nature of default case

ON THE NATURE OF DEFAULT CASECarson T. Schu¨tze

Abstract. This paper presents arguments that Universal Grammar includes a notion of‘‘default case’’ different from that which has generally been assumed in the literature.It comprises the case forms used to spell out nominals that do not receive a casespecification by assignment or other syntactic means. As such, it does not interact withthe Case Filter, which is argued to be a purely syntactic constraint as opposed to amorphophonological one. It is shown that diverse phenomena in the distribution ofpronouns in English can be parsimoniously treated using default case, and further thatEnglish can thereby be assimilated to ‘‘richer’’ case languages such as German, ratherthan being analyzed with arbitrary language-particular rules. A sampling ofphenomena from other languages demonstrates that evidence for default case iswidespread, and moreover, that crosslinguistic differences in case patterns can oftenbe reduced to the choice of a default case.

If possible, I would like to avoid recourse to a ‘ ‘fall-back’ ’ morphologicalcase, at least for German, and conserve the notion that whenever case-marking fails, then the case filter applies. (Emonds 1985:229)

1. Introduction

In this paper I defend a particular notion of default case as part of UniversalGrammar and explore its consequences for the system of morphological caseand its relationship to abstract Case. My central purpose is to argue thatpositing this proposed kind of default case, which involves postsyntacticspell-out of DPs that are independently licensed in the syntax proper,provides a parsimonious account of numerous facts about the distribution ofmorphological case marking that otherwise can be treated only in an ad hocfashion. In this respect I pursue the approach that Emonds resists in theepigraph above. The form of the argument is the classic one for defaults ingeneral: we find a set of elements behaving alike, where the members of thatset have nothing in common other than the fact that they donot belong to anynatural classes within their paradigm. In the present instance, the elements arenominals that, for a variety of reasons, have not had their case inflectiondetermined by the syntax and are therefore sent to the morphological spell-out procedures without any indication of which case form they should berealized with. Under this view, default case plays no role in licensing these

Syntax4:3, December 2001, 205–238

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* Portions of this work were presented at the workshop ‘‘Effects of Morphological Case’’ atUtrecht University, August 1998. I would like to thank the workshop participants for theirfeedback, two anonymousSyntax reviewers and two other anonymous reviewers for theircomments, and Adam Albright, Masha Babyonyshev, Ivano Caponigro, Joe Emonds, MartinHackl, Morris Halle, Henk Harkema, Arild Hestvik, Eric Hoekstra, Jarich Hoekstra, TeunHoekstra, Anders Holmberg, Paul Kiparsky, Joan Maling, Alec Marantz, Jeannette Schaeffer, andChris Wilder for contributing data and/or additional discussion. Standard disclaimers apply. Thiswork was supported by a UCLA Academic Senate grant.

nominal expressions in the first place, becausestructural licensing (a.k.a.abstractCase)is a syntacticrequirement. Indeed,when we recognize thatlicensing and morphological case are independent systems, the problemraisedaboveby Emonds will not arise:default casein my sensecan never‘‘save’’ a DP from violating the Case Filter. Furthermore, becausetheavailability of default spell-outs seems to be a property of (at leastinflectional) morphology in general, no new machinery is required forcapturinga broadrangeof default-casephenomena.

In therestof thepaper, I first spelloutmy proposal for whatdefault caseisand how it works and review how it relates to someideas in the literature.ThenI give several empirical arguments from English pronounsto showthatwe needthis notion.Theseyield analysesthat arethenusedto show,contraseveralclaims in the literature, that English can be assimilated to ‘‘richer’’caselanguages.Following that,I exploretheextentto which other languagesshowdefault-casephenomenaandraisethequestion of whethera language’schoiceof default casefollows from other properties.I concludeby reviewingthe consequences of my proposal for the Case Filter and the syntax-morphology interface.Theappendixexploreswhether some postcopular DPsmight alsoprofitably be analyzedasinhabiting a default caseenvironment.

2. What Default CaseIs and Isn’t

2.1 What It Is

I characterizemy useof the term default caseasfollows:

(1) Thedefault caseformsof a languagearethosethatareusedto spelloutnominalexpressions(e.g.,DPs)that arenot associated with any casefeatureassigned1 or otherwise determined by syntactic mechanisms.

To make the discussionconcrete,I assumea Minimalist syntax (Chomsky1995)coupledwith DistributedMorphology(Halle & Marantz1993,1994).2

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1 I will refer to ‘‘caseassignment’’ ratherthan‘‘casechecking’’ becausethe former term isfamiliar to awideraudienceandbecauseI leaveopenthepossibility(seesection2.1) thatit is themorphological component of Spell-Out that determines morphological case,rather than thenarrowsyntax—underthatscenario,‘‘checking’’ makesno sense.I assumethatcaseassignmentwould be implemented in narrowsyntaxaschecking.

2 An anonymous reviewersuggeststhat DistributedMorphology’sview of late insertionisincompatible with Minimalism. The authorsof thesetwo theoriesthink otherwise:‘‘Empiricalphenomena might call for ‘distribution’ of [the lexicon], with late insertion in the mannerofDistributedMorphology’’ (Chomsky2001:10);‘‘Also left to the sideis the questionwhether[alexical item] is assembledin a single operationor at severalstagesof the derivation, as inDistributedMorphology(Halle & Marantz1993).Rephrasingof the accountjust given in thesetermsis straightforward’’ (Chomsky2000:142,note27); ‘‘. . . On theassumptionsof DistributedMorphology, thephonological featuresareintroducedafterSpell-Outby phonological operationsapplyingto [lexical items] lackingthem.I will assumesomeinstantiationof this arrayof optionsto be correct.’’ (Chomsky2000:119);‘‘The structureof grammarassumedwithin [DistributedMorphology] is shownin (10), with someupdatesfrom previousdisplaysof this structurein the

206 CarsonT. Schutze

The crucial featuresof this combinationarethe existenceof a postsyntacticspell-outmodule andthepostulate thatall vocabulary insertion is partof thatcomponent(‘‘late insertion’’). Thenotionof defaultcasecharacterizedin (1)is essentially thatof Marantz1991,thoughI amnot adoptingthewider viewof casefound in that work. In particular, I am assuming for the sakeoffamiliarity andconcreteness(thoughnot crucially for most of what follows)that much of the distribution of caseis determined in the syntax proper,whereasMarantz(1991)handlesall casepostsyntactically (seeSchutze1997for issuesthat may be at stakein this matter).

The generalmodel of grammar that I have in mind is as in (2), whichschematically follows three nominals through a derivation: one with an(uninterpretable) nominative (NOM) feature to be checked, one with an(uninterpretable)accusative (ACC) featureto be checked, and one with nocasefeatureat all. (An uncheckedfeatureis annotatedwith anempty square,a checked featurewith a checkedsquare.)WhentheseDPsaresentto Spell-Out, theNOM casefeature hasalreadybeenchecked,while theACC featureis waiting to check covertly (see section 4.4), but the caseless DP alsosurvivesto LF and PF, given that it neverhad any uninterpretable featuresthatneeded to bechecked.Themorphologyinsertscaseaffixes in responsetothe featureson these DPs: for the sakeof illustration I borrow some formsfrom Latin: -us is the NOM casemorpheme, -um is the ACC one,and thedefault casein this languageis NOM. As a result, the NOM suffix is alsoaddedto DP3. Note that the default caseis neverassigned by anything toanything; rather,it is usedto spell out a terminalnodeof the syntactictree.Crucially, the presenceof defaultcaseis, by design, invisible to the syntax.(Seesection4.4 for detailsof how this model canbe implemented.)

(2) Lexicon+ Select

{DP1[úNOM], DP2[úACC], DP3,. . .} � NumerationS +

Merge Y + ) ) ) ) ) ) ) Spell-Out& N + +Move T + [. . .DP1[ú✓NOM]. . .DP2 [úACC]. . .DP3. . .]

A + +X + Morphology

+ +[. . . DP1 . . . DP2 . . . DP3 . . .] . . . DP1-us . . . DP2-um . . . DP3-us . . .

LF PF

literature. We now find it importantto adoptthe basicarchitectureof Chomsky’s‘Bare PhraseStructure’ theory.’’ (Marantz1996:17).

Therevieweralsosuggeststhat latevocabularyinsertionis incompatible with constructionofa ‘‘presyntacticlexical numeration.’’ This is incorrect.As theDistributedMorphology literaturehas discussed,the numerationcan be composedof bundlesof syntactico-semanticfeatures,without any associatedvocabulary items.

On the Natureof Default Case 207


2.2 What It Isn’t

The definition in (1) crucially presupposesthat a DP neednot be assignedacasefeature to satisfy syntactic licensing requirements.More specifically,restrictions on the surfaceposition of DPs, usually treated under the CaseFilter (Chomsky 1981,following unpublishedwork by Vergnaud), cannotbeimplemented by the samefeatures that underliecasemorphology, becausemorphological caseand abstract Casebehaveasseparate systems(Marantz1991,Harley 1995,Schutze 1997, inter alia); to reduce confusion hereafterIrefer to abstractCaseasstructural licensing. Two key consequencesfor thenatureof default caseareasfollows.

The Case Filter (or whatever enforcesstructural li censingrequirements)cannotbe morphophonologically motivated,becauseno (PF or LF) crash iscausedby the absence of casefeatureson a DP, contrathe classicdefinitionfrom Chomsky1981:‘‘. . . theCaseFilter . . . which I will assumeto bea filterin the PF-component. . . *NP if NP hasphonetic contentandhasno Case.’’

