A Realizational Approach to Case

The German noun phrase generally reflects a straightforward four-way case distinction (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), but this is most clearly realized on the determiner. Nouns show a depleted case system: genitive is only marked specifically on masculine/neuter nouns in the singular. There are several contexts which require genitive case: possessor NPs and objects of certain verbs and prepositions as well as complements to deverbal nominalizations. However, certain forms of proper names obligatorily fail to realize their genitive case in genitive contexts. Moreover, there are contexts in which even an unambiguously marked genitive singular noun is inadequate on its own and has to be accompanied by an inflected (not indeclinable!) modifier. This complex pattern of behaviour is difficult for current LFG approaches to case to handle because there is a many-many relationship between syntactic case specification and morphological case marking. I propose a realizational analysis, in which it is only NP/DPs in c-structure which are given syntactic CASE attributes. A set of fto c-structure mapping rules define the distribution of these attributes, effectively capturing statements such as ‘transitive SUBJECT is realized by ergative’, ‘POSSESSOR is realized by genitive’ and so on. The syntactic CASE attributes are not part of lexical structure but are mapped onto morphological case-marked forms. Thus, syntactic CASE GEN is by default realized by a noun marked [Case: Gen], but not always, and not all [Case: Gen] marked elements realize CASE GEN (much less POSS).