Case, Valency and Transitivity

Case, Valency and Transitivity Edited by

Leonid Kulikov Leiden University

Andrej Malchukov Peter de Swart Radboud University Nijmegen

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Case, Valency and Transitivity / edited by Leonid Kulikov, Andrej Malchukov and Peter de Swart. p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165–7763 ; v. 77) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Case. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--Transitivity. 3. Dependency grammar. 4. Semantics. I. Kulikov, L.I. II. Mal’chukov, A.L. (Andrei L’vovich). III. Swart, Peter de. IV. Series. P240.6.C37 2006 415’.5--dc22 isbn 90 272 3087 0 (Hb; alk. paper)

2006040572

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chapter 2

Case systems in a diachronic perspective A typological sketch Leonid Kulikov Leiden University

The present paper offers a cross-linguistic survey of the main types of possible developments in case systems. In Section 2 I will focus on the main mechanisms of the rise of new cases and expansion of case systems (case-increasing). Section 3 will deal with the loss of cases and decay of case systems (case-reducing). In Section 4 I will discuss some processes within case systems which do not lead to quantitative changes but help to resist phonetic erosion (stable case systems). On the basis of this diachronic typological overview, I will outline in Section 5 a tentative classification of the evolutionary types of languages from the point of view of case systems. It will be argued that one of the main factors determining the evolutionary type of a language is the areal (rather than genetic) relationship.

1. Introduction The present paper offers a cross-linguistic survey of the main types of possible developments in case systems. In Section 2 I will focus on the main mechanisms of the rise of new cases and expansion of case systems (case-increasing). Section 3 will deal with the loss of cases and decay of case systems (case-reducing). In Section 4 I will discuss some processes within case systems which do not lead to quantitative changes but help to resist phonetic erosion (stable case systems). On the basis of this diachronic typological overview, I will outline in Section 5 a tentative classification of the evolutionary types of languages from the point of view of case systems.

2. Rise of cases and expansion of case systems: sources and mechanisms 2.1 Adpositions and adverbs Most often, new case-markers (and, accordingly, new cases) are recruited from postpositions and prepositions1 (for which I use the cover term ‘adpositions’) or other semiauxiliary adverbial words with similar semantics.2 Thus, in Harris and Campbell’s

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(1995: 89) formulation, ‘[c]ases develop from postpositions when the postposition is felt to be so closely connected to its attribute noun that together they are reinterpreted as one word; semantic and morphophonemic changes (e.g. vowel harmony) often take place which conceal the word boundary and change the status of elements, resulting in new case suffixes.’ This source of new case markers is well-known from historical linguistics, studies on case and grammaticalization (see, for instance, Kahr 1976; Lehmann 1995: 80ff.; Blake 2001: 161ff.) and hardly requires a long discussion. It will suffice to give a few examples of the rise of new cases, illustrating the mechanism in question by the evolution of the Indo-Aryan case systems and by the history of locative cases in (Old) Lithuanian.

2.1.1 New Indo-Aryan languages: new cases from postpositional phrases and nominal compounds

By the end of the Middle Indo-Aryan (mia) period, that is, at the turn of the 2nd millennium ad, the Indo-Aryan languages have lost most of the cases of the original Sanskrit, or Old Indo-Aryan (oia), system of eight cases3 (which, except for minor details, is nearly identical to the case system reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European). Generally, only two cases survive, Direct (resulting from the merger of nominative and accusative) and Oblique (mostly going back to the Old Indo-Aryan genitive), although in some languages isolated traces of some other oblique cases, such as instrumental, locative or ablative, can still be found, sometimes even within the declension paradigm; cf. the Sinhala instrumental case suffix -en/-in and Assamese ergative -e, both reflecting the oia instrumental singular ending of a-stems ‑ena. The functions of the lost cases are largely taken over by morphemes (bound or free, i.e. postfixes or postpositions) of different origin, many of which occur in this usage already in oia (Sanskrit), where they supplement the inventory of case-markers. These Indo-Aryan morphemes can be of different grammatical types according to the type of their source:

(i) First of all, in oia we find primary, or ‘old’, postpositions; they go back to ProtoIndo-European morphemes which were used in the adpositional function already in the proto-language. An example of an old oia postposition reflected as a case suffix in a daughter language, in Middle Indo-Aryan, is the Māhārāṣṭrī ablative suffix -āhi < Skt. postposition adhi (constructed with the ablative in oia); see Insler 1991–92; Bubeník 1998: 68f. Next to old postpositions, there are several markers which result from grammaticalization of some verbal and nominal forms. The grammatical types of these secondary postfixes and postpositions (which may eventually yield case markers) include: (ii) Postpositions descendant from a. non-finite verbal forms, in particular, converbs, traditionally called ‘absolutives’, or ‘gerunds’ (cf. Skt. ādāya ‘with’, lit. ‘having taken’); gerundives (parti-

Case systems in a diachronic perspective

cipia necessitatis, cf. Skt. kārya- ‘to be done’ in (4)); and verbal adjectives (cf. Skt. kr̥ ta- ‘done, made’ in (4)); b. case forms of some nouns (cf. Skt. madhye ‘in the middle’ in (2)); (iii) Final members of compounds, which, again, may represent a. non-finite verbal forms (cf. -gŕ̥ hya-formations in (1) and nominal compounds in -sthita- in (2)) or b. nominal case forms (cf. nominal compounds in -artham ‘goal, purpose’ in (3)). The markers of the first three types (i, ii.a and ii.b), representing free morphemes (words), were originally attached to (non-nominative) case forms of the noun, thus forming, after having become bound morphemes, the second layer of case forms (see below). In type (iii), the source of the new case morpheme was attached to the nominal stem, thus creating a new case within the first layer. It is worth mentioning that, due to the erosion of the nominal inflexion by the end of the mia period, some (oblique) case forms may eventually become indistinguishable from bare stems, and thus the border between types (ii) and (iii) cannot always be drawn with accuracy. Such grammaticalization processes can be traced as far back as Old and Middle IndoAryan,4 and the embryonic cases of the above-described types can be found already at the earliest documented stage of oia, in (early) Vedic. Thus, in early Vedic, that is, foremost, in the language of the R̥ gveda (RV), the most ancient Vedic (and Indo-Aryan) text (around the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium bc), we encounter a few examples of compounds based on the converb of the verb gr̥ h ‘grasp’.5 These include:

(1) a. b. c.

(RV 8.70.15) karṇa-gŕ̥ hya ear-grasp:conv ‘(having grasped) by the ear’ (RV 4.18.12, 10.27.4) pāda-gŕ̥ hya foot-grasp:conv ‘(having grasped) by the foot’ (RV 10.85.26) pūṣa tvā itó nayatu hasta-gŕ̥ hya Pūṣan you:acc from.here lead:3sg.impv hand-grasp:conv ‘Let Pūṣan (a deity) lead you from here by the hand.’

