A Late Note on Bobaljik (2008)

Bobaljik (2008) is a significant publication for two reasons: (1) for arguing that it is morphological case and not grammatical function that determines what is accessible for agreement; and (2) for showing that this explains a typological gap when case and agreement do not align. Bobaljik (2008) also argues for two other points that have not generally been adopted: First, that morphological case is assigned post-syntactically; and second, that agreement, since it depends on morphological case, must be a post-syntactic operation as well. In this short note, I question Bobaljik's motivation for making morphological case assignment be post-syntactic.

The basic argument that morphological case assignment is not syntactic is that it does not feed any other syntactic operation (other than agreement). According to Bobaljik (2008), nothing in the syntax depends on whether an NP is assigned, say, dative versus nominative case. However, the very data that he discusses show that this is false. As he notes, dative subjects in Icelandic have all the syntactic properties of subjects, but apparent dative subjects in German do not. If morphological case assignment does not take place in the syntax, then this difference is impossible to state. Take the verb `help'. In both languages, it assigns dative case to its complement. In both languages, the verb can be passivized. In Icelandic, this makes the dative NP the grammatical subject. In German, it does not. But the logical object of other verbs (those that assign structural accusative case) does become the grammatical subject in German. There is no way to explain the difference in German except to refer to the lexical dative case assignment, since both types of verbs can be passivized. I conclude that morphological case assignment does have syntactic consequences, and it therefore cannot be taken out of the syntax.

Moreover, the logic of the argument is flawed. There are many syntactic operations that apparently do not have any syntactic consequences, except perhaps for agreement. For instance, an adjective can be merged with a noun in an NP. In no language that has ever been described will this have any consequences for the distribution of that NP. The adjective might agree with the head noun, but that is the only syntactic operation that merging an adjective will feed. Should we then conclude that merging an adjective with a noun does not take place in the syntax? Of course not. Merging two things is exactly what syntax does. It would be redundant to have another module of grammar to do that just for adjectives and nouns.

Since most of the field has not accepted Bobaljik's (2008) conclusion that both morphological case and agreement are post-syntactic, this note is probably not important, but it is worth making. To my knowledge, no one has addressed his argument directly.

Reference: 

Bobaljik, Jonathan David (2008), “Where’s Phi? Agreement as a Post-Syntactic Operation.” In Daniel Harbour, David Adger, and Susan Bejar, eds., Phi-Theory: Phi Features Across Interfaces and Modules, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 295–328.