Double Case

About this book

The essays collected in this volume address a curious and little-known agreement pattern. It consists of a nominal that is case marked for its own grammatical relation, typically that of an attribute in a possessive construction taking another case in agreement with the nominal it is in construction withschematically "in-the-palace in-the-king's." Such double case marking, termed Suffixaufnahme when first noted, is cross-linguistically rare and intriguingly distributed. Offering in-depth descriptions of all the core cases of Suffixaufnahme and of a variety of less prototypical ones, these essays highlight the considerable significance of this pattern for linguistic theory. Ostensibly marginal, Suffixaufnahme bears on several fundamental issues in syntax and morphology. It exemplifies unusual case marking and agreement, and it throws light on the word-class distinction between nouns and adjectives, the difference between inflection and derivation, the nature of grammatical relations (especially those of attribution and apposition), and the hierarchical nature of syntax.