Advances in the Syntax of DPs - Structure, agreement, and case

chapter 5

A note on oblique case

Evidence from Serbian/Croatian*

Julia Horvath

Tel Aviv University

Manifestations of oblique case in Serbian/Croatian (specifically, the dative and the

instrumental) present a puzzling pattern of distribution. The paper proposes an

analysis for the source of the relevant case phenomena that can resolve the puzzle,

rendering it a direct consequence of an independently attested property, namely,

the Case Realization Condition of oblique case in the language. It also provides

striking evidence regarding the nature and assigner of oblique case in general.

The phenomena and their account will lead to the conclusion that contrary to

appearances, and in contrast to the standard assumption, lexically governed cases

can only be assigned by (overt or null) instances of the category P.

1. Introduction

Richly inflected languages often manifest in addition to structural case, also oblique
case, i.e. lexically governed case assignment. Thus Slavic languages, for instance, pos-
sess a variety of (morphologically realized) oblique cases. Such cases are commonly
assumed to be assigned by individual lexical items that belong to the syntactic catego-
ries V, N, P or A, the assignee being the complement of the particular case assigning
head (Babby 1987). Oblique case contrasts with structural, configuration-based Case,
which gets assigned/checked independently of individual lexical items.
The present note examines some manifestations of oblique case in Serbian/Croa-
tian (specifically, of the dative and the instrumental), which present a puzzling pattern

• I would like to thank David Pesetsky, whose discussion of morphological case in Slavic
  made me think of the argument presented above, and two anonymous reviewers for their
  helpful comments on the manuscript. I am also grateful to Tena Gnjatović for checking the
  Serbian/Croatian data and the glosses.