Non-Canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects (review)

The book under review deals with issues which concern core syntactic arguments, subject and object, and yet belong to the periphery of syntactic research. In most languages of the world, we find constructions where the core arguments display some non-standard properties, in particular, non-canonical case marking. Thus, subject can surface in cases other than nominative (in nominative-accusative languages) or ergative and absolutive (in erga-tive languages); likewise, (direct) object can be marked with cases other than accusative or absolutive. The typology of such a non-canonical marking has not yet become the subject of a special study. This volume aims at filling this lacuna in the research of argument realisation.

The book consists of a short editorial preface (pp. ix–xi), a general introduction written by M. Onishi, a survey article on non-canonical marking of objects and subjects in European languages, and seven studies on individual languages. The editors have tried to remain outside formal theories "which come and go with such frequency that anything cast in terms of them soon becomes antiquated" (p. x)—an approach which seems most appropriate and laudable for a coherent typological study of a particular linguistic problem. Each of the contributors received the preliminary draft of the introduction, which determined the guidelines for description of the non-canonical marking in individual languages. On the basis of the individual contributions, the introduction was revised. This simple and effective method of processing the typological data resembles very much the interaction between the co-ordinator of the group and the individual authors in the tradition of the Leningrad/St. Petersburg typological school described in detail by Nedjalkov and Litvinov (1995:235ff et passim).

Since Onishi's introductory chapter "Non-canonically marked subjects and objects: Parameters and properties" (pp. 1–51) accumulates and conveniently summarises the results of the individual contributions. I will mainly focus on this chapter in my review. It starts with a general discussion of the basic patterns for cross-identification of the core syntactic categories, A (= the subject argument of a transitive clause), O (= transitive object), and S (= intransitive subject). Alongside the two basic syntactic patterns, transitive and intransitive, the author briefly discusses extended transitive (ditransitive) and extended intransitive clauses, of which each requires one additional obligatory argument E. Thus, roughly speaking, the scope of the present study encompasses all instances of the non-nominative and non-ergative/non-absolutive marking of A and S, as well as the non-accusative and non-absolutive marking of O.

After this introductory discussion of the basic syntactic patterns, the author addresses two main theoretical questions, which thus divides the introduction into two main parts:

(1) the properties of the canonically marked subjects and objects and their application to the cases of non-canonical marking; and (2) the semantic basis for (= parameters of) the non-canonical marking, viz. semantic classes of verbs involved in such constructions.

The relevant properties of subjects and objects are further divided, according to the well-known scheme, into coding and syntactic properties. The former include case-marking, verbal agreement, and word order. The non-canonical marking of the core arguments suggests oblique case marking for A/O/S (e.g., Dative for A/S, Partitive or Genitive for O).

The syntactic properties and criteria, which can also be used for determining the status of an argument under question (A/O/S or not), include:

1. 1. imperative constructions, which prototypically require canonically marked 2nd person A/S;

2. 2. constraints on coreferential arguments in complementation: A/S of the complement clause are typically coreferential with A/S or O of the main clause;

3. 3. valency-changing derivation, targets of which are usually core arguments, i.e., A/O/S;

4. 4. antecedent control over reflexive pronouns, usually performed by A/S;

5. 5. relativisation, for which very often only the top of the well...