Default casecan never ‘‘save’’ an otherwise invalid syntacticstructure.This makesit unlike thenotionof defaultcaseappealed to by McCloskeyinthe following passages:‘‘A more generaldefault rule which simply assigns(accusative) Caseto anyNP which doesnot getCaseby someother means’’(McCloskey 1985:195); ‘‘Irish is a language(like Latin) that doespossessaproductive rule of (accusative) Caseassignmentto the subjectof a nonfiniteclause.. . . Whether the relevant rule is onethat makesspecific reference. . .to thesubjectNP or is instead a general default mechanismthatassignsCaseto any NP that doesnot alreadyhave it is open to argument’’ (Chung &McCloskey 1987:188); ‘‘. . . perhaps a default rule that assignsCase innoncanonicalCasecontexts’’ (Chung& McCloskey1987:232).In particular,the allegedlyexceptional possibility of overt subjectsof nonfinite clausesinlanguageslike Irish and Latin cannot be attributed to the availability ofdefaultcase, becausethereareno defaultcasefeaturesin thesyntax.If therewere,they would renderthe CaseFilter vacuous.3 Also unlike McCloskey, Iclaim that all languageshavedefault caseavailable.

Thus,morphological caseis neithernecessarynor sufficient for satisfyingthe CaseFilter. Even though (asI argue)EnglishhasdefaultACC case, theCaseFilter violations in (3) arestill ungrammatical with ACC forms.


3 This point is madeindependentlyby Zwart (1988)andDuffield (1989);Duffield proposessomerestrictionson the availability of default casein subjectpositionof clauses,not relevanthere.For earliermentionsof defaultcasein thegenerativeliterature andbefore,seeZwart 1988(chap.4); the proposalsin Schutze 1997arepursuedby Miller (1998)andKang (1998);Smith(1992) definesa notion of default caseconceptuallyquite similar to that proposedhere butappliesit to a largelydifferentsetof constructions, within a quitedifferentsyntacticframework.


(3) a. *It seemshim/he to be tired.b. *It/*The re wasbelieved he/him.c. *Him/*He to leave would be rude.d. *It is importanthe/him to be on time.e. *My desirehe/him to succeed led me astray.f. *Me/*I, Tuesday is fine. (cf. As for me, Tuesday is fine.)

2.3 How Do I Get Case?Let Me Count the Ways. . .

I assumethatmorphological casemarking (crucially separate from structurallicensing) can arise as a result of severaldifferent processes; the list thatfollows is not necessarilyintended to be exhaustive. First, case can beassignedby a syntactic head(e.g.,a verb or Infl).4 Second,casecansurfaceby matching a semantically related constituent—for example, a left-dislocated DP can match the caseof its corresponding argument. I takesuchinstancesasstrongprimafacieevidencethatnot all casemarking resultsfrom caseassignment, given that there is apparently no syntactic relationbetweenthe caseassignerandassigneein onepart of the syntacticstructureandthematchingcase-markedDP,which maybearbitrarily far away.5 Third,casethat is syntactically assignedto a head(typically D) can be spreadtootherconstituentswithin its projection (DP); Babby(1987)writesin termsof‘‘NP internal agreement’’ and‘‘percolation.’’ This canbe seen,for example,in concord among adjectivesandnounswithin a DP,asfoundin Latin; Blake(1994)termsthis concordial case. A possible fourth mannerof casemarkingthat I do not dealwith heremight be described ascasefrom semantics. Forexample,in rich case-marking languages,superficially bareDPs can servevariousadverbial functions, with their particular meaning dependent on thechoice of case (e.g., dative of duration, ablative of instrument); this issometimesreferredto asadverbial case(e.g.,Andrews 1982). Babby(1987)calls it semantic caseandstatesthat it is ‘‘not determinedby other categoriesin the sentence (hence not assigned under government) and, therefore,contributes to the meaning of the sentence’’ (Babby 1987:93). Zaenen,

4 An anonymousreviewerfinds that caseassignment in this sense‘‘looks suspiciouslylikestructurallicensing.’’ But structurallicensing,asnotedabove,concernsvalid surfacepositionsfor NPs,whereaswhat I amdescribinghereis how thechoiceof morphological markingon NPsis determined.Thesearesimply not thesameempiricalphenomena.Furthermore, althoughsomeof the samesyntacticheadsmight be involved both in structurallicensingand in determiningmorphological casemarkings,thereis a greatdealof evidencethat a given headmay performthesetwo functions with respectto two differentNPs.Thebest-knownexampleis probablythatof Icelandic,whereinInfl canassignNOM to anobjectevenwhile structurallylicensinga DATsubject,andV (or AgrO, etc.) canstructurally licensea NOM objectandfail to assignits ACCcaseat all. (SeeSchutze 1997andsourcescited there,aswell asmuchsubsequentliterature.)

5 An anonymous reviewerobjectsthat in the text ‘‘no plausiblemechanismis proposedfor[semantic casematching].’’ I indeeddo not knowwhatmachineryis implicatedhere,but I do notseeanyway that thesefactscanbereducedto anyothercasemechanismthathasbeenproposed.In theframeworkI amassuming,it is technicallypossiblethatatSpell-Out,wheremorphologicalcaseis expressed, coindexationcanbe referredto for this purpose.



Maling, and Thrainsson(1985) also employ the term semantic case. It isunclearhow the connection between the casefeatures and the meanings isestablished,unlessby a covert headsuchasa null adposition; if suchheadsexist, then this kind of casereducesto assignedcase.(For classicdebateaboutthis analysis, seeEmonds 1987andLarson 1985, inter alia.)

I arguehere for a fifth distinct mechanism by which casemarking canarise,namelyby default, when noneof the other mechanisms hasapplied.Thus,the logic for identifying DPswith default caseis to find environmentswherethose other mechanismscanberuledout—that is, environmentswherethereis no caseassigner for theDP in question, nothingfor it to matchwith,and so on. Purely to simplify the discussion,I assumethat the other fourmechanisms apply in the syntax, though nothing major would changeifinsteadsome or all of themappliedin the morphology,prior to defaultcasebeingsupplied.

3. Default Casein English

To support theneedfor defaultcasein anexplanatorytheory, I examinefivekindsof environmentsin English where ACC pronounsoccur—surprisingly,giventhat theyarein, or relatedto, subjectposition—and arguethat theyaremostparsimoniously characterizednegatively, namely,by theabsenceof anyof the other four above-mentioned sources of case.Therefore, ACC is thedefault casein English.(For earlier discussionsof theseandother potentialdefault case environments, see Emonds 1985, 1986; Wales 1996;Johannessen1998.6)

3.1 Left Dislocationand Apposition

Left dislocatedandappositive pronounsareACC in Englishevenwhentheyaresubject-related:

(4) a. Me/*I, I like beans.b. The bestathlete,her/*she, should win.

TheseDPs are not arguments, and thereare no obvious caseassigners forthem,sotheyaregoodcandidatesfor defaultcase. Accordingto Lambrecht’s(1990) analysis, ‘‘Mad Magazine’’ sentences (Akmajian 1984) suchas (5),which takeACC subjects in English,constitute a specialcaseof this,because


6 The list of default-case environmentsfor English presentedhere may be far fromexhaustive. Schutze (1997,section2.6) enumeratesmany other potentialdefault environmentsthat arenot includedherebecausethey aresusceptibleto an alternativeanalysisunderwhich anonfinite Infl assignsACC to its subject.(This gainssomeplausibility from the fact that otherlanguageshavenonfinitesubjectsin whatclearly cannotbe thedefaultcase,e.g.,DAT subjectsof certaininfinitives in Russian;however,I amnotawareof anyindependentevidenceinternaltoEnglish.) What I presenthere are what I take to be the most compelling examplesof thephenomenon.


he argues that the (notional) subject and predicate are eachindependentlyattachedin left-dislocated(discoursetopic) positions.

(5) What?! Him/*He weara tuxedo?!Never.

3.2 Ellipsis

Pronouns in elliptical utterancesthatcontainno (overt)verbor Infl areACC,evenwhen their meaning correspondsto asyntacticsubject.Theutterancesin(7) and(8) represent possibleresponsesandfollow-onsto thequeryin (6). Inall instances,the ACC pronoun hasthe grammatical function of subject.

(6) Q: Who wants to try this game?

(7) A: a. Me/*I.b. Justme/*I.c. Me/*I too.d. And me/*I!e. Me/*I next!

(8) A: a. Not us/*we.b. Me/*I neither.

(9) A: I/*Me do (too).

Theseelliptical constructions critically involve surfaceomissionof Infl (aswell as an antecedent VP). The relevance of Infl is shownby the contrastbetween(7a,c) and(9). Thus,Infl in (7) and(8) is notmerely asilentdummy;it must beeitherabsentor featurally distinct from thatof a finite clause.Onecould posit a specialInfl that assignsACC to its subjectin thoseexamples,but there is no way to verify or falsify its existence.7 The null hypothesis,I

7 TeunHoekstra(p.c.)suggestedthat theutterancesin (7) and(8) areelidedclefts, in whichcasetheACC casemarkingwould follow from whateverexplainsACC in postcopularpositioninEnglish generally(seethe appendix).This approachdoesnot strike me as very promisingforthosecases(thoughit could well work for (10)), becausethe only differencebetweenan elidedsimpledeclarativeandanelidedcleft shouldbefocusproperties,andyet thecontextsfor (7) and(8) mostly do not felicitously combinewith cleft focus(infelicity is markedwith ‘‘#’’):

(i) A: a. #It’s me.b. #It’s just me.c. #It’s me too.d. #And it’s me.e. #It’s me next.