Note that the -gŕ̥ hya-formations do not give rise to a new case: in middle Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit we find no continuation of this morphological type. Apparently, this proto-case was unable to gain a place within the nominal paradigm, thus turning out to be a dead-end formation, from the point of view of the diachronic typology of case systems.

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A number of examples of the grammaticalization of new cases (or quasi-cases) can be found in the mia period, in particular, in Apabhraṃśa Prakrits, cf.:

(2) Apabhraṃśa Prakrits (Bubeník 1998: 67, 80) a. abl. -ṭṭhiu (as in hiaya-ṭṭhiu ‘out of [my] heart’) < oia sthita- ‘standing’ (passive perfect participle of the verb sthā ‘stand’) b. loc. majjhe < Skt. madhye (Loc.sg. of madhya ‘middle’), e.g. in gharaho majjhe house:gen in ‘in the house’

In New Indo-Aryan languages we observe a rapid increase in use and grammaticalization of such new postpositions, which are normally added to the Oblique case form. This grammaticalization may result in the amalgamation of a postposition with the nominal stem or Oblique case and, hence, in the rise of a new case. Such is, for instance, the origin of some new case endings:

(3) a. Sinhala dat. -ṭa, Khowar dat. -te < Skt. -artham ‘goal, purpose’; b. Sinhala gen. -ge < Skt. gr̥ he ‘in the house’ (Loc.sg. of gr̥ ha- ‘house’)

A bulk of markers of genitive and dative containing k- and/or r-, most of which go back to nominal derivatives of the Old Indo-Aryan verbal root kr̥ - (kar-) ‘make, do’, can be found in several New Indo-Aryan languages, cf.:

(4) New Indo-Aryan genitive a. Hindi -kā, -ke (< Apabhr. -kera) < Skt. gerundive kārya- ‘to be done’; b. Awadhi, Maithili -ker < Skt. part.pf.pass. kr̥ ta- ‘done, made’; < Skt. adj. kr̥ tya- ‘to be done’. c. Bhojpuri -kæ

Likewise, some dative k-morphemes, such as Hindi -ko, Oriya -ku, Marathi ‑kē, Romani -ke/-ge undoubtedly reveal a vestige of the same Sanskrit root kr̥ - (kar-). The initial stages of the corresponding grammaticalization processes can be dated as early as Old Indo-Aryan. Thus, the starting point of the grammaticalization path of Skt. -artha ‘goal, purpose’ towards the Sinhala dative case suffix -ṭa (see (3) above) is the adverbial usage of the accusative of the Sanskrit bahuvrīhi compounds in -artha(X-artham), meaning ‘having X as a goal, purpose’ → ‘for (the sake of) X’: udakārtham ‘having water as a goal’ → ‘for water’, sukhārtham ‘having happiness, pleasure as a goal’ → ‘for happiness, for pleasure’, tadartham ‘having that as a goal’ → ‘for that, therefore’. A detailed chronological analysis of the major turning points in the corresponding grammaticalization scenarios, particularly on the basis of evidence from a variety of mia and (early) nia dialects remains a desideratum. In nia languages, the morphological status of the resulting markers may vary from bound morphemes (case suffixes), tightly connected with the nominal stem (cf. the Sinhala case markers mentioned in (3)), to free morphemes (postpositions). The latter


type can be illustrated by the Hindi dative-accusative morpheme -ko that can be shared in some constructions by several nouns (as in rām aur mohan ko ‘to Ram and Mohan’), exemplifying a ‘Gruppenflexion’, which pleads for a postposition rather than for a suffix analysis. There are also some intermediary instances, where it is quite difficult to draw a clear-cut border between bound and free case markers. In the modern indological literature (as well in some other linguistic traditions) the difference between these groups of case (or case-like) markers and postpositions is described in terms of the distinction between cases of the first, second and third layers (Zograf 1976; Masica 1991: 230ff.; Matras 1997). The first layer corresponds to the case in the strict sense of the term and, in Hindi, is limited to the opposition between the direct and oblique cases. The third layer corresponds to clear instances of postpositional phrases, while the second one takes an intermediary position between cases proper and postpositional phrases. It is important to note that only the first layer case can trigger agreement on adjectives. Although both ‘Gruppenflexion’ and the lack of agreement with second layer cases appear to distinguish these morphemes from cases proper, the high degree of grammaticalization makes appropriate their association with the category of case in general.

2.1.2

New locative cases in Old Lithuanian

Similar mechanisms for creating new cases have been used in Old Lithuanian, resulting in a sub-system of locative cases, which is not preserved in the modern literary language6 but can still be found in some archaic dialects, spoken, in particular, in Belarus (for details, see e.g. Ambrazas et al. 1985: 90 = 1997: 106; Mathiassen 1996: 38; Zinkevičius 1996: 112f.). Most of the Lithuanian cases can be traced back to the ProtoIndo-European case system. In addition, we find three new locatives: illative, adessive and allative, made by attaching the postposition (?) *nā˘ to the accusative form in ‑n (with the subsequent degemination of ‑n-n-) and the postposition *piẽ (< Proto-Balt. *prei) to the locative and genitive, respectively. In fact, the only locative which is present in the modern literary Lithuanian case system, ‘inessive’, is a new case as well (made by adding the new postposition *en to the old locative), replacing the old locative inherited from Proto-Indo-European (which only survives in some adverbials such as nam-iẽ ‘at home’). The resulting case system (as attested in Old Lithuanian and in some Southern and Eastern archaic dialects) is summarized in Figure 1 (see p. 28).

2.2 Multilayer case marking New cases (usually, new locatives) can also be created by adding existing case‑markers to some case forms or to adverbials with case-like semantics, which results in multilayer case marking. Such mechanism has given rise to the rich system of locative cases in Finnish (probably already by the Proto-Finnic period), as well as in some other Finno-Ugric (FU) languages (see e.g. Hakulinen 1961: 67ff.). Although the documented history of the FU

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Nom. mìšk-as ‘forest’ Acc. mìšk-ą (< *-am) Gen. mìšk-o mìšk-ui Dat. mišk-ù Instr. (new) Loc. Voc. mìšk-e *mišk-iẽ) (old Loc.

mišk-è (< *mišk-ę´ < *-oi + (H)en)

mišk-anà (mišk-añ) (< *-am + na) ‘into the forest’ mišk-ópi (-óp) (< *-o + piẽ) ‘to(wards) the forest’ mišk-íepi (-íep) (< *-iẽ + piẽ) ‘into the forest’

Illative Allative Adessive Figure 1.

languages counts ‘as few as’ about five hundred years and we cannot directly observe the rise of new cases (as in Indo-Aryan), most of the Finno-Ugric case-markers are morphologically transparent and their sources can readily be reconstructed. Thus, only one third of the fifteen cases of modern Finnish (which can all be traced back to the Proto-Finnic period) can be reconstructed to Proto-Finno-Ugric (pfu), or Proto-Uralic, as the comparison with other Finno-Ugric languages shows. Some others have been developed during or after the Proto-Volga-Finnic (pvf) period. Specifically,

Finnish

Nom. Acc. Gen. Essive Partitive Translative

-ø -n -n -na/-nä -ta/-tä, -a/-ä -ksi

pf

< < < < < *-k-s-e <

Internal locative cases Inessive -ssa/-ssä < Elative -sta/-stä < Illative -hVn, -–n, -seen < *-seń, -zeń External locative cases -lla/-llä -lta/-ltä -lle(´)

pvf

*-s-na/-s-nä *-s-ta/-s-tä

Adessive Ablative Allative

< *-l-na/-l-nä < *-l-ta/-l-tä < *-leń

Abessive -tta/-ttä (‘without X’) Comitative -ine-

<

*-s-ta-k/-s-tä-k

<

*-i-n (?)

