Rethinking structural case: Partitive case in Sakha

• Main Authors: Mark C. Baker, Nadezhda Vinokurova
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Language Science Press 2021
• Subjects: Sakha; Sakha language
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/4680300; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4680300

The Sakha language has a special partitive case used only on nonspecific direct objects in imperative sentences. This is neither a canonical structural case, nor a canonical inherent case. We show that its basic properties can be explained within a configurational case theory by assuming that partitive is unmarked case assigned to any NP within the VP complement of v imp , a special v head found only in the scope of imperative (Jussive) heads and a few semantical similar items. This theory is briefly contrasted with one in which partitive is assigned by agreement with a special v, and one in which partitive is the feature V copied onto a nearby NP.