Kalin (2018): Licensing and Differential Object Marking #

This file formalizes [Kal18], which derives differential object marking from nominal licensing rather than from object visibility, raising or differentiation. Two parameters interact: which nominals require licensing, in Senaya only the specific ones, and where the licensers are, every clause carrying an obligatory licenser that licenses the closest nominal whatever its needs, and secondary licensers that merge only when the derivation would otherwise crash, the Licensing Economy Principle, (36). In Senaya the marking is verbal agreement: in the imperfective, Asp is the obligatory licenser and agrees with the subject as an S-suffix, and T is a secondary licenser that agrees with a specific object as an L-suffix, (43) and (47); in the perfective, Asp is no licenser and T is obligatory, so T agrees with the subject and a specific object cannot be licensed at all, (49) and (50), the ban of (12). The licensing derivation reproduces the agreement data (8) to (12) and (38) whatever the specificity of the subject (rows_agree), and the toy nominative-accusative language of §3.1 shows differential marking by a secondary v (toy_animate_object, toy_inanimate_object). The perfective ban is the paper's argument against a theory without licensing: the dependent-case rules of [Mar91] value the perfective object accusative, but a specific object there crashes (dependentCase_values_banned_object).

The theory is formalized first. Every nominal bears a Case feature, unvalued unless a lexical head has valued it, so every nominal is visible to a licenser; only some bear uninterpretable Case ([PT07]), and those alone crash the derivation when it goes unvalued. A licenser is a head with a φ-probe that Agrees with the highest nominal in the phase domain it probes whose Case is unvalued, the Agree of Minimalist.agreeValue, and a secondary licenser merges only as a last resort ([Rez11]). The derivation never sees which nominals need licensing, since it runs on positions alone, and needs are read only by convergence. Licensing is monotone in the licensers (license_mono), so the Licensing Economy Principle stated for each secondary licenser coincides with the preference for a derivation with fewer licensers (economical_iff). Licensing is the Agree modality of case assignment of [BV10]: case assigners with no dependent or elsewhere case assign exactly what the licensing derivation does (assign_eq_map_license).

Implementation notes #

The agreement suffix is read off the licensing head, the S-suffix from Asp and the L-suffix from T, the analysis of [KvU15] that the paper adopts in §4.1.
In Senaya v is not a phase head (§4.1), so both arguments are in the domain T and Asp probe; in the toy language the object is in the domain of v, which the subject is not.
Nominals are listed from the highest down; the licensers probing one phase domain are listed in merge order, the lowest first, and the domains spell out in the order given.
Only structural licensing under c-command is modelled: an inherent licenser that values only its specifier is not.
Word order and the position of agreement within the verbal complex are not modelled.

Kalin (2018): Licensing and Differential Object Marking #

Implementation notes #

References #

Licensers and nominals #

The derivation #

Monotonicity #

The Licensing Economy Principle #

Licensing as the Agree modality of case assignment #

Senaya's licensers #

The agreement data (Section 2.1) #

The toy language of Section 3.1 #

Licensing against dependent case #