Abstract
Following a well-known linguistic tradition, Case Theory, as introduced in the late seventies and early eighties (Rouveret & Vergnaud 1980; Chomsky 1981; Stowell 1981 among others) makes a distinction between structural case and inherent case. Nominative and accusative are instantiations of the former, and dative is an example of the latter. In recent minimalist work (Chomsky 1993 and subsequent work) the symmetry between nominative and accusative is strengthened by the assumption that both cases are a manifestation of Specifier Head Agreement. Nominative applies when AGR-S is involved and accusative when AGR-O applies.1 This view on the classification of nominative, accusative and inherent case is schematized in (1):
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Weerman, F. (1996). Asymmetries between Nominative, Accusative and Inherent Case. In: Brandner, E., Ferraresi, G. (eds) Language Change and Generative Grammar. Linguistische Berichte, vol 7. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-90776-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-90776-9_4
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