(ii) A: a. Not us!b. #It’s not me either.

A secondcounterargumentis that amongthe possibleDP answersto (6) are quantificationalexpressions(Everyone!No one!) thatcannotappearin clefts:*It’s everyone,*It’s no one, andsoforth. This is equallyanargumentagainsttreatingtheresponsesin (7) and(8) asleft dislocationsaccompaniedby IP-ellipsis(e.g.,*Everyone, theywant to try this game).



suggest,shouldbe that case-assigningfeatures of Infl are absent here andACC is default.This shouldextendto the elliptical clauseof (10).

(10) Who’s to takecareof him if not us/*we?

This claim doesnot commit us to the view that the DPsin (7), (8), and(10)lack structural licensing, particularly undera visibility-driven versionof theCase Filter where structural l icensing would be necessary for theinterpretability of an argumental/referentialDP. My claim is orthogonal tothis question, asit involvesonly the issueof whether morphological caseisassignedin thesestructures.8

3.3 ` Gapping’’

Certainapparent instancesof gapping forcea subjectpronoun to beACC. Insentences like those in (11), Infl hasbeengappedfrom thesecond clause,andthe verb may be gappedaswell.

(11) a. We can’t eatcaviarandhim/*he (eat)beans. (Siegel 1987)b. For Mary to be the winner andus/??wethe

losers is unfair. (cf. Sobin 1997)c. Why couldn’t he takemy car, or me/?Ihis? (Howe 1996)d. Noneof the kids will eatanything, except them/*they the potato

chips.e. Q: What did everyoneeat?A: Me/*I, beans; him/*he, rice; them/

*they, carrots.f. She grew up in Jacksonville, me/??I in Tallahassee.9


8 One further constructionthat superficially looks like an elliptical default environmentinvolvessubjectsof understood predicatesin comparatives,wherewe generallyfind ACC (i), incontrastto their full clausecounterparts, which requireNOM (ii).

(i) a. Studentssmarterthanher/*shegot no scholarships.b. No oneis assmartasthem/*they.c. No teamhasmoregutsthanus/*we.d. I met a manwho danceslike me/*I.

(ii) a. Studentssmarterthanshe/*heris get no scholarship.b. No oneis assmartashe/*him is.c. No teamhasmoregutsthanwe/*us do.d. I met a manwho danceslike I/*me dance.

However,thereis reasonto think that the comparativewordsin (i) areprepositions ratherthancomplementizers,contraEmonds 1986.TheycanbestrandedunderA0-movement (a propertyofPbutnotC in English),andtheytakeACC complementsalsoin Dutch,whereACC is apparentlynot the default case(beter dan mij ‘better than me’). Thanks to an anonymousrefereefordiscussionof this point.

9 This sentenceappearedin a Linguist List posting;thanksto MarthaMcGinnis for bringingit to my attention.


The relevant reading for (11a) involves the modal can’t taking semanticscopeover both clauses; that is, it is paraphrased as We can’t allow asituationto arisewhere[weeatcaviar andheeatsbeans]. Similarly, in (11b)theirrealis semantics of for-to appliesto theconjunctionof theevents,with aparaphrasesuchasIt would beunfair if [Mary werethewinnerand wewerethe losers] . These sentences can therefore not involve simplenonpronunciation of the secondinstanceof Infl underidentity, becausethiswould give themthe wrongmeaning. For example, (11a)is not synonymouswith Wecan’t eatcaviar andhecan’t eatbeans. It thereforeseems plausiblethat Infl is ‘‘missing’’ from the second clause in somedeeper sense(seeJohnson1996for possible analyses). (Seesection 4.3 for how themarginallypossibleNOM alternativesin (11)arise.)If this is correctthenwecannottreatthe ACC caseof the subjectpronoun in the second clauseasbeingassignedby some noncanonical kind of Infl. Another alternative that has beensuggested is that the conjunction assigns ACC (Johnson 1996, citing asuggestionfrom Zoerner1995),but to my knowledgethereis no independentevidence that true conjunctions can be case assigners. A default casetreatmentis thereforea propos.

Particularly striking in this paradigmis (11b), with a marginal NOMsubjectin thesecond conjunct,becauseunlike therestof theexamplesin (11)the fully spelled out version of (11b) would not havea NOM subject. Thissuggeststhat it is the absence of a case assignerthat can make NOMsomewhat available in (11), not simply the influence of an unelidedcounterpart sentence.Example(11b) contrastswith (12), in which for is stillelidedfrom thesecondconjunctbut to be is restored:(12) is noticeably worsewith NOM than(11).

(12) For Mary to be the winner andus/*we to be the losersis unfair.

Evidently,with to be in thesecond clauseitssubjectmustbeassigned(ACC)caseby for; thegapping of Infl + V turnsthis into a default-caseenvironment(11b) where for can no longer assigncase, perhapsbecause it is really thecombinationfor + to that is required for assigningACC. Thestatusof (11b)seemsto bemirroredunderstripping (13) (takenin thesenseof Hankamer&Sag1976,which is ratherdifferent from its original definition in Hankamer1971),which sharesmany properties with gapping but also somewith VP-ellipsis (Lobeck 1995),and for which Blight (1999) independently suggeststhe possibility of a default-caseanalysis:

(13) a. The kids often go skatingon the lake, andsometimesus/??we too.b. Our friendswill go to the beachalmostany day of the year, but

us/?*we only whenit’s really hot.

Someof the examples in (7) and(8) may alsoyield to a strippinganalysis.



3.4 Coordination

Oncewe escapefrom theheavyprescriptive influencefoundin theuseof thefirst-singular pronoun, we can see that English uses ACC pronouns inconjoined DPsevenwhen theyaresubjects(seealso Emonds1986,Maling &Sprouse 1995,Sobin1997):

(14) a. Us andthem/*We andthey aregonnarumble tonight.b. Her andus/*Sheandwe havebeenfriendsfor ages.c. Did your parents or him/*he pick up Mary?

(Following Emonds and Sobin, I do not take the possibility of anunambiguously NOM pronoun as a member of a conjunctionto be a bonafide option for any grammarof English.10) As already noted, one couldsuggestthat the English conjunction for some reasonis a caseassigner(totwo DPs in the general case), but thereis no independent evidencefor thisidea.11 (Johannessen [1998:120]gives arguments againstit as well.) Moreimportantly, the considerationof crosslinguistic dataon coordination below(seesection5.2) will support the contentionthat the facts in (14) shouldnotbe treatedasa weird quirk of English; rather, this seems to bea default-caseenvironment in severallanguages.

3.5 Modified Pronouns

Themajority of restrictively modifiedpronounsin EnglishmustbeACC, notNOM, evenin subjectposition (cf. Klima 1964).


10 Contrathecitedsources,ananonymousrefereefeelsthat ‘‘there is little doubtthatyouandI is well formed (and not a caseof hypercorrection or prescriptivism).’’ This is ultimately anempiricalquestionaboutwhetherthesystemcanbelearnedby childrenwithout explicit teachingandcorrection; I am not convincedthat we havemeaningful intuitions on the matter.

11 Another construction that might seem to motivate the attribution of ACC-assigningpropertiesto and is the subordinating and-construction(Quirk, Greenbaum,Leech& Svartvik1985;Hacker 1999):

(i) a. How could you be so spiteful, andher your bestfriend?b. Not a gentleman,eh?And him with his knighthoodtoo.c. Fancynow, . . . andhim sucha nice youngfellow too.d. Baby,all thosecurvesandmewith no brakes. [Title of a bookof pickuplines,by

StephanDweck & Monteria Ivey, New York: Hyperion,1998.]

Hereagain,defaultcasehandlesthe factswithout needingto stipulateunexpectedpropertiesofand.


(15) a. The real me/*I is finally emerging.b. TheMe NobodyKnows12 (cf. *The I Nobody Knows)c. Little Me13 (cf. *Little I)d. Lucky me/*I getsto cleanthe toilets.e. Dearme/*I!f. Lucky us/*we!g. Poor them/*they!

With certain typesof postpronominal modification,some speakersfind bothNOM andACC acceptable.14

(16) a. We/Usthreehaveto be leavingnow.b. We/Us linguistsarea crazy bunch.c. How muchwould us/?wewith insurancehaveto pay?

This variation may in part reflect the conventionalized nature of some ofthesesequences; at any rate, as I shall show in section 4.3, this kind ofvariability is often characteristicof default-caseenvironmentsanddoesnotobtain in situations wherecaseis actually assigned.

Becausethese DPscanoccurin subject position of finite clauses, thereisno potential ACC sourcefor them,unlesstherewereone within theDP itself,ananalysisthatwould again beadhoc.Anticipatingtheproposal to follow insection4.3, I suggest that what is relevant here is what occupies the headposition of the DP, becauseonly the head is the direct recipient of caseassignedto a DP. Simple subjectpronouns (e.g.,He left) areheadsof theirDPs(Abney 1987).In the examplesin (15), the pronoun cannotbe the headof the subject because the preceding material either fills that headposition(thedeterminer) or canoccuronly to the right of theD position (adjectives).In support of this claim about headedness, note that non-third-personpronounswithin this kind of DP trigger third-personagreement:

(17) a. The real me is/*am finally emerging.b. The hiddenyou is/*are finally being revealed.