Figure 2.

pfu *-ø *-m *-ń *-na *-δa (*Loc.-Abl.)


the three internal locative cases, inessive, elative and illative, have been created by adding the case markers of essive and partitive (historically going back to locative-ablative) to the forms in -s (which can be identified as an adverbial suffix). Likewise, the external locatives (adessive, ablative and allative) have been made from the adverbial forms ending in -la/-lä,7 which is probably identical with the final element in a few nouns with locative semantics such as ete-lä ‘south’, pohjo-la ‘north’, appe-la ‘home of the father-inlaw’ (← appi- ‘father-in-law’). These developments are summarized in Figure 2. Of course, it is sometimes almost impossible to draw with accuracy the distinction between the two types discussed in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, i.e. between adpositional cases and multilayer case marking. Thus, Proto-Lithuanian *nā˘ used in the formation of the illative (cf. mišk-añ < *-am + na ‘into the forest’) might represent an old postposition or an extinct case-marker (perhaps directly borrowed from an adjacent Finno-Ugric language? cf. Finnish essive suffix ‑na/‑nä).

2.3 Cases from pronouns and articles (indexicals) New case-markers can also be recruited from the set of demonstrative pronouns or articles (which in turn typically go back to pronouns). Such was probably the origin of the Berber inflectional case-prefixes, illustrated in (5) (Sasse 1984: 120ff.; see also Prasse 1964; Aikhenvald 1990; Aixenval’d and Militarev 1991: 211):8

(5) Berber Nom (‘dependent form’) Acc (‘independent form’)

‘man’ urgaz argaz

‘children’ uarrau arrau

A comparison with Cushitic languages shows the striking similarity with the vocalism of the demonstrative pronouns; cf., for instance, masculine demonstratives in Burji:

(6) Burji (Cushitic) Nom ku Acc ka

According to Sasse (1984: 122), the Berber case-prefixes can be interpreted as relics of a previous system of definiteness markers, being in fact fossilized articles. Articles and/or demonstrative pronouns may also be the historical sources of some case endings in Kartvelian languages.9 Thus, according to A. Šanidze, the marker of the Georgian nominative case -i (the ‘Subject–Object’ form, approximately corresponding to the absolutive of the ergative languages) may go back to the postposed demonstrative pronoun -igi (through the stage of the definite article).10 The same may be the origin of the Laz and Megrelian (Mingrelian) ‘narrative’ case marker -k (for discussion, see Klimov 1962: 17f., 36f.). The Georgian ergative suffix -ma/-m, the marker of another case encoding the two main syntactic arguments, undoubtedly goes back to the

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demonstrative pronoun man ‘that; he’; Old Georgian still preserves the more archaic form of this ending, -man, which is formally identical to the source morpheme (Klimov 1962: 55). Likewise, some scholars suggest a similar origin of the ergative case marker in two North-West Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe) languages, Kabardian (-mə) and Ubykh (-n). According to Kumaxov (1971: 43, 158; 1989: 31f.), both case morphemes may go back to the definite article/demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ (Kabardian mə, Ubykh jəna). Finally, rich evidence for the development of ergative case markers from demonstrative and pronominal forms is provided by a number of Australian languages; see now the most comprehensive treatment of the issue in McGregor (to appear), which offers both a detailed survey of data available from several grammars and a theoretical explanation of this grammaticalization scenario. Thus, the Nyulnyulan ergative suffix -ni/‑in/-nim etc. may derive from Proto-Nyulnyulan *‑nimV, which ‘is a plausible cognate of the … third person pronoun ni ~ nu’. The Jingulu ergative markers -(r)ni and -nga probably go back to either pronouns or demonstratives *-nu and *-ngaya (McGregor, op.cit.). In general, the possible developments of demonstrative pronouns can be represented according to the scheme in Figure 3 (Harris and Campbell 1995: 341f.). Case marker Demonstrative pronoun

Definite article Gender-class marker

Figure 3.

2.4 Split of one case in two New cases can also be created by splitting one case into two. The most common scenario is the borrowing of a new case marker from a different declension type, as shown in Figure 4 below. The case Ci that originally has distinct endings in declensions I and II (-xI and -xII, respectively) splits, yielding two new cases, Ci1 with the ending -xI (= the direct successor of the ‘old’ case Ci) and Ci2 with the ending ‑xII. This process is usually accompanied by the loss of the declension type (II) that was the source of the new casemarker (see Figure 4). Declension types

Cases

Figure 4.

I

II

C1 C2 …

… …

… …

Ci

-xI

-xII

(I) C1 C2 Ci1

… … … -xI

Ci2

-xII


An illustration of such development is provided by the history of the modern Russian ‘second’ locative and ‘second’ genitive (also called partitive).11 Locative-2 of the 2nd declension type (historically going back to the Proto-IndoEuropean declension of the *-o-stems) is marked with the accented ending -ú (thus being opposed to -e of the original locative, or Locative-112) and can only be employed in constructions with the locative prepositions v ‘in’ and na ‘on’. It is formed almost exclusively from monosyllabic nouns such as sneg ‘snow’, les ‘forest’, sad ‘garden’: na sneg-u/ v sneg-u, v les-u, v sad-u. The ending -ú has been borrowed from the old declension of the stems in *-u- (type synъ < *sūn-u-s ‘son’, dom-ъ < *dom-u-s ‘house’), where it was regular: Nom.sg. dom-ъ (< *dom-u-s) — Loc.sg. dom-u (< *dom-óu). Under the influence of the locatives of some nouns of this type, such as (v) med-u ‘(in) honey’, -u-forms have penetrated into the paradigm of the old *-o-type nouns, foremost of those which denote location and thus are particularly common in the locative usage. The earliest attestations of this new case appear at the turn of the 13th century (one of the earliest attestations, na sněg-u ‘on the snow’, dates to 1296). Subsequently, the *-u-declension has disappeared (approximately after the 14th century), being ousted by the productive 2nd (*-o-) declension. Outside the *-o- (2nd) declension, the two locatives can be distinguished for one of the accent subtypes of the 3rd declension, which includes feminine nouns ending in a palatalized consonant, cf. ten’ ‘shadow’: Locative-1 (o) téni ‘about the shadow’ ~ Locative-2 (v) tení ‘in the shadow’. Even more limited is the distinctiveness of Genitive-2 (partitive) (see e.g. Kiparsky 1967: 26ff.). Only some uncountable nouns of the 2nd declension, such as saxar ‘sugar’, čaj ‘thee’, mëd ‘honey’, have a separate form of Partitive (with marker -u) different from Genitive-1 in -a (but identical with the dative): mëd-u ~ mëd-a, saxar-u ~ saxar-a, čaj‑u ~ čaj-a. This form is employed in constructions like ‘a pound (of) ___’, ‘he drunk/ate some ___’, being interchangeable with Genitive-1 in certain contexts, for instance in kilo saxar-u/saxar-a ‘(one) kilogram sugar’. Again, like in the case of Locative-2, the ending -u has been taken over from the old *‑u- declension, where it was regular: Nom.sg. med-ъ ‘honey’ — Gen.sg. med-u (< *medh-ou-s); Nom.sg. syn-ъ ‘son’ — Gen.sg. syn-u (< *sūn-ou-s, cf. Lith. Gen.sg. sūnaũs). Genitive-2 had been established approximately by the 16th century. These developments are summarized in Figure 5, which represents the relevant fragment of the modern Russian 2nd declension (in the singular) as compared to its Old Russian predecessor (attested since the 11th century).

