• Language and Information
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.93-111
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• 2010

This article is a description of the case variation in Guarani Language, which is a relatively, rarely studied language, and more so about case phenomena. Guarani has two remarkable facts about case. First, it has two overt accusative case markers, which are differentiated by the semantic notion of boundedness as in Jackendoff(1990, 1991). The existence of accusative case markers in Guarani is attested by their behavior in the typical transitive verb sentences, the ability to occur in ECM constructions, and the interpretation of specificity which is parallel to Turkish accusative case marker realization reported in Enc(1991). Second, accusative case forms occur in adjunct positions as well as object positions in Guarani. To capture these peculiar case phenomena, an account based on some recent Minimalist ideas about case checking from Legate(2008), Bowers(2010) is shown to be available.

• Language and Information
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1-20
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• 2008

This paper examines the effects of focus types on case ellipsis in Korean. A number of previous studies have suggested that accusative case markers in Korean and Japanese cannot be dropped when the object they mark is contrastively focused (Masunaga, 1988; Yatabe, 1999; Ko, 2000; Lee, 2002). Using experimental evidence, we argue against the view that case ellipsis in Korean is sensitive to the distinction between contrastive vs. non-contrastive focus. An alternative analysis is proposed which accounts for the phenomenon of variable case marking in terms of the interaction between the contrastive strength and the discourse accessibility of focused object NPs. By viewing patterns of case ellipsis as the result of balancing between these two forces, such an analysis can correctly predict the gradient pattern of case ellipsis shown by the three types of focused objects tested in the experiment (contrastive replacing focus, contrastive selecting focus and non-contrastive, informational focus), while at the same time offering an explanation for why subtypes of focus exert distinct influences on case ellipsis.