12 A 1970Friedman andHolt musical.13 A 1962Coleman,Leigh, andSimonmusical.14 Emonds(1985)claims that NOM in (16) is a prescriptive artifact. I disagreewith this, in

partbecause,to my earsandthoseof someothersI haveasked,theNOM alternativesin (16) donot feel like partof thesameartificial registerthatexpressionslike It is I andHeandI do,thoughagain,it is notclearif suchintuitionsaremeaningful. Furthermore,I find aclearcontrastbetween(16b)(we/uslinguists. . .), whereeitherpronounis fine, and(i), wherewe attemptbothpre-andpostmodification:

(i) Lucky us/*we linguistshaveto explainour professionto everyone.

This follows directly from theanalysisI propose,wherebythegrammarallowsNOM just in casethepronouncanbe takenasbeingtheheadof theDP. It is lessobviouswhy a prescriptive rulewould exhibit this behavior.



I claim thatpronounsthatdo not headthesubjectDP arenot assignedNOM,sotheyreceivetheir caseby default.Postmodification with no determiner,asin (16), allows the pronoun to occupythe headD becausethereareno otherelementspresentthat would necessarily displace it. The ACC option arisesbecausethe othersort of structure,with the pronoun in some lower position,is alsoavailablein the presenceof modifiers.

3.6 Summary

All of the facts in this sectioncan be captured by positing that ACC is thedefault casein English and that noneof the critical pronoun positionsareassignedcasein the syntax. In contrast,a theorywithout defaultcasewouldrequireseveralad hoc stipulations to ensurethat ACC was assignedin theenvironmentsof sections3.1–3.5,given that canonical ACC-assigning headsareabsent. Notice further that undermy approachnothingspecificabouttheACC environments needsto be said for default caseto apply—it will besupplied in onefell swoopto all non–case-receiving positions.In this respect,I suggestthat default caseis just oneinstanceof a more generalproperty ofmorphology whereby it alwaysmakesavailable a default spell-out for anyelementthat the syntax candeliver to it (Halle & Marantz 1993).

4. Analyses and Consequences

4.1 DoesEnglishHaveCase?

Factssuchasthose in (14) and(15) havebeentakenby Emonds (1985,1986)andHudson(1995)to showthatEnglish lacksabonafidemorphological casesystem altogether, because other familiar languages mark NOM on allsubconstituents of the subject. For example, Emonds asserts, ‘‘ themorphological ‘case’ of English pronouns is not case of the sort thatdependson grammatical relationsor abstractcase’’ (Emonds1985:297); ‘‘theremnantsof casefound on Englishpronouns shouldnot be generatedby themechanisms for morphological case’’ (Emonds 1985:220); ‘‘[in English]someother language-particular (hencelocal) rule must assignnominativecaseto subjectpronouns’’ (Emonds1985:239); he is explicit that the rulegoverning the distribution of NOM forms in normal (i.e., nonprestige)English ‘‘necessarilyfails to accurately reproduce the patterns inducedbyabstractcase’’ (Emonds 1986:107).Hudson puts it more directly, saying,‘‘Does English have morphological case. . .? Evidence is presented whichsuggeststhat it may be a completely case-less languagelike Chinese’’(Hudson 1995:375). Emonds and Hudson propose idiosyncratic rules toaccountfor the distribution of the different pronoun forms in English—forexample, a rule that the NOM forms are lici t only whendirectly dominatedby an S node (seealso Klima 1964), or that they arise only by a specialtransformation. I argue that a simple parametric difference, coupled with



defaultcase, allowsusto maintain theexplanatoryvalueof unifying Englishpronounswith ‘‘richer’’ casesystems. The proposed parameterstatesthatlanguagesmayhaveor lack casespreading (concord)within DP—that is, thecasefeatureof the D headmay or may not be copied or spreadto otherconstituents of the DP. Latin, for example, hasthis kind of casespreading,whereasEnglishdoesnot.

The consequencefor English is that if a lone barepronoun occupies theheadD of asubjectDP,it is assignedNOM, but in (14)and(15) thepronounsareburieddeeperwithin theDP whose headis NOM, andsotheyreceivenocase.(This accountpresupposesthat in a coordinate subject like meandhim,neitherpronoun is theheadof thehighestDP.)TheNOM casefeaturewill befoundon a word thatdoesnot showcasecontrasts(e.g.,the in (15a)),andthepronounposition will not haveany casefeature specification,so it mustbespelledout asa default.In eachinstance,then,the pronoun itself canlack acasefeature eventhoughit is containedwithin a DP that hasa casefeature.(Seesection5.2 for a refinement of this parameter.) I return in the nextsubsectionto more details concerning the internal structure of DPs withmodified pronouns.

Johannessen (1998)independently proposesthatconjuncts within DP takedefaultcasein some languages(includingEnglish)andprovidesa somewhatdifferentaccount from mine.Shesuggeststhatin somelanguages,only ‘‘pureDPs’’ cangetcase,anda ConjP is not categoriallya DP,soit cannotgetcasein those languages. (My account is neutral with respectto thecategoryissue.)Shesituatesher proposalin a general theory of the typology of coordinationunderwhich featuresof a Conj headareobligatorily sharedwith its specifier,yielding languagesin which only one conjunct shows the casemarkingexpectedfor the position of the ConjP.As a further parametric option, thelexical entry of a conjunction may stipulatefeature matching between thespecifier and the complementof Conj; this derives languagesin which allconjunctsshow the expected case.(See section 5.2 for some examples.)Johannessen’s accountmakes the prediction that case-marking patterns incoordinate DPs should correlatewith other aspectsof coordination acrosslanguages—in particular, whether coordination is ‘‘ balanced’’ or‘‘unbalanced.’’ It is hard to assessthis prediction from her study, becausemostlanguagesdonothaveenoughdifferentkindsof morphology to allow usto test it. Still, her account is in principle empirically distinguishablefrommine, which predicts insteada correlation betweenthe behaviorof caseincoordination versus in other sorts of DP-internal constituents such asmodified pronouns.

Returning to the general issueof whether to assimilate English pronouncontraststo case, note that failing to do so would leave it as a totalcoincidence(at leastsynchronically) that the ‘‘nominative’’ environmentsinEnglish are a subset of the nominative environments in bona fide caselanguages, ratherthanjust anyarbitrary setof surfacepositionsthatcould bewritten into an idiosyncratic rule. It would also be a coincidencethat other



‘‘non-case’’ languageslike Irish have very similar distributions for NOMversusACC (asdiscussedin section 5.2).

PaulKiparsky (p.c.) hassuggested a further reasonto doubt that modernEnglish really has a casesystem—namely, the distribution of who versuswhom. The key fact is that in colloquial English, speakerswho usewhomatall tendto havethe following preferences(cf. Klima 1964):

(18) a. To whom/?*who did you give the book?b. Who/??Whom did you give the book to?

This is unlike familiar languagesthat uncontroversially have case, wherelocal wh-movementwould not changethe casemarkingof the wh-DP; (18)might be seenas supporting an analysis in termsof surfacepositions (e.g.,whomwhen adjacentto an ACC caseassigner,who elsewhere). I agreethatwho/whomshouldnot be treatedascase, but I do not think this underminesthe treatmentof personal pronouns asembodying a casesystemin English,becausewhenoneconsidersa largerrangeof facts,it becomesclearthat nosimple rule of the Hudson/Emonds sort will suffice to capturewho/whomanyway,whereas simple rulesdo capturethevastmajority of thebehaviorofpersonalpronouns. SeeLasnik andSobin2000andsourcescited there.

4.2 WhereAre Modified Pronouns?

In this subsection I expandon detailsof the analysisneeded to account forfacts like thosein (19), repeatedfrom previousexamples:

(19) a. The real me is/*am finally emerging.b. The me nobodyknowsc. Lucky us/*we!d. We/Us threehaveto be leavingnow.

Thegeneralizationsnotedearlierwere:(i) if wordsprecedingtheembeddedpronounmaketheD headof theentireDP unavailable,thepronounmustbeACC; (ii) with no precedingmaterial, the pronouncan often be NOM orACC interchangeably; (iii) embeddedpronouns do not trigger personagreement.Theseobservationsall point to astructurein which theembeddedpronounis not in theheadof the largestDP containingit (exceptperhapsinthe NOM variantof (19d)). Independentevidencefor this is a distributionaldifferencebetweenbarepronounsandmodifiedpronounswith respectto thequantifierall, notedby Pesetsky(1978),who creditstheobservationto GuyCarden:

(20) a. All us linguistsunderstandthe riddle of existence.b. All *(of) us understand . . .