2.5 Other possible sources of new cases The above short sketch does not claim to be an exhaustive list of all possible sources of new cases. Thus, a very interesting mechanism for the rise of a new case is instantiated by the emergence of the new vocative in the modern (colloquial) Russian. The history of this form can be briefly summarized as follows.

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Modern Russian 2nd declension

Old Russian *-o-type *-u-type

Nom. Gen.

les-ø ‘forest’ čaj-ø ‘thee’ mëd-ø ‘honey’ lés-a čáj-a mëd-a

lěs-ъ lěs-a

med-ъ med-u

Gen.-2 /Part. Dat. Loc.-1

lés-u lés-u (o) lés-e

čáj-u čáj-u (o) čáj-e

mëd-u mëd-u (o) mëd-e

– lěs-u lěs-ě

– med-ovi med-u

Loc.-2

(v) les-ú

…

(v) med-ú

–

–

Figure 5.

Common (or Proto-) Slavic has inherited from Proto-Indo-European the old vocative which was distinct from the nominative. Originally, its form was equal to the bare stem, but already by the Proto-Slavic period the morphemic structure has been blurred in all declension types, as shown in (7):

(7) Old Russian nominative and vocative *-o(/e)-declension *-u-declension *-ā-declension Nom.sg. Voc.sg.

žen-a ‘wife’ žen-o (< *gwen-a)

vьlk-ъ ‘wolf ’ vьlč-e (< *ulkw-e)

syn-ъ ‘son’ syn-u (< *sūn-ou)

Unlike some other Slavic languages, such as Polish, Bulgarian and Ukrainian, modern Russian has not preserved this case form, which only survives in a few idiomatic expressions, such as (o) bože! ‘Oh God!’. Instead, it has developed a new vocative form.13 The new vocative case is distinct from the nominative only for several nouns of the 1st declension (historical *-ā-declension), specifically for those which are particularly common in the vocative usage. These include a few kinship nouns (mama ‘mum(my)’, papa ‘dad’, tëtja ‘aunt’) and short forms of proper names: Maša (short form for Marija), Tanja (~ Tat’jana), Saša (~ Aleksandr (m.)/Aleksandra (f.)), Petja (~ Pëtr), etc. Like the Proto-Indo-European vocative, it is marked with the zero ending, thus being identical with the bare stem (and with the genitive plural of this declension type): mama — mam-ø, papa — pap-ø, tëtja — tët’-ø, Maša — Maš‑ø, Tanja — Tan’‑ø, Saša — Saš‑ø, Petja — Pet’‑ø, etc. Most interestingly, the mechanism of such a resurrection of the vocative case, according to which the vocative form tends to be as close as possible to the bare stem (being in that respect similar to the imperative form in the verbal system), is likely to reflect a very basic (albeit of course not absolute and exceptionless) universal of the human speech.


3. Loss of cases and decay of case systems 3.1 General remarks The general mechanisms which lead to the merger of cases and to case syncretism and, eventually, to the loss of some cases are well-known from historical linguistics (see e.g. Sihler 1995: 247f.; Blake 2001: 167ff.). These include: – phonetic processes which result in the loss of the difference between two or more case forms, some kind of erosion of case inflexion; – overlapping of syntactic and semantic functions and/or uses of cases, i.e. syntactic and semantic affinity of some cases; – analogical developments. All these mechanisms usually work together, so that, most often, all the three factors create favourable (albeit not always sufficient) conditions for the merger of cases. In what follows I will illustrate the above-listed types of development using examples from Indo-European languages, which probably provide the richest evidence for various scenarios of the evolution, decay and collapse of case systems. Since it is impossible to enter into a discussion of the details of the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European declination, the reader can be referred to the standard handbooks of Indo-European comparative linguistics, such as Szemerényi (1970: 144ff. = 1990: 166ff.); Beekes (1995: 172ff.); Sihler (1995: 246ff.); etc.

3.2 From Proto-Indo-European to Latin: Merger of three Proto-Indo-European cases in the Latin ablative The Latin ablative case results from the merger of three Proto-Indo-European cases, ablative, locative and instrumental, as shown in Figure 6. 14 PIE

Latin

Abl Loc

Abl

Ins Figure 6.

The relevant fragment of the system of case endings reconstructed for Proto-IndoEuropean is represented in (8) (the endings which have left direct reflexes in the actually attested markers of ablative are in bold face; those which have only indirectly contributed to the attested endings are in bold and underlined):15

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(8) Proto-Indo-European ablative, locative and instrumental case endings Singular

Plural

Ablative

*-(o)s *-ed

*-ios

Locative

*-i *-ø

*-su *-oisu

Instrumental

*-(e)h1 *-bhi (/*-mi)

*-ōis *-bhi-s†

†

For the endings of the instrumental in the proto-language and their relations with the inflexion of the dative and ablative plural, see, in particular, Kortlandt 1984: 101f. = 2003: 48f.

The resulting system of the ablative endings, arranged by declension types, is shown in (9). Although the origins of some actually attested endings may be the subject of debate,16 the main details of the scenario are quite clear:

(9) Latin ablative case endings Declensions

Singular

1st (-a-)

-ā(d) [analogy with -o-type]

2nd (-o-)

-ō(d) < *…o-ed

3rd (-i-, -C-)

-ī(d) [analogy with -o-type] -e < *-i

4th (-u-)

-ū(d) [analogy with -o-type]

5th (-e-)

-ē < *…e-eh1

Plural -īs < *-oisu and/or *-ōis

-bus < *-bhos (← *-ios + *-bhis ?)

