W. Hinzen
On the rationality of Case
Hinzen, W.
Authors
Abstract
Case marking has long resisted rationalization in terms of language-external systems of cognition, representing a classical illustration in the generative tradition for an apparently purely ‘formal’ or ‘syntactic’ aspect of grammatical organization. I argue that this impasse derives from the prevailing absence of a notion of grammatical meaning, i.e. meaning unavailable lexically or in non-linguistic cognition and uniquely dependent on grammatical forms of organization. In particular, propositional forms of reference, contrary to their widespread designation as ‘semantic’, are arguably not only grammar-dependent but depend on relations designated as structural ‘Cases’. I further argue that these fail to reduce to thematic structure, Person, Tense, or Agreement. Therefore, Case receives a rationalization in terms of how lexical memory is made referential and propositional in language. Structural Case is ‘uninterpretable’ (bereft of content) only if a non-grammatical notion of meaning is employed, and sapiens-specific cognition is (implausibly) regarded as unmediated by language.
Citation
Hinzen, W. (2014). On the rationality of Case. Language Sciences, 46(Part B), 133-151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.03.003
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Publication Date | Nov 1, 2014 |
Deposit Date | May 14, 2014 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 17, 2014 |
Journal | Language Sciences |
Print ISSN | 0388-0001 |
Publisher | Elsevier |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 46 |
Issue | Part B |
Pages | 133-151 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.03.003 |
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© 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
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