I take this to showthat us linguistsdoesnot haveus in the samestructuralposition as bare us. There may also be a crosslinguistic argument againstidentical structural analysesfor us in isolation versus with postmodifiers:some languages(e.g., French) have to insert an extra morpheme whenmodifying a pronoun, if they allow the construction at all (Pesetsky 1978):

(21) nous/vousautres linguistes1PL/2PL others linguists‘us/y’all linguists’

Doesthisanalysisforceus to abandon thewidely heldview, datingbackatleastto Postal1969,thatpronounsare(always)Ds?Not necessarily. It couldbethat in (19a),for example, meheadsa DP that is embeddedwithin theDPheadedby the, with me having beenconstrued as something like a propernamein ananalogousstructuresuchasthe real Bill Clinton.15 Alternatively,it couldbethatmehasbeenreinterpretedasanounin thisconstruction. In thelatter caseit could be important that this N not undergo (covert) N-to-Draising, otherwise it should presumably behavefor purposes of caseandagreementchecking asif it hadbeengeneratedin D. In fact, I am not awareof anyevidencethatN raisesashigh asD covertly in Englishanyway,sothismay not be a big worry.16

At the endof section4.3, I will returnto the statusof NOM in exampleslike (19d).

15 I am not suggestingthat (bare)propernamesin generalinvolve DP recursion,only thattheremight beDP recursionin anexpressionlike the real Bill Clinton, consistingof a modifiednameand a determinerthat apparentlymakesits usual semanticcontribution, that is, not anexpletivedeterminer.

16 An anonymousreviewersuggeststhat the fact that somelanguagesdisplay evidenceforovertN-to-D raisingshouldmakethenull hypothesisthatEnglishhascovertN-to-D raisinghere.However,in Italian (whereN-to-D hasbeendiscussedthe most),structuresanalogousto (19a)andits proper-namecounterpartdisallow overt N-to-D:

(i) a. il vero me stessothe real my self

b. ??il vero methe real me

c. **me (stesso)veromy (self) real

(ii) a. il vero Paolothe real Paul

b. **Paolo veroPaul real

Moregenerally,therangeof DPtypesin whichN-to-D hasbeenarguedfor constitutesa smallsubclassof DPsevenin Italian (cf. Longobardi1996),sothereis little reasonto think thatall Dsneedto unite with their Ns for featurechecking.



4.3 Prescriptive Influencesand Variation

It is acurious fact thatNOM is marginally analternative to ACC in severalofthe environmentsenumerated in section 3, often by prescriptive fiat. Inparticular,

• conjoined pronouns areoften NOM, evenin complement position,wherehypercorrectionhasgivenusbetweenyouandI; I do not consider this partof the grammar of English proper, because it does not generalize toplurals:*betweenweand theyversusbetweenusandthem. (It alsosoundsdistinctly ungrammatical to many nativespeakers, myself included.)

• NOM is attestedin sentences like thosein note11 involving subordinatingand, andSobin(1997)reports it asmarginally possible in (11b).

• oneoccasionally hearsutteranceslike Not I in contexts like (8a).

In general, given that there is no vacillation in any examples ofuncontroversial caseassignmentin English (**Me am tired, **John likesshe), it cannot simply be that English speakersare wishy-washy when itcomesto case. Rather, I suggest that the variableavailability of the NOMalternative has specifically to do with the absence of a syntactic casespecification—that is, thedefault spell-out is more easilyoverridden(e.g.,byprescriptive rulesor ‘‘vi ruses’’ in the senseof Sobin 1997) than the syntaxproper.17 Returning to the model in (2), this would mean thatextragrammatical influences can be exerted by adding a NOM featurespecification to a DP like DP3 that enters Spell-Out caseless, but suchinfluencesare not capable of removing feature specifications, like those onDP1 andDP2, that arealreadypresentat that point.18

This proposal might bearon the analysisof the NOM/ACC alternationinexampleslike (19d). Specifically, we could entertain thepossibility that thereis no structural ambiguity in theseexamplesbut that thepronoun is alwaysin


17 This is proposedin Schutze 1997(section2.6); Johannessen(1998) independently makesessentiallythesameproposal,basedon paradigmsassembledby Emonds(1986).Shemakestheaddedstipulationfor EnglishthattheConjheadcanassignNOM within ConjP,whereasI assumethatprescriptiveandothersuchinfluencescanactdirectly on thechoiceof vocabulary insertionundertheseconditions.

18 Interestingly, anotherenvironmentthat sharesthis character(i.e., ACC generallypreferredbutNOM variablypossible)is thesubjectpositionof ACC-ing gerunds(cf. Reuland1983,Abney1987):

(i) He/Him beingthe smartestonesurprisedme.

This might betakenas(ratherindirect)evidencethatACC in thatpositionis theresultof defaultcaseratherthanassignmentof ACC by a nonfinite Infl. As notedby a reviewer,Reuland(1983)offers a different analysison which caseis assignedto the subjectof the gerundby first beingassignedto thegerund(or its head,-ing) andthenbeing‘‘transmitted’’ from -ing to its subject.Inadditionto the ad hocnotion of transmission,that analysishasothershortcomings: it requiresaseparatestipulationto explainwhy thesubjectof agerundin subjectpositioncanalmostneverbeNOM (when -ing itself is being assignedNOM), and it treatscasemarking of the subjectofabsoluteusesof gerundsdifferently from argumentuses(because-ing hasno placeto get casefrom whenit headsan adjunct),with anotherstipulation.


a default caseenvironment, with NOM arisingextrasyntactically in the waydiscussedin the presentsubsection. In principle, this makes a differentempiricalprediction from theambiguity account,in thatwelinguistsoughttotriggerfirst-pluralagreementwhereasuslinguistsoughtto triggerthird-pluralagreement. Unfortunately, that distinction is nevermarkedin English.

4.4 Two Implementations of Default Case

In (2) I was deliberately vague about what happens in the step labeled‘‘Morphology’’ and,in particular,abouthow the defaultcaseaffix comestobe inserted. In principle, this could happensimply because the relevantvocabularyitems happento be the least featurally specifieditems of theirrespectiveparadigms—that is, the ‘‘elsewhere’’ forms are the default caseforms.Alternatively, therecouldbeanexplicit feature-filling mechanismthatapplies before vocabulary insertion. This would need to carry out aninstructionsuchas,‘‘If you encounter a DP with no casefeatureon it, supplyit with anACC feature.’’ 19 Sofar I haveignoredthedifferencebetween thesetwo implementations, but in certain circumstancesthey diverge in theirempirical predictions: for purposes of further discussion, I label themElsewhereInsertionandFeature Filling , respectively.

Under ElsewhereInsertion, we would be dealing with default forms;defaultcasewould be a descriptive way of referring to that setof forms butwould have no independent status in the grammar.20 In contrast, underFeatureFilling oneof thefunctionsof Spell-Out is to supplya casefeaturetoDPs that lack one. This is analogous to another function attributed to themorphology(in theoriessuchasDistributedMorphology), namely to supplytheme vowels to stems. In both instances, something is added to arepresentation, not becausethis is required by any syntactic principle butbecausethis is one of the arbitrary propertiesabouthow a given languagehappensto be pronounced.

19 An anonymousrefereepoints out that the casefeaturesnow underdiscussioncannotbeidentical to purely syntacticcasefeaturessuchas thoseshownin (2), given that they havenoopportunity to be checked.HereI am usingthe term ‘‘feature’’ in its traditionalbroadersense.Note that Chomsky’ssyntacticcasefeaturesare not strictly what determinescasemarking inSpell-Out either, becauseif they have been overtly checkedthey should have been erased(Chomsky 1995, chap. 4). Apparently what is neededare morphological casefeaturesthatshadowtheir syntacticcounterparts(if any) but arenot obliteratedby checking.

20 Schutze (1997) notes a prima facie problem for this approachin German,where (asdiscussedin section5) thedefaultcaseis NOM. Syncretismin Germanpronounparadigmsdoesnot uniformly collapseNOM with anothercase:sometimesit collapsesACC with anothercase,leavinga NOM form with a narrowerdistribution:

(i) Case 3SG-FEM 1PL

NOM sie wirACC sie unsDAT ihr uns

More sophisticated treatmentscould be considered,but I leavethe matterhere.



The most salient empirical consequence distinguishing ElsewhereInsertionand FeatureFilling concerns whether therecould be a mixture ofcasesin default environments—for example, in instanceswhere patternsofsyncretism among different casesvary across paradigms. WhereasFeatureFilling predicts that the default form should be in the samecasefor allnominal paradigms, Elsewhere Insertion predictsthat the default might beNOM for some pronouns but ACC for others, for example. The lattersituation seemsto arise in the Italian pronoun system,where the second-singular forms behaveexceptionally. Conjoinedsubjectpronouns must beNOM in Italian except when thesecondconjunct is secondsingular, in whichcaseit must be te, the form usedin objectposition(22). Johannessen(1998)observesthat te appears in other environmentswhere we would not expectACC to be assigned, but we might expect default caseto surface(23).

(22) a. Tu e io andremoinsieme a Roma.you-NOM andI-NOM go together to Rome

b. *Io e tu.. .I-NOM andyou-NOM

c. Io e te.. .I-NOM andyou-ACC (Johannessen1998,citing Renzi 1988)

(23) a. Pensaci te.think you‘That’s your problem.’

b. Te fai comevuoi.you do as li ke‘Do asyou like.’ (Johannessen1998,citing Zingarelli 1990)

Basedon thesefacts,shesuggests that te is thedefault second-singular form,whereaselsewherein thepronounparadigmtheNOM formsaredefaults.Thepatternin (22) then follows on the assumption that thesecoordinationsareasymmetrical, with the assigned casespreading to the first conjunctbut notthe second (cf. section 5.2). We then expect the second conjunct to beuniformly in the default case,which just happens to soundlike the second-singular ACC form but the NOM form otherwise.

