parallels and examines differences between examples of European, Asian and African languages, and discusses whether and how licensing of certain morphological cases (especially, subject marking) is related to the grammatical functions such as Topic and Focus. It will be of interest to researchers in Theoretical Linguistics, particularly those involved with Language Variation and Change, Linguistic Typology, Morphology and Syntax, and Generative Grammar.

Yoshiki Ogawa is a Professor in the Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Japan. He is a theoretical linguist that studies the nature of morphosyntax and its relation to phonology and semantics in the framework of generative syntax.