The example of Latin is instructive, showing that phonetic processes may render opaque formal distinctions between cases, thus leading to the merger of some forms (as in the case of Loc. and Ins.pl.), but do not represent the only driving force of case syncretism. Note that all three Proto-Indo-European source cases, the (old) ablative, locative and instrumental, have left traces both in the singular and plural paradigms at least in some of the attested Latin declensions, so that phonetic processes alone could not yet result in the simple syncretism of these three cases. Apparently, the final picture results from a complex interplay of several mechanisms, which may overrule each other quite intricately. In particular, the three source cases must be considered semantically (functionally) close enough to each other, which has licensed the form of one of them to take over the functions of the other(s). Most likely, the ultimate syncretism of the three cases was preceded by a period of the variation and alternation between them, when two or all of them could be interchangeably employed in some usages (perhaps with minor functional distinctions), but eventually the ablative has ousted its competitors in all or most of such contexts.


3.3 From Latin to modern Romance languages: Collapse of case systems in Spanish and French Latin seems to attest the very beginning of the decay of the original Proto-Indo-European case system, which has affected all Romance languages. The daughter languages, i.e. Spanish, Italian, French, Rumanian etc., display the same tendency, reducing the Latin case system further down and ending up with caseless systems or with two cases at maximum (as in Rumanian; see, for instance, Penny 1991; Calabrese 1998; Blake: 2001: 175f.). These processes can be illustrated by the development of the case system in Spanish. The phonetic changes that were relevant for the evolution of the Proto-Romance (≈ Latin) case system can be summarized as follows: 1. Loss of final -m mostly caused merger of Acc.sg. with Abl.sg.: -m > ø: Acc.sg.

montem

Abl.sg.

monte

monte

2. Merger of the long and short a, together with the loss of final -m, caused merger of Nom., Acc. and Abl.sg.: -m > ø , ā > a : Nom.sg. mensa Acc.sg.

mensam

Abl.sg.

mensā

mensa

3. Merger of u and ō in final position caused merger of Acc.sg. with Abl.sg.: u, ō > o | __# : Acc.sg. dominum Abl.sg.

domino

dominō

4. Merger of the front vowels in final position caused merger of Nom.-Acc.pl. (montēs) with Gen.sg. (montis).

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By the 4th and 5th centuries ad these changes have resulted in a considerable reduction of the case paradigm: three-case system in the Eastern part of the Roman empire and two cases in the most of the West, including Spain. The latter includes Nominative and Oblique cases and can be illustrated by the following three examples: (10) Old Spanish case system (Penny 1991: 104) Nom.sg. rosa annos leo Obl.sg. rosa anno leone leones Nom.pl. rosas anni rosas annos leones Obl.pl Such two-case systems survived in French (see below) and Provençal until the 12th13th centuries. In other areas, there was an early further reduction to invariable singular and plural forms. By virtue of further phonetic changes most of the contrasts shown in (10) have become obliterated, surviving only for anni ~ annos. Of course, this isolated sub-type could not survive for a long time, foremost due to the levelling pressure of the other morphological types. Accordingly, the form annos has been generalized as plural form, in analogy with other inflexional types with plural in -s. The resulting system of the three major paradigmatic classes that Spanish inherits from Latin is represented in (11): (11) Modern Spanish nominal paradigm (1) (2) (3) Sg. rosa año leon Pl. rosas años leones Here it will be in order to have a brief glimpse at the evolution of the Old French twocase system and to discuss the mechanisms of its disappearance. As mentioned above, by the Old French period only two cases have survived (usually called subject and object cases = ‘sujet’ and ‘régime’), as illustrated in (12) (for details and discussion, see e.g. Plank 1979; van Reenen and Schøsler 2000): (12) Old French case system Masculine Subj.sg. Obj.sg. Subj.pl. Obj.pl

li forz mur-s ‘strong wall’ le fort mur li fort mur les forz mur-s

Feminine li forz flor-s ‘strong flower’ la fort flor les forz flor-s les forz flor-s

Thus, each declension type counts no more than two forms in total, distributed quite intricately across the paradigm. The system becomes even more opaque because of the loss of the final -s before a consonant: -s > -ø | _ C


Thus, for mur- we have two allomorphic variants, as shown in (13): (13) Subj.sg. Obj.sg. Subj.pl. Obj.pl

__V , __ ## [myrs] [myr] [myr] [myrs]

__ C [my:r] [myr] [myr] [my:r]

The further collapse of this system was caused by several factors (for a general survey see especially Laubscher 1921). These include, in particular: (i) the expansion of constructions with non-canonical subject marking, viz. with the subject encoded by the object case — as, for instance, in impersonal constructions of the type Il i a __ (= Modern French Il y a __ ‘There is __’), which has apparently triggered case variation in the subject position (see Laubscher 1921: 51ff.); (ii) the existence of a few (minor) inflexional types which had completely lost case distinctions by the Old French period; (iii) the very intricate distribution of as few as two markers, -ø and -s, across the four member paradigm, in other words, the fact that the system is ‘conceptually too complicated’ (van Reenen and Schøsler 2000: 337).

3.4 Types of case syncretism in Indo-European: a summary To conclude the discussion of the developments attested in some Indo-European case systems, I will briefly summarize the types of syncretism attested in the main branches of the Indo-European family (see Figure 7).17 The rich variety of syncretism patterns does not of course imply that any two cases may fall together in a totally unpredictable and accidental way. There are several factors which play an important role in the choice of the scenario of the case variation and syncretism, such as semantic and formal markedness, the relationships with other cases within the paradigm, paradigmatic independence of case. A detailed study of the system of these parameters goes beyond the scope of the present paper.18 Nominative Accusative Genitive Ablative Balkan

Greek, (Common) Slavic

Instrumental Locative Dative

Figure 7.

Balkan (Albanian, Rumanian etc.)

Mycenaean, Homeric Greek

Classical Greek

Latin

Celtic, Germanic

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4. Restructuring of case systems: Resolving case syncretism Thus far I discussed the examples which illustrate the increase or decrease of the total number of cases, i.e. various quantitative changes in case systems. Next to these two types, we may be faced with more complex situations, where some developments compensate the loss of case oppositions, so that the number of case distinctions remains unchanged, at least in some fragments of the declensional paradigm, but the system itself undergoes crucial restructuring. In what follows I will discuss a few language mechanisms used for resisting potential case syncretisms.

