Nominative Object Constructions in Old Russian and Finnish
Edit Jakab
 
In this paper I investigate the question of nominative objects,
i.e. direct objects which receive nominative Case rather than the
cross-linguistically canonical accusative Case.  I will focus on Finnish
(Fin) and Old Russian (OR) since there appears to have been a syntactic
borrowing of the nominative object construction from Finnish and
Balto-Finnic languages into the Northern dialects of OR.  The nominative
object constructions always contain a modal predicate; this may be either
overt, in which case it is an invariable third person singular form (1,2),
or non-overt (3):
(1) sinu-n  tayty-y   [t luke-a    tama     kirja]   (Fin)
    you-gen must-3sg     read-inf  this-nom book-nom
    'you must read this book'
(2) ino dostoit'' muzu    [t zena     svoja   nakazyvati]  (OR)
    for fit-3sg   man-dat    wife-nom own-nom punish-inf
    'for it is fitting for a man to punish his wife'
(3) tym'     znati     svoja    sluzba   (OR)
    they-dat know-inf  own-nom  duty-nom
    'it is for them to know their own duty'
A necessary condition in these constructions is that the subject NP of the
clause must be oblique, and the verb must be nonfinite.  Finnish is
particularly interesting because it has nominative objects not only in
constructions with modal predicates but also in imperative sentences:
(4) lue            (sina)    tama      kirja!
    read-impv,2sg  (you-nom) this-nom  book-nom
    'read this book'
This is not surprising semantically since imperatives by definition denote
some sort of modality, usually the speaker's volition or an incentive to
act.  What is especially noteworthy about imperatives in Finnish is that
they allow two nominative noun phrases (4) to appear in the same sentence;
one as the subject and the other as the direct object.
I show that previous theories, such as the Case Tier Hypothesis (CTH) and
Timberlake's Impersonal Theory (IT) cannot account for all the data in
that they fail to explain the possibility of two nominative NPs in one
clause in Finnish.  According to the CTH the highest available grammatical
function is assigned nominative, and the next highest is assigned
accusative on the basis of the notion that grammatical Cases form a Case
tier, clearly not being able to account for the second nominative.  The IT
establishes nominative as the "default Case" for the DO which occurs in
environments that systematically lack a grammatical subject.  This theory
is not adequate either, since when the Finnish infinitive bears a
possessive suffix, thereby making the verb form personal, the object will
still be nominative contradicting the IT.
 In this paper I argue that modality is linked to this
construction because the modal predicate that is associated with the
infinitive (either overt or null) is assigning the oblique Case to the
subject.  Since the D feature of T is strong in Fin and OR, it must be
checked and deleted before Spell-Out, and so the oblique subject NP is
attracted to Spec-TP to check it.  However it cannot check T's nominative
feature because it inherently has an oblique Case-feature.  Since the
Case-feature of T is not strong, it can be checked off by another NP at
LF; hence T's weak nominative feature will be checked by the nominative
Case-feature of the DO NP which then head-moves to T at LF to check its
Case-feature against the weak Case-feature of T.  In imperatives the
nominative DO checks its Case against T's nominative Case-feature at LF as
well; however, the imperative verb itself has a D-feature (for which there
is independent evidence) which checks off T's EPP and f-features.
 This issue is further investigated on the basis of
structural height tests (cf. similar constructions in Japanese and other
languages).  Among others, I examine whether nominative objects in Finnish
pattern with canonical accusative objects with regard to binding into
adverbials.

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