It hasnot beenmy purpose here to attemptto choosebetween the twoimplementationsof defaultcase. Rather, I havesimply shownthat thereareworkable implementationsconsistent with the generalarchitecturein (2).

5. Crosslinguistic Support

Because I claim that defaultcaseis made availableby UG, it is necessarytofind evidencefor its existencein languagesotherthanEnglish.In thissection,I examine the behavior of someof the constructions from section3 in a fewdifferent languages. Beyond using these to support the existenceof default



case,I put forwardthestrongerproposition thatthenotion of default casecanactuallyexplaincrosslinguistic differencesin casemarking that seemnot tocorrelatewith any independent syntactic factors; this is accomplished bypositingaparametricchoicewithin themorphological componentasto whichcaseis the default in a given language.

5.1 Left Dislocations

I claim that all the languagesin this subsection differ from English in thatthey have NOM as their default case.The evidencefor this is that leftdislocationscan be NOM when their coreferential arguments are in someothercase; that is, when matching is ruled out.

In German, the caseon left dislocations often matches the associatedargument (24), but a mismatchingNOM is sometimesallowed(25).21 In (25)somesentences allow choiceof NOM or matchingcasefor somespeakers,whereasothersdemandmatching.

(24) a. Der Hans,der ist nicht gekommen.the-NOM he-NOM is not come‘Hans, he hasnot come.’

b. Den Hans, den magich nicht.the-ACC him-ACC like I not‘Hans, I don’t like him.’

c. Dem Hans,dem sagich nichts.the-DAT him-DAT sayI nothing‘Hans, I tell him nothing.’

(25) a. Der/*Den Hans,an den erinnere ich mich nicht.the-NOM/*ACC of him-ACC remember I myself not‘Hans, I don’t rememberhim.’

b. Der/*Dem Hans, mit dem spreche ich nicht mehr.the-NOM/*DAT with him-DAT speak I not anymore‘Hans, I don’t speakwith him anymore.’ (cf. van Riemsdijk1978)

c. Die/*Der Anna, ich habe lange nicht mit ihrthe-NOM/*DAT I havea-long-time not with her-DAT

gesprochen.spoken‘Anna, I haven’t spokenwith her in a long time.’

(van Riemsdijk & Zwarts 1997)

21 Thefactsin (24) and(25) aresubjectto a greatdealof interspeakervariation.Nonetheless,asfar asI know,all GermanspeakershavethedefaultNOM optionsomewherein this paradigm.Seesourcescited in Grohmann2000(chap.4) for further discussion.



d. Dieser/Diesem Kerl, dem werdeich esnochzeigen!this-NOM/DAT fellow him-DAT will I it yet show‘This character,I’ll showhim yet!’

e. Die Tatsache,daßAlex arm ist, er mißt ihrthe-NOM fact that poor is he attachesit-DAT

keine Bedeutungbei.no importanceto‘The fact that Alex is poor, this he attachesno importanceto.’

f. Dieser/Diesen Mann, ihn habeich nochnie gesehen.this-NOM/ACC man him-ACC haveI yet neverseen‘This man, I’ve neverseenhim yet.’

g. Dieser Gast, wannhat ihn der Oberkellner gegrußt?this-NOM guestwhen hashim-ACC the maitred’ greeted‘This guest, when did the maitre d’ greet him? (Grohmann2000)

h. Der/??DenHans,Anna behauptet, daß ich ihn nichtthe-NOM/??ACC claims that I him-ACC notbeachten soll.pay-attention-to should‘Hans,Anna claims that I shouldn’tpay him (any) attention.’

(van Riemsdijk & Zwarts 1997)

The construction that allows case mismatch is Hanging Topic LeftDislocation (HTLD), according to Grohmann (2000); he analyses this asinvolving basegeneration of the fronted element, in contrastto ContrastiveLeft Dislocation (CLD) in German,which involvesmovement anddisallowscasemismatch. Independent differencesbetween the two types include thefact that HTLD requires a noticeableprosodic breakafter the left dislocatedelementwhereasCLD doesnot havesucha break.In HTLD themismatchingNOM generally arises with arguments that are DAT and/or objects ofprepositions,but it is evenpossible with directobjects(25f–h),particularly ifthey are sufficiently distant from the topic. Another factor relevant to casematchingis whether the coreferentis a (weak) personalpronoun versus ademonstrative: according to Grohmann,the personalpronoundisfavorscasematching.Apparently, thecombinationof distance plus theuseof a personalpronoun is what leads to the surprisingdegradation of matching ACC in(25h).

Given that there seemsto be no syntactic caseassigner for the left-dislocated DPs in (28), the simplest explanation is that default case inGermanis NOM. SeeCzepluch 1996for further discussion.Without appealto defaultcase, we would haveto stipulateseparately that something assignsNOM to left dislocations in Germanbut ACC to left dislocations in English.

DefaultNOM alsoarisesin left dislocations in Icelandic (26), Greek(27),Russian(28), Latin (29), andArabic (30).



(26) a. Strakarnir, við þa hafði aldrei verið talað.the-boys-NOM with them-ACC had never beenspoken‘The boys,they hadneverbeenspokenwith.’ (Sigurðsson1992)

b. Þessi hringur, Olafur hefur lofað Marıu honum.this-NOM ring-NOM Olav has promised Mary-DAT it-DAT

‘This ring, Olav haspromisedit to Mary.’ (Zaenen 1997)

(27) a. I Maria, tin emathakala tosa xronia, kserothe Mary-NOM her-ACC knew goodso-manyyears knowpos na tis miliso.how COMP her-DAT talk‘Mary, I havefigured her out after so manyyears,I know how totalk to her.’ (Anagnostopoulou1997)

b. O paraksenos anthropos, dhenton idhame.the-NOM strange-NOM person-NOM not him-ACC saw‘The strangeperson,we didn’t seehim.’ (Johannessen1998)

(28) Vanja/?Vanju, ego ja ne ljublju.John-NOM/?ACC him-ACC I don’t like‘John, I don’t like him.’

(29) Ceterae philosophorum disciplinae, eas nonremaining-NOM philosophers-GEN disciplines-NOM these-ACC notmodonihil adjuvare arbitror, sedetiam.. .only nothing help-INFIN it-is-my-opinion but also.. .‘The remaining philosophical disciplines,I not only find themnot tohelp, but also.. .’ (Zwart 1988,citing Havers1926)

(30) al-kitaab-u qara?t-u-huthe-book-NOM read-1SG-it‘The book, I readit.’ (Ouhalla1991)

5.2 Coordination

Johannessen (1998) hasassembled numerous examples of unexpected casemarkingin coordinatestructures, which sheargues to be theresult of defaultcase.(SeealsoBorsley1994for critical discussion.)

In colloquial anddialectal Norwegian, either the second conjunct (31) orboth conjuncts (32) of a coordinate DP subject canbe ACC:

d-



(31) a. Han og meg var sammenom det. [Stavangerdialect]he-NOM andme-ACC were togetheraboutit‘He andI were in it together.’

(Johannessen1998,citing Berntsen& Larsen1925)b. Det sku’ baremangle at eg og deg ikkje sku’

it should only lack that I-NOM andyou-ACC not shouldgjere det. [Bergendialect]do it‘Of courseI andyou would do it.’

(Johannessen1998,citing Larsen & Stoltz 1912)c. Ska æ og dæ ga? [Tromsødialect]

shall I-NOM andyou-ACC go‘Shall you andI go?’ (Johannessen1998,citing Iversen1918)

(32) a. Bare meg og deg ska’ sitte pa kjelken hans.only me-ACC andyou-ACC shall sit on sledge his‘Only you andme shall sit on his sledge.’ [Bergendialect]

b. Meg og deg hjalp no godt te’, da.me-ACC andyou-ACC helped now well too then‘But thenme andyou did help a lot, too.’

(Johannessen1998,citing Larsen & Stoltz 1912)

In Spanish, coordinated pronouns in complement position must be NOM,unlike their uncoordinatedcounterparts:

(33) a. paratu y yofor you-NOM andI-NOM

b. *para ti y mıfor you-ACC andme-ACC

c. parati/*tufor you-ACC/*NOM

d. paramı/*yofor me-ACC/*NOM (Johannessen1998,citing Goodall1987)

Johannessen provides data from many other typologically diverselanguagesin which only oneconjunct is markedfor caseandall the othersarebare.Thosefacts(like theNorwegian facts)areconsistentwith my claimthat default casecan appearon DP-internal constituents,once we add theparametric option that the headof a DP mayspreadcase(andpossiblyotherfeatures)to asingleprivileged subconstituentof DP.(Johannessenshows thatthis option is independently motivatedfrom other facts aboutconjunction.)That is, theoptionsfor casespreading/concord are:(i) do not spreadthecaseof the head (English, Spanish,Norwegian dialect); (ii) spread it to allconstituents within DP (Latin, German);(iii) spreadit only to thespecifierofDP (Norwegian dialects in (31)).22 The SpanishandNorwegian facts make



the argument for default case more strongly than Johannessen’sotherexamples,becausehere one cannot treat the unexpected forms as simpleabsenceof case, whereas in languagesthat allow bare (caseless)DPs tosurface,it is not possible to distinguisha theory that invokes default casefrom onein which caselessDPswould beallowedto staycaseless throughoutthe Spell-Out component(seealsonote32). That is, the strongestevidencefor default caseinvolves presenceof unexpected casemarking, rather thanmereabsence of expected casemarking.