4.1 Borrowing inflexion from other cases: Genitive-accusative in Slavic One such mechanism used to avoid merger of cases resulting from phonetic processes and erosion of inflexion and thus to resolve possible case syncretism(s) and prevent the loss of cases19 is the borrowing of new inflexion from other cases. One of the most well-known examples is the rise of the category of animacy in the history of Slavic languages (for details, see e.g. Klenin 1980, Iordanidi and Krys’ko 2000: 198ff.). Already by the time of Common Slavic, the old Indo-European nominative and accusative have merged in most declension types due to the phonetic erosion of the end of word (in auslaut): the final consonant was dropped, and the originally distinct nominative and accusative forms have fallen together. The only important exception is the declension type in -a- (< PIE *-ā-), where the distinction was preserved. Thus, for instance, in Old Church Slavonic (around the 9th century ad), within the singular paradigm, the nominative and accusative forms are only distinguished for the -a-type: (14) Old Church Slavonic *-ā-type žena ‘wife’ Nom.sg. žen-a (< *-ā)

*-o-type

*-u-type

rabъ ‘slave’

rodъ ‘birth’

synъ ‘son’

rab-ъ (~ PIE *-os)20

rod-ъ

syn-ъ

Acc.sg.

žen-ǫ (< *-ām)

rab-ъ (~ PIE *-om)

rod-ъ

syn-ъ

Gen.sg. …

žen-y …

rab-a …

rod-a …

syn-u …

The Old Russian paradigm (attested since the 11th century ad) is very similar. In the plural, after the replacement of the old nominative ending -i by -y of the accusative (approximately by the 15th century), the syncretism of the nominative and accusative cases has proceeded even further, since the two forms have merged not only for masculine but also for feminine nouns in -a-:


(15) Old Russian *-ā-type Nom.pl. žen-y ‘wife’ Acc.pl. žen-y Gen.pl. žen-ъ … …

*-o-type (by the 15th cent.) rab-i ‘slave’ → rab-y rab-y rab-ъ …

While for the neuter nouns the syncretism of nominative and accusative was normal and even obligatory already in Proto-Indo-European, for other nouns such an innovation apparently could not be tolerated. For the resolution of the case conflict, the form of the genitive case has been taken, replacing the old accusative, formally identical with the nominative.21 This innovation was limited to the animate nouns (cf. the shaded boxes in (16)), which thus have become opposed to inanimates. As a result, the Slavic languages have acquired the category of animacy: (16) Modern Russian Fem.

Masc.anim.

Masc.inanim.

Nom.sg.

žen-a

rab-ø

rod-ø

Acc.sg.

žen-u (< *-ǫ)

rab-a

rod-ø

Gen.sg.

žen-y

rab-a

rod-a

…

…

…

…

Nom.pl.

žen-y

rab-y

rod-y

Acc.pl.

žen-ø

rab-ov

rod-y

Gen.pl.

žen-ø

rab-ov

rod-ov

…

…

…

…

Note that in the singular of the -a-type (but not in the plural), the old form of accusative has been preserved. Apparently, because of the lack of merger, it was not necessary to replace it with the genitive. Here evidence from texts is particularly valuable: we can observe a continuous growth of the tendency and the expansion of the genitive. For instance, Old Russian attests the introducing of the Gen.pl. forms in the function of the Acc.pl. in the 12th century for masculine human nouns; some Slavic languages, such as Polish, have stopped at that stage. The feminine humans and non-human animates introduce Gen.pl. for Acc.pl. only in the 13th century.

4.2 Resisting phonetic erosion: Evolution of the Armenian case system Another telling example is provided by Armenian,22 which has preserved the original Proto-Indo-European system of case oppositions intact, in spite of the heavy phonetic

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erosion in the auslaut, thus being even more ‘case-stable’ (see type 3 in Section 5) than the phonologically more conservative Slavic and Baltic languages. There are a variety of mechanisms which help to preserve the original case contrasts. Thus, the ablative singular form (ending *-os in most declensions of the proto-language) would fall together with the locative singular (*-i) after the apocope.23 For instance, both Abl. and Loc.sg. of the Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘heart’ (*ḱr̥ d/*ḱērd(i)‑; Proto-Armenian has generalized the stem *ḱērdi-) would yield Arm. srti. The removal of this syncretism has become possible by adding an enclitic particle (probably going back to PIE *eti; reflected, for instance, in Skt. áti ‘over, beyond’), which yielded -ē, cf. sirt ‘heart’ — Loc.sg. i srt-i ~ Abl.sg. i srt-ē (Pedersen 1905: 221ff. = 1982: 83ff.; Kortlandt 1984: 103 = 2003: 49f.). Another interesting mechanism of the recruiting of the new case inflexion is exemplified by the gen.-dat.-abl.pl. ending -c‘, which can be traced back to PIE *‑sko‑m. *‑sko‑ represents the derivational adjectival suffix (cf. Goth. manna ‘man’ — mannisks ‘human’). Apparently, Armenian has introduced the possessive adjective into the substantive paradigm, replacing the old genitive plural; later this form was expanded to the dative and ablative (see Godel 1975: 106; Kortlandt 1984: 100 = 2003: 47). A detailed discussion of all phonological changes and morphological developments which, altogether, result in a perfect preservation of the PIE system of case contrasts might be the subject of a separate study. Here it will suffice to refer the reader for details to special studies on the history of the Armenian declension (Meillet 1936: 64ff.; Godel 1975: 99ff.; Džaukjan 1982: 85ff.; and, especially, a short but very rich and insightful paper Kortlandt 1984).

5. Concluding remarks: The main evolutionary types of languages The analysis of possible changes in case systems presented in Sections 2–4 can serve as a basis for classification of languages according to the general tendency which determines the evolution of case systems. We can distinguish between the following three main evolutionary types of languages: 1. Case-increasing languages24 include, for instance, Uralic, New Indo-Aryan, Tocharian; 2. Case-reducing languages: Germanic, Italic (Romance) and Celtic, Albanian, Greek; 3. Case-stable languages: Armenian, Slavic, Baltic (Lithuanian), Turkic. The border between case-reducing and case-stable languages can not always be drawn with accuracy. Thus, as mentioned above, in the brief discussion of the history of the Lithuanian case system (Section 2.1.2), the ablative and (old) locative were lost by the time of the oldest attested texts. This feature, indicating per se the case-reducing type, was, in a sense, compensated by the rise of new locatives, and, accordingly, there are good reasons to consider (Old) Lithuanian an example of the case-stable type.


