Arguments and Case: Explaining Burzio's Generalization (review)

This volume is based on the workshop on Burzio’s generalization (BG) which was held at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS in June 1994. In its original form, BG states that a verb that does not assign an external theta-role does not assign accusative case and conversely. This generalization has raised a host of questions as to its theoretical basis and how it can be explained. The papers in this volume explore these questions.

The book opens with a concise introduction by Eric Reuland, where the background to BG and some important issues are presented. In particular, R poses the following questions: (1) Can there be a direct relation between the absorption of a theta-role and the absorption of accusative case? (2) Can BG be derived from the ‘obligatory subject’ hypothesis or from the ‘nominative first’ hypothesis? (3) Is there a relation between nominative case and accusative case? (4) What is the nature of the checking mechanism for case? Does structural case (SC) differ from inherent, oblique, and lexical cases? Importantly, all papers in this volume give a negative answer to the first question, considering BG an epiphenomenon. What they differ on is their specifics of deriving BG.

Alec Marantz argues in his ‘Case and licensing’ that the facts covered by BG split into two sets, both explained by independent factors: the extended projection principle and the distinction between SC and morphological case (MC). He shows that the proper treatment of MC requires a complete break between abstract case (AC) and MC and that AC can be eliminated altogether.

Hubert Haider in ‘The license to license’ discusses the distinction between nominative and accusative case, on the one hand, and the nominative/accusative and ergative/absolutive systems on the other hand. According to him, in nominative/accusative languages the external argument is linked to the default checking whereas in ergative/absolutive system the internal argument is so linked.

Teun Hoekstra’s contribution (‘The nature of verbs and Burzio’s generalization’) is essentially in agreement with Haider’s position on nominative/accusative vs. ergative/absolutive languages. Moreover, his analysis of BG is based on the idea that verbs that assign accusative case are formed by an incorporation of an (oblique) preposition associated with the external argument.

Anoop Mahajan (‘Oblique subjects and Burzio’s generalization’) challenges BG on the basis of the fact that in Hindi certain predicates are unable to assign structural accusative case but still license a structural thematic subject. His analysis of these data is based on Marantz’s idea of dependent case.

Itziar Laka (‘Thetablind case’) derives BG from the idea that languages differ as to whether tense or aspect is the active case assigner. According to her, only in languages where tense is the active case assigner does BG hold.

Werner Abraham’s contribution in ‘The aspect-case typology correlation’ is in bringing into the many considerations from the typological literature. He investigates the nature of ‘split ergativity’ and the interactions between case and perfectivity. In this way, his paper relates to the one by Laka.

Finally, Luigi Burzio (‘Anatomy of a generalization’) argues in line with other contributions in this volume that BG is an epiphenomenon. In essence, BG results from the interplay of movement and conditions on case. He argues that cases are subject to a number of constraints of an optimality-theoretic nature. Furthermore, he provides a novel way of looking at quirky case in Icelandic.