5.3 Other Environments

As shown in section5.2, coordination facts suggest that accusative is thedefaultcasein Norwegian. Thereareotherenvironmentsin Norwegian thatsupportthisclaim.Specifically, we find accusativeoptionally in appositiontoa subject(34) andobligatorily on certain premodified pronouns (35).23

(34) Læreren sa at densmartestestudenten, altsameg/jeg,the-teachersaid that the smartest student, thus me-ACC/I-NOM,skulle gi en tale.should give a speech‘The teachersaid that the smarteststudent,namelyme, should give aspeech.’

(35) a. Den virkelige meg/*jeg er i ferd med a komme frem.the real me-ACC/*I- NOM is on-the-point-of to-comeforward‘The real me is aboutto emerge.’

b. Den egentlige meg ville ikke.the actual me-ACC would not‘The actualme would not.’

Similarly, Danish shows defaultACC in someof the sameenvironmentsasEnglish, including modified pronouns (36), aswell as in coordination.

(36) Hende med de bla øjneer svensker.her-ACC with the blue eyesis a-Swede‘She/Her with the blue eyesis a Swede.’ (Howe 1996)

Irish suppliesfurther supportfor theseclaims. Although, as notedearlier,McCloskey has in mind a different notion of default casefrom what I amproposing,his descriptionof numerousACC environmentsin Irish nonethelessbringsto light facts that are relevantto the presentdiscussion.He writes,

22 I crucially assume,asin DistributedMorphology, that vocabularyinsertioncan‘‘see’’ theentiresyntacticstructure,not just the terminalnodeat which an item is beinginserted.

23 The factsfor postmodified pronounsaremurky.



‘‘Accusative’’, in Irish, is clearly the defaultcase—that which is assignedwhenno otherrule canapply. It is thecaseassignedto thesubjectsof non-finite clauses, to the objects of non-inflecting prepositions, to NP inapposition, to NP in verb-less clausesof all kinds, to NP in syntacticisolation, andso on. . . . This caseis not assignedin a particular context.Ratherit seemsclearthat it is assignedby anelsewhere-rule, whose effectis simply to assignAccusative to anyN0 not in acontext affectedby other,morespecific, Case-rules.(McCloskey 1986:266–267)

Threeof the default ACC environments that I examined in section 3 patterntogether in Irish too (with onetwist).24 First, we find ACC on a pronoun inapposition to the subject:

(37) RinneEoghane fein e.did Owen him-ACC EMPH it‘Owen himself did it.’

Second,ACC appears on an elliptical answerto a subjectquestion:

(38) Q: Ce a bhı ann?who COMP wasthere

A: E fein.him-ACC EMPH

Third, we find ACC within conjoined subjects,exceptthatunlikeEnglish,theleftmostconjunctremainsNOM (as in Norwegian (31)):

(39) a. Chuaigh se fein agusEoghan’na bhaile.went he-NOM EMPH and Owen home‘He andOwenwent home.’

b. Chuaigh Eoghanaguse/*se fein ’na bhaile.went Owen and him-ACC/*NOM EMPH home

c. Chuaigh seisean aguseisean/*seisean ’na bhaile.went he-NOM-CONTR and him-ACC/*NOM-CONTR home

d. *Chuaigheisean aguseisean/seisean ’na bhaile.went him-ACC-CONTR and him-ACC/NOM-CONTR home

(McCloskey 1986)

5.4 Summary

Different languages make use of default case in different sets ofconstructions,while employingstrategiessuchascasematchingor spreadingin others. For example,in bare DP answers to questions, German(unlike


24 As with English,I ignore the otherenvironments mentionedby McCloskeybecausetheyaremoresusceptibleto alternativeanalysesnot involving defaultcase.


English) alwaysusesthe casethat would appearin the correspondingfullsentence.Ratherthanweakening the evidencefor default case,this variablecrosslinguistic distribution actually strengthensit, because this is just thesituationwe expectfrom defaultenvironments—they areheterogeneousandarebestcharacterized negatively, andthevariationis explainedby parametricdifferences in theapplicationof ‘‘positive’’ casemarking processesoperatingin the complementary set of environments.That is, bare DP answerstoquestionsarea possible default-caseenvironmentcrosslinguistically, but notanactual default-caseenvironmentin a languagelike German that hassomeother strategy that applies there (case matching). Further crosslinguisticdifferences in casemarking (e.g.,NOM versusACC in non-case-matchedleftdislocations,modified pronouns, etc.) are reducible to a single parametricchoice—whether the default caseof the language is NOM or ACC. Anadditional issue that I cannot pursue here is whether that choice isnonarbitrary. It is commonly assumed, for example, that in rich caselanguages(Latin, German,Russian,etc.)thedefaultis alwaysNOM, whereasin poor caselanguagesit may be ACC (English, Irish, Norwegian) or NOM(Dutch,25 Swedish). Whetherthis pattern demandsa synchronic theoreticalexplanation depends first on establishinga rigorousdefinition of richness forcase,andchecking whether the implication holdsuniversally.

6. Conclusions

The existence of default casearguably makes a late insertion theory ofmorphology(such asDistributed Morphology) more appealing thanan earlyinsertiontheory. This is becauseindividual words(e.g.,him) maycorrespondboth to syntactically accusative andsyntactically caselessDPs.Postsyntacticdefault spell-out can treat both with a single lexical entry for him, whereasearly insertion would demand two entries: him[ACC] and him[Ø], becausethey necessarily behavedifferently in the syntax.Putting it another way, Ihave arguedthat the sameset of caseforms can arise in more than onesyntacticway.

It is not crucial that other languages, even those with similar casemorphology to English, should necessarily replicate the complete Englishpatternof default-casedistribution. My proposal statesin essencethat thedistribution of English pronouns reflects severalmicroparametersthat mightbesetindependently (in additionalto theoverallchoiceof ACC asthedefaultform). By microparameters I mean parameters whose scopeis relatively

25 Theevidencefor Dutchis not abundant.Theonly informativeconstructionseemsto bethemodified pronoun, which must be NOM-marked in all syntactic positions in Dutch, andfurthermore triggers third-singular agreementuniformly (as in English), confirming that thepronounis not the headof the DP:

(i) De echteik komt/*kom eindelijk boven.the real I comes-3SG/*come-1SG finally up‘The real me is finally emerging.’



narrowandthatmaynot interactsignificantly with other parametric choices.The onesrelevant to the rangeof variation discussed in this paperare thefollowing:

• Doescasespread from D (or Conj) to one privileged constituent of itsphrase,to all of them,or to none?26,27 (This canapply both to coordinatestructures andto modified pronouns.)

• Do left dislocationsmatchthecaseof their coreferentsalways, sometimes,or never?28

• Do elliptical DP utterances match the case of their full-sentencecounterparts?

In the architecture argued for in Schutze 1997, all three parametersareimplemented in the (postsyntactic) morphological component, forindependent reasons.It doesnot strike me asunreasonable to posit variationthere whose effects seemrather construction specific, given that there arealreadyvery manysmall quirks of crosslinguistic morphological differencesthatonemustposit. In otherwords,I do not seethenarrowempirical effectsof theseparametersasunparsimonious.

If the analysis is correct, the ACC positions in section3 mustbe caselesspositionsin the syntax,which implies that DPscan get structural licensingwithout getting case,and/orthat someDPs (perhapsnonarguments)do notneedstructural licensingat all. Eitherway, theCaseFilter cannotbestatedasa morphologically motivated conditionon all overt DPs,but must ratherbestatedasa purelyconfigurationalrequirement.Underthis view, thereis onlyone‘‘flavor’ ’ of structural licensing (‘‘Case’’), anda DPhasit if andonly if itis in an appropriate surface position. In terms of Chomsky’s (1995)formalism, one might retain the stipulation that certain DPs (perhaps allarguments) are obligatorily supplied with an uninterpretableCasefeatureupon enteringthe Numeration, as a way of implementingthe Case Filter.Independently, DPs may optionally be supplied with morphological casefeaturesat that stage as well. Only the latter featuresmake the distinctions


26 SeeJohannessen1998for a theoryof privilegedconstituentsundercoordination.27 An anonymousrevieweris troubledthatthisparameter‘‘seemssufficiently ‘syntactic’ . . . to

qualify asa ‘parameter’ in syntax;but it doesnot seemeasilyamenableto a formulationin termsof thestrengthof featuresof functional categories.’’ I agreewith the latterpoint, which leadstooneof two conclusions:either(a) this parameteris not implementedin thenarrowsyntax,whichis whatI claim in themaintext,or (b) Chomskyis wrongandthereareothersyntacticparametersbesidesfeaturestrength.The latter is probably true in any case,given that therehavebeennoproposalsfor how to formulate such well-understoodsyntactic variation as differencesinboundingnodes/islandhoodfor movementor domainsfor binding in termsof featurestrength,andthe prospectsseemslim.

28 An anonymousreviewer asks whether this formulation can be made more precise,presumably wanting to know what ‘‘sometimes’’ can mean.From looking just at Germanit isclear that the answeris subject to considerable individual variation. It appearsthat relevantfactorsincludewhether or not theDP is containedwithin a PP,whetherthecaseto bematchedisinherentversusstructural,and the distancebetweenthe dislocatedDP and the coreferentialargument.


betweenNOM, ACC, DAT, and so forth; only thesehave a default; andlanguagesmay differ on their choice of default.

