This seminar addresses a variety of issues relating to the
morphology, syntax and semantics of case. The first part of the
course will be typological in orientation, where we will survey
different types of morphological case systems and the syntactic and
semantic functions of case. In the second part we focus on specific
case related problems, such as nominative objects, ergativity,
partitivity, the notion of default case, etc. In the last part, we
examine more theoretical issues related to case, such as its
relationship to agreement, movement, clitics, and expletives. The
specific topics for the second and third parts will depend on
student interest. Readings include Barry Blake’s "Case" and a
selection of journal articles and book chapters. Active
participation is expected and a term paper is required.