Speaker: Adam Przepiórkowski (Warsaw/MIT)
Title: On the origin of cases
Time: Tuesday, April 1st, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: Do grammatical cases exist, or are they just an epiphenomenon, a perceived result of flagging an NP with an additional category (Pesetsky and Torrego 2001, Pesetsky 2013) or with an additional set of ? features (Clem and Deal 2024)? If they exist, what is their origin on NPs? In this talk I’ll argue that cases do exist but may sometimes originate from within NPs, rather than being assigned externally. I will in particular propose that this explains the long-standing puzzle of the source of accusative on numeral subjects in Polish.