Differential Subject Marking in Georgian
Dissertation
Datum der mündl. Prüfung:2023-02-07
Erschienen:2024-01-18
Betreuer:Prof. Dr. Hedde Zeijlstra
Betreuer:Prof. Dr. Anke Holler
Betreuer:Prof. Dr. Nino Doborjginidze
Betreuer:Prof. Dr. Irina Lobzhanidze
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Stavros Skopeteas
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Rezo Marsagishvili
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Anke Holler
Dateien
Name:Berikashvili-2024-DSM-in-Georgian.pdf
Size:2.60Mb
Format:PDF
Zusammenfassung
Englisch
This thesis presents a novel account on Differential Subject Marking (DSM) in Georgian based on the current progress in minimalist syntax. It is an original contribution to a highly complex problem in Georgian Syntax and comes up with original results that are expected to have an impact both on the research of Georgian Syntax as well as the research on Case Theory (CT) in general. The main idea of the thesis is that Differential Case Marking (DCM) in Georgian is not the effect of operations that take place only in the Morphological Structure (MS) after Spell-out, but both case assignment and agreement based on an already assigned case (dependent, unmarked, etc.), happen in the syntax proper. Moreover, I claim that all subject cases (including the so-called ‘non-canonically marked’ ergative and dative) are structural in Georgian and that Dependent Case Theory (DCT) is enough to deal with structural case assignment. This thesis differs from already existing language-specific accounts in a minimalist framework by applying a pure Dependent Case (DC) algorithm to both ‘non-canonically marked’ subject cases. The novel data except for the theoretical analysis contains a new empirical domain, new language-specific diagnostics (related, for instance, to test subjecthood in DOC passives, or unergatives vs. unaccusatives, etc.) and new argumentation for the existence of the implicit argument in the unergative structure that contributes to our understanding of Georgian ergativity.
Keywords: syntax; case; agreement; ergativity; differential subject marking; dependent case theory; ergative; dative; unergatives; implicit arguments