The next question one might want to ask in this domain is why defaultcaseexists.29 I am not certain that it makes senseto try to answerthatquestionwhile having no answerto the question of why caseexistsat all.Functional considerationssuchas reductionof ambiguity do not seemverycompelling,given that thereare languagesthat get along just fine with nocaseat all; thereis somuchambiguity in naturallanguage,it doesnot appearthat case marking puts much of a dent in the problem. Furthermore,paradigmsof casemarking frequently show large amountsof syncretism,substantially undermining its potential for functional benefit. Against thisbackdrop, seeking a deep justification for default case can yield onlyspeculation. One possible answer suggestsitself basedon the claim inDistributed Morphology that every setof competingvocabulary itemshasadefaultmember—that is, onewith no featuresother thanthosethat identifythesetasa whole.This would entail thatanylanguagethathascasemarkingipso factohasdefault casemorphemesandthat their distribution is asI havecharacterized it; this comesfor free. Ideally, that is all thereis to say.

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CarsonT. SchutzeUCLA

Departmentof LinguisticsBox 951543

Los Angeles,CA 90095-1543USA

[email protected]



Appendix: Postcopular DPs

In this appendix I discussthe possibility that casemarkingon the postverbalDP of a copular construction (i.e., the nonsubject) could be anotherinstanceof default case,at least in some languages.(This idea is entertained butrejectedby Maling & Sprouse1995.)From an acquisitionperspective thereare two reasons why this construction is of particular interest. One is theexistenceof a split among Germanic languagesasto casemarkingin copulaconstructions: might this be reducedto a split in the choiceof default case,ratherthanbeing yetanotherdifferencein casebehaviorfor thechild to learn,one that appears uncorrelated with anythingsyntactic?The other reason isthat if postcopularDP is a default-caseenvironment, it is potentially usefultolearnersin establishingwhich casetheir languagehasasdefault, andcopularutterancesareprobablyabundantin speech to youngchildren.Unfortunately,theprospects for successalongeitherof theselinesturnout to beslim to noneoncethe factsarecarefully scrutinized.

Maling and Sprouse (1995) note the following split as to the caseofpostcopularnominalsin Germanicmatrix clauses:we find NOM in German,Icelandic, Faroese,and Swedishbut ACC in English, Dutch, Norwegian,Danish, Frisian, and Low Germandialects. Some representative data aregiven here.

(40) a. It wasus/*we.b. There’s me/*I. (list reading)c. The murderer is her/*she.d. That’s them/*they over there.e. If you wereme/*I, . . .

(41) a. Dat is hem.30 [Dutch]that is him-ACC

a. Ik benhaar/*zij.I am her-ACC/*NOM

b. Als ik jou/*jij was,. . .if I you-ACC/*NOM were,.. .‘If I wereyou, . . .’

30 Thereare,of course,Dutch sentencessimilar to thesein which the pronounfollowing thecopulais NOM:

(i) a. Dat is hij.that is he-NOM‘That is he.’

b. Dit/Dat benik.this/thatam I‘This/That is me.’

c. Daarbenik.theream I‘There I am.’



(42) Det er ham/meg. [Norwegian (Bokmal)]it is him-ACC/me-ACC (Askedal1994, Howe 1996)‘It is him/me.’

(43) Det ar jag/du/*mig/*dig . [Swedish]It is I-NOM/you-NOM/*me-ACC/*you-ACC (Maling & Sprouse1995)‘It is I/you.’

(44) Hun er kennari/*kennara. [Icelandic]she-NOM is teacher-NOM/*ACC (Maling & Sprouse1995)‘She is a teacher.’

Variousauthorshaveraisedthe possibility that this Germanic split reflectsacontrast in whatthedefault caseis. As before,in assessingthis hypothesiswefirst needto rule out other alternatives,of which the obvious two are caseassignment andcasematching.

Thereis no reasonin principle why thecopulacould not beacaseassignerjust li ke any other verb. This would handlethe languageswith postcopularACC, but copular case assignment is implausible for languages withpostcopular NOM becauseno other verbsassignNOM in theselanguages.31

On the other hand,postcopularNOM could ariseby casematchingwith thesubject,asthepostcopularDPis eithercoreferentialwith or predicatedof thatsubject(anotherinstance of ‘‘concordial case’’ in Blake’s [1994] taxonomy).Matching in this environment is independently motivated by the casealternations seenin ECM contexts in Icelandic, for example. Embeddingexample (45a)asa complementinfinitival clausemakesbothembeddedDPsACC (45b); (45c)reassuresusthatpostcopularACC in (45b)is not somehowdueto the nonfinitenessof Infl.

(45) a. Hun er kennari/*kennara.she-NOM is teacher-NOM/*ACC

b. Eg taldi hana vera kennara/*kennari.I believed her-ACC to-be teacher-ACC/*NOM

c. Að vera kennari/*kennara er mikilvægt.COMP to-beteacher-NOM/*ACC is important (Sigurðsson1989)


d. De manmet de rodehoedbenik.the manwith the red hat am I‘I am the manwith the red hat.’

e. MeneerSmid benik.Mr. Smith am I‘I am Mr. Smith.’

However,in all theexamplesin (i), ik is actuallyin subjectposition,with theprecedingmaterialfrontedin theusualV2 fashion.This canbeseen,for example,in thefact thattheverbuniformlyagreeswith ik. Thus,theseexamplesdo not bearon thequestionof how complementsto copulasarecasemarked.Similar comments apply to other languagesdiscussed.

31 Someof theselanguageshaveNOM objects,but it is clearthatNOM comesfrom Infl andnot V, becausethis is possibleonly whenthe subjectof the clauseis not itself NOM.


Having establishedthe needfor both ACC assignmentby the copula andcasematching,is thereany evidencethat would requirean appealto defaultcaseasa third option?32 To motivatethat,we would needa situation wherematchingcould be ruled out (i.e., the two DPshavedifferentcases) andthepostcopularDP was not ACC—for example,an ECM complement with anACC subject anda nominative postcopularDP in a NOM-default language.Superficially suchcasesexist,asin oneversionof theGermansentence(46).

(46) Laß denPeter doch der/den Morder sein.let/makethe-ACC after-all the-NOM/ACC murdererbe‘Let/Make Peter be the murdererafter all.’

(Maling & Sprouse 1995;Haider,Olsen& Vikner 1995)

Here,ACC on denMorder must bearising by casematching with its subjectdenPeter, becausepostcopularaccusative is not available in matrix clausesin German. In the sameposition,NOM on der Morder apparently cannotbearising by matching, becauseits subject is not NOM. A straightforwardtreatmentwould haveit that embeddedpostcopular NOM is an instance ofdefault case.However, the factsaremore complex. As Maling andSprouse(1995) point out (observation attributed to Hubert Truckenbrodt), somespeakersfind thattheir casepreferencein (46)changeswith theinterpretationof the verb lassenas permissive(NOM preferred)versuscausative(ACCpreferred). This arrangementis unexpected if the syntactic structures areidentical,but it would beconsistentwith treating thepermissiveasanobjectcontrol verb and the causative as an ECM verb, in which instance thepostcopularDP could simply be uniformly matching the caseof its subject(NOM PRO in the permissive). However, the judgments are hugelyvariable—some speakersseemto have free variation under both readings,othershavepreferencesthat shift with the personof the embeddedsubject,andsoon.According to Maling andSprouse,all of theaboveappliesequallyto corresponding sentences in Swedish. It seems, therefore, that clearevidenceof the needfor postcopular default casestill eludesus.

32 Another option that might seemnecessaryon empirical groundsis the possibility for acopulanot to assigncaseandfor no defaultor matchingstrategyto beused.Relevantlanguagesinclude Korean and Japanese,wherein postcopular DPs cannot be marked for caseat all.However,it is not obviousthatabsenceof a casefeatureis thecorrectcharacterizationof whatisgoing on. In theselanguages,caseis signaledby a particleat the endof the DP, which is oftenanalyzedasthefunctionalheadof theoutermostprojectionof a nominalphrase.Theabsenceofany such particle on postcopular nominals could reflect the fact that such nominals arecategorially smallerthancanonical(referential) DPs.Thatpredicatenominalsdo not projectthefull structureof referentialnominalshasbeensuggestedon the basisof the observation that inmanylanguagesdeterminersareomissibleor impossible in predicateposition(ia) but obligatoryin referentialpositions(ib).

(i) a. Mary hasbeen(the) presidentof our club for manyyears.b. *(The) presidentof our club hascalleda meeting.



Despitethenumerousissuesthatremain open,I cannow partially respondto the questions raised at the beginning of this appendix. It is clear thatdefault case plays at best a minor role in these constructions cross-l inguistical ly—other case-marking strategies are very common forpostcopular DPs. A language’schoice of default casewill not be able toexplain the division between Germanic languageswith NOM versus ACCpostcopular case. Finally, learnerswould do quite poorly in identifying theirlanguage’s defaultcaseif they werekeying in on this syntactic environment(contraryto thesuggestion in Schutze1997).However this parameter settingis accomplished, it clearly happens quite early in acquisition. In Schutze1997,it is shown thatEnglish childrenwho havebothNOM andACC formsin their productive vocabulary are producing only ACC in default-caseenvironments from the earliest point at which these can be identified,typically at a little over two yearsof age.



nature of default case

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