Of particular interest is the distinction between case-reducing languages, on the one hand, and the case-stable/case-increasing type, on the other, which can be found within one single language family or even within a smaller genetic unit, a group of very closely related languages. Most importantly, the case-stable (or case-increasing) type by no means correlates with the phonological conservatism. In other words, in the cases where two genetically related languages A and B undergo some crucial phonetic changes which, eventually, should result in the erosion of inflection, this does not yet guarantee that these processes will be equally fatal for their case systems. In reality, one of the languages (e.g. A) may indeed be affected by heavy losses of cases or even the total collapse of case system, whereas in another one, B, the case system may remain essentially intact. Thus, both Romance and Slavic languages have been subject to the erosion of case inflection, which has resulted in the merger of some case endings (see Sections 3.3 and 4.1 above). However, in contrast to the Romance languages, Slavic shows a greater degree of morphological conservatism, using several compensating techniques (Harris and Campbell’s ‘preservative reanalysis’). As a result of one such compensating process, Slavic has developed the category of animacy, which has helped to save the nominative– accusative contrast. The only outsider within the Slavic language group is Bulgarian/ Macedonian, which has lost the entire case system (except for the vocative form). Another instructive example is provided by the history of the Indo-Aryan group. Like many other Indo-European languages, the Indo-Aryan languages have lost most case distinctions by the end of the Middle Indic period. Nevertheless, in contrast to the Western Indo-European languages, in the New Indo-Aryan period we observe a strong tendency to develop new cases from postpositions, which has resulted in the restoration of case systems nearly up to the previous (Old Indo-Aryan) size in such languages as Sinhala. It seems that one of the factors which determine the evolutionary type of a language is the areal rather than genetic relationship. Thus, Baltic and Slavic language groups form a remarkable exception within the Indo-European family, being most conservative as far as the case systems are concerned. Old Lithuanian has even extended its case system, developing three new locatives (still preserved in the most archaic dialects); likewise, Russian has expanded the original (Common Slavic) case system (from 7 to 9 units). Both phenomena are likely to be due to the Finno-Ugric influence (see e.g. Mathiassen 1996: 38). By contrast, the collapse of the Bulgarian case system seems to represent one of the features of the Balkan linguistic area: nearly all languages belonging to this ‘Sprachbund’ have considerably reduced their case systems ending up with 2 or 3 cases at maximum (cf. Rumanian, Albanian and Greek). Another case in point is New Indo-Aryan. Here, the emergence of new cases on the basis of the multilayer case technique may be due to the influence of the adjacent agglutinating Dravidian languages. It is interesting to note that the shared characteristics of two or more genetically related or geographically adjacent languages are usually not limited to the evolutionary

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type of language, which determines the global tendency in the development of case system (case-increasing, case-reducing, case-stable), but extend to some ‘minor’ features. Thus, the affinity of Finnish, (Old) Lithuanian and Russian is not limited to the caseincreasing type (probably induced by Finno-Ugric). In addition, Baltic (Old Lithuanian) seems to have borrowed from Finnish the very mechanism of case-expansion (multilayer case-marking, rather uncommon for the Indo-European linguistic type in general) and extended the same semantic area (locative) as the adjacent Finnish. The functions of the two new Russian cases, 2nd locative and 2nd genitive (partitive) also seem to indicate the Finno-Ugric influence. It is a common place in the Russian historical grammar that the rise of the partitive case is due to the influence of the Finno-Ugric case systems (such as that of Finnish, which has a partitive case). The rich system of Finnish locative cases may also have been an indirect reason for developing a new (second) locative case, distinct from the old Russian locative, which bears too many nonlocative functions. A study of the areal phenomena in the evolution of case systems (as well as of other morphological features) offers new perspectives in the study of the linguistic prehistory. Establishing such evolutionary features typical for a particular linguistic area may give a clue to the morphological type of the extinct substrate language(s) which used to be dominant in the area and has (have) determined the evolution of the morphological type of the historically attested languages for many centuries.

Acknowledgements This article is a revised version of the paper presented at the pionier-Workshop ‘Case, Valency and Transitivity’ (University of Nijmegen, June 2003). Some parts of the paper were also presented at the meeting of the CLS Diachronie Groep (Nijmegen, April 7, 2003) and at pionier Talk (Nijmegen, April 9, 2003). I would like to take this opportunity to thank the audiences of these talks and all participants of the discussion, in particular (in alphabetic order) P. Ackema, J. Barðdal, H. Baayen, W. Boeder, M. Butt, P. Fikkert, H. de Hoop, A. van Kemenade, S. Kittilä, M. Lamers, A. Malchukov, P. Muysken, Å. Næss, Yang Ning, G. Postma, P. van Reenen, N. Roos, R. Ryan, A. Spencer, L. Stassen, P. de Swart, S. G. Thomason and C. Versteegh for suggestions and critical remarks. I am also much indebted to P. Arkad’jev, R. Derksen, A. Lubotsky, H. Martirosyan and M. de Vaan, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their criticism and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I acknowledge the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (nwo) for financial support, grant 220-70-003 for the pionier project ‘Case cross-linguistically’.

Notes 1. The origin of case prefixes from prepositions, albeit theoretically possible, seems to be extremely rare in the languages of the world. This disproportion may be due to some reasons of general nature. Thus, as Reh (1986) concludes on the basis of the analysis of evidence from some


African languages, prepositions may tend to become suffixes on the preceding verb rather than prefixes on the following noun. This, in turn, according to Stampe, may result from the fact that ‘[u]naccented elements tend to attach rather permanently to preceding accented elements, and not to following ones’ (Donegan and Stampe 1983: 344; Stampe 1994). 2. The adpositions, in turn, often go back to verbal forms or (especially often for expressing locative case relations) to nominal forms; see, for instance, Blake 2001: 161ff. 3. For details, see, for instance, Bloch 1934; Zograf 1976; Bubeník 1998: 99–101; Masica 1991: 230ff. 4. For a general survey and discussion of the evolution of the Indo-Aryan case system, see, for instance, Bubeník 1998: 65ff. 5. For a discussion of the status of these formations, see Kulikov (forthc.). 6. Some isolated forms still existing in modern Lithuanian do not belong to the paradigm but function as adverbials. 7. Termed ‘coaffix’ by Collinder (1960: 291) and some other scholars. 8. For case-marking in Berber languages, see also Aikhenvald 1995: 44–6. 9. I would like to thank V. Chirikba and Y. Testelets for having discussed with me the Caucasian data. 10. Important corrigenda to this explanation of the origin of the Kartvelian nominative and ergative morphemes are offered by Boeder (1979: 471, note 20; 474, note 35), who accounts for the nominative -i as resulting from the reanalysis of igi ‘that:nom’ as ig-i ‘that-nom’. 11. For the synchronic status of these two cases, see, in particular, Zaliznjak 1967; Plungian 2002; for their history, see e.g. Kiparsky 1967: 35ff.; Ivanov 1983: 266ff.; Hentschel 1991. 12. Called in the Russian grammatical tradition predložnyj, i.e. ‘Prepositional’ case, since it can only be employed with prepositions. 13. An alternative analysis of this new vocative is offered by Yadroff (1996), who argues that such forms can be interpreted as nominatives (rather than bare stems), which underwent deletion not of segments but of a prosodic unit (‘deprosodization’) with subsequent resyllabification. 14. For details of the history of the Latin case endings, see, next to general Indo-European handbooks (e.g. Beekes 1995: 172ff.), in particular, Leumann 1977: 405ff.; Gasperini 1999. 15. Although we do find traces of some other case forms, they do not form separate cases any longer. Thus, for instance, the old singular locatives are still found in archaic adverbial locative expressions such as Romae ‘in Rome’ < *Romā-i, Tusculī < *Tuscule-i; the old instrumental appears in such adverbs as certē. 16. Thus, the genesis of the abl.pl. ending of the 3rd, 4th and 5th declensions -bus poses some problems. It is likely to represent the Proto-Italo-Celtic *-bhos, which replaced the original ending *-ios, presumably under the influence of the ins.pl. *-bhis (Kortlandt 1984: 103f. = 2003: 50). 17. For the case syncretism in Indo-European, see the seminal work by Delbrück 1907; Luraghi 1987; for a typological perspective, see now Arkad’jev 2003. 18. An important study of possible patterns of case syncretism in a typological perspective is Arkad’jev 2003. 19. Cf. Harris and Campbell’s (1995: 89) ‘preservative’ (or ‘structure-preservative’) reanalysis.

