122 Julia Horvath
(9) Serbian/Croatian Dative/Instrumental Case Realization Condition
If a verb or noun assigns dative or instrumental case to an NP, then that
case must be morphologically realized by some element within the NP.
The Case Realization Condition in (9) makes the correct prediction also regarding
phrases headed by indeclinable quantifiers (as those in (4)). As pointed out in relation
to (6) above, quantifiers, do not “transmit” the case-feature of their maximal projec-
tion to their dependents, unlike ordinary nouns. Thus their determiners and modi-
fiers do not manifest the oblique case assigned to the QNP; instead they invariably
bear genitive plural. The Case Realization Condition then predicts, correctly, that these
phrases never get rescued by the addition of modifiers, and consequently are ungram-
matical whenever they occur as complements of a dative or instrumental (i.e. oblique)
case-governing V or N (see e.g. (10b) vs. (10a), from W&Z 2001: 549 ex. (20a, b)).
(10) a. pokloniti knjige [ovim studentima]
give.inf books.acc this.pl.dat student.pl.dat
‘to give books to these students’
b. *pokloniti knjige [ovih pet studenata]
give.inf books.acc this.pl.gen five student.pl.gen
‘to give books to these five students’
Having introduced the existence of an oblique case realization requirement motivated
for Serbian/Croatian noun phrases, we can turn now to the issue that is the focus of the
present note: a puzzling distributional asymmetry displayed by indeclinable nominals
in oblique case positions, involving a split between the different categories (heads)
governing oblique case.- The Puzzle
Indeclinable female names and quantifiers exhibit a rather unusual distribution. As
noted by W&Z (1999, 2001 ), they can freely occur in V-governed or N-governed posi-
tions, except where dative or instrumental case is assigned; the relevant restriction
is captured by the oblique case realization requirement given in (9) above. However,
surprisingly, the same indeclinable nominals do appear freely as objects of any P, no
matter what case the P governs. The latter fact is demonstrated for Ps assigning dative,
instrumental, as well as locative, case in (11) with undeclined female names, and in
(12b) for a dative-assigning P with an undeclined quantifier (see W&Z 2001: 546 (9),
549 (24)):
(11) a. The preposition prema ‘toward’ governs dative:
On je trčao prema (lepoj) Miki.
he aux.3sg run.ptcp.sg towards beautiful.sg.dat Miki
‘He ran towards (beautiful) Miki.’