<OT> New Posting: ROA-1019

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 1019-0309

Finnish case alternating adpositions: A corpus study

Sander Lestrade <s.lestrade at let.ru.nl>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1019


Abstract:
In this paper, I discuss Finnish case alternation adpositions
from a theoretical and corpus perspective. First, I argue
that postpositional PP constructions with genitive case
denote the standard spatial meaning of which an extension
is marked with partitive case. Also, I show how word order
interacts with case assignment. Both findings are formalized
in a bidirectional Optimality Theoretic framework. Second,
I show that case alternating behavior does not occur unrestricted
ly in newspaper corpora. Adpositions in principle tend to
assign the same case to the same object over and over again,
and only a small subgroup of highly frequent nouns is assigned
both genitive and partitive case by the same adposition(s).
This suggests that (adpositional case) alternation is only
allowed for highly frequent adpositional objects. Frequency
is a necessary condition for variation (and therefore, for
bidirectional optimization).

Comments: 
Keywords: Bidirectional OT, adpositions, case alternation, variation, frequency, frequency conditions
Areas: Semantics,Morphology,Syntax
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1019