Case and the Syntax of Argument Indexation
Faruk Akkuş, David Embick, Mohammed Ali Salih · 2025
Abstract This book develops an analysis of argument indexation: the process by which arguments in a clause are co-indexed with grammatical markers that bear their features. The main case study is based on varieties of Sorani Kurdish (Iranian language family), whose indexation properties interact with an Alignment Split of the type often called ‘split Ergative.’ The theory developed in the book is quite general, and applied to many other languages as well. A key line of argument is that agreement and clitic movement operations target specific cases: what is called Case Targeting. Regarding case features themselves, the approach hypothesizes that case labels like Nominative, Ergative, etc. are shorthand for decomposed feature bundles. It is these features that are targeted by syntactic operations (agreement and movement). In addition to requiring Case Targeting, the analysis of Sorani implies that syntactic operations (agreement, clitic movement) and their morphophonological reflexes may be mismatched: agreement and movement can both produce affixes and clitics, contrary to many views of morphosyntax/morphophonology relations. The implications of these arguments are discussed in detail, as are implications for other domains (theories of case assignment in particular).