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20. The genesis of the actually attested endings of the nom.sg. and acc.sg. forms of the *o‑declension represents an intricate problem on its own and was the subject of long debate in the scholarship; for a discussion and survey of the relevant literature, see, in particular, Kortlandt 1983: 181ff.; Vermeer 1991; Orr 2000: 96–113. Here it will suffice to briefly summarize the main conclusions. While the development *-om > -ŭ (-ъ) in the accusative must be regular, the expected reflex of the nominative ending *‑os should be **-o (preserved in some isolated forms, such as the Russian proper name Sadk-o). Later this ending must have been replaced by -ŭ (-ъ), in analogy with the *u‑declension, where the nominative–accusative merger was phonetically regular (*-us, *-um > -ŭ (-ъ)); for the most comprehensive discussion and convincing substantiation of this scenario, see Vermeer 1991. 21. In fact, the use of the genitive for encoding the direct object (exemplifying a non-canonical object marking) is quite an old feature of this group of Indo-European languages, undoubtedly going back to the Common Slavic period. Already in the oldest attested Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic (the earliest texts are dated to the 9th century ad), genitive objects were common in some types of constructions, in particular under negation and with some non-canonical transitives, such as xotěti ‘wish’. 22. I am thankful to H. Martirosyan for discussing with me the evidence from Armenian. 23. For the apocope, i.e. loss of vowels in final syllables, see Kortlandt 1980: 103f. = 2003: 31. 24. To be more accurate, we should of course use the term ‘languages which undergo case-increasing’.

References Aikhenvald, A. Y. [= Aixenval’d, A.Ju.]. 1990. “On Berber cases in the light of Afroasiatic languages”. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress, H. G. Mukarovsky (ed.), 113–19. Wien: Afro-Pub. Aikhenvald, A. Y. [= Aixenval’d, A.Ju.]. 1995. “Split ergativity in Berber languages”. St. Petersburg Journal of African Studies 4: 39–68. Aixenval’d, A.Ju. and Militarev, A.Ju. 1991. “Livijsko-guančskie jazyki” [Lybian-Guanche languages]. In Jazyki Azii i Afriki [Languages of Asia and Africa]. T. IV, kn. 2. Afrazijskie jazyki [Afro-Asiatic languages], 148–267. Moskva: Glavnaja redakcija vostočnoj literatury. Ambrazas, V. et al. 1985. Grammatika litovskogo jazyka [A grammar of the Lithuanian language]. Vil’njus: Mokslas. [Engl. transl.: Ambrazas, V. et al. Lithuanian Grammar. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1997.] Arkad’jev, P. 2003. Tipologija padežnogo sinkretizma [A typology of case syncretism]. B. A. thesis. Moscow, Russian State University for Humanities. Beekes, R. S. P. 1995. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. An Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Blake, B. J. 2001. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloch, J. 1934. L’indo-aryen: du véda aux temps modernes. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve. Boeder, W. 1979. “Ergative syntax and morphology in language change: The South Caucasian languages”. In Ergativity: Towards a Theory of Grammatical Relations, F. Plank (ed.), 435– 80. London etc.: Academic Press.


Bubeník, V. 1998. A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhraṃśa) [Current issues in linguistic theory 165]. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Calabrese, A. 1998. “Some remarks on the Latin case system and its development in Romance”. In Theoretical Analyses on Romance Languages, J. Lema and E. Treviño (eds), 71–126. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Collinder, B. 1960. Comparative Grammar of the Uralic Languages. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Delbrück, B. 1907. Synkretismus: Ein Beitrag zur germanischen Kasuslehre. Strassburg: Trübner. Donegan, P. J. and Stampe, D. 1983. “Rhythm and the holistic organization of language structure”. In Papers from the Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax, J. F. Richardson, M. Marks, and A. Chukerman (eds), 337–53. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Džaukjan (Djahukian), G. B. 1982. Sravnitel’naja grammatika armjanskogo jazyka [A comparative grammar of Armenian]. Erevan: AN ArmSSR. Gasperini, L. 1999. “Diachrony and synchrony of the Latin ablative: Concerning certain semantic roles”. Diachronica 16 (1), 37–66. Godel, R. 1975. An Introduction to the Study of Classical Armenian. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Hakulinen, L. 1961. The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language. Bloomington: Indiana University; The Hague: Mouton. Harris, A. C. and Campbell, L. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective [Cambridge studies in linguistics 74]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hentschel, G. 1991. “Rol’ sxem formal’noj differenciacii v istoričeskom razvitii flektivnoj sistemy russkogo suščestvitel’nogo” [The role of the schemes of formal differentiation in the historical development of the inflectional system of the Russian substantive]. Russian Linguistics 15 (1): 31–51. Insler, S. 1991–92. “The Prakrit ablative in -āhi”. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 72–3: 15–21. Iordanidi, S. I. and Krys’ko, V. B. 2000. Istoričeskaja grammatika drevnerusskogo jazyka. Tom 1. Množestvennoe čislo imennogo sklonenija. [A historical grammar of Old Russian. Nominal declension: Plural]. Moskva: Azbukovnik. Ivanov, V. V. 1983. Istoričeskaja grammatika russkogo jazyka. [A historical grammar of Russian]. Moskva: Prosveščenie. Kahr, J. C. 1976. “The renewal of case morphology: Sources and constraints”. Working Papers on Language Universals (Stanford University) 20: 107–51. Kiparsky, V. 1967. Russische historische Grammatik. Bd. 2. Die Entwicklung des Formensystems. Heidelberg: Winter. Klenin, E. 1980. “Conditions on object marking: Stages in the history of the East Slavic genitive-accusative”. In Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, E. Traugott, R. Labrum, and S. Shepherd (eds), 253–7. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Klimov, G. A. 1962. Sklonenie v kartvel’skix jazykax v sravnitel’no-istoričeskom aspekte [Declension in Kartvelian languages in a comparative-historical perspective]. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR. Kortlandt, F. H. H. 1980. “On the relative chronology of Armenian sound changes”. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Armenian Linguistics, 97–106. Delmar, N. Y.: Caravan Books. [= Kortlandt 2003: 26–33] Kortlandt, F. H. H. 1983. “On final syllables in Slavic”. Journal of Indo-European Studies 11: 167–85.

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