Free Word Order, Morphological Case, and Sympathy Theory

In this paper, I address the relation between scrambling and morphological Case from an optimality-theoretic perspective. Based on empirical evidence from German, Russian, and Bulgarian, and conceptual evidence involving issues of parametrization, I give arguments against the traditional view that scrambling presupposes morphological Case. The remaining two options are (a) and (b). (a) There is no synchronically relevant relation between scrambling and morphological Case. (b) Morphological Case does in fact presuppose scrambling. I pursue the latter, more radical approach, which implies that morphological Case is not given pre-syntactically (i.e., is not part of the syntactic input), but arises in the syntax. The presence of morphological Case is forced by a constraint that requires a Case marker on scrambled items (i.e., items at the left edge of vP); but morphological Case violates a DEP constraint. The main problem with such an approach turns out to be that morphological Case in languages like German and Russian may show up on an NP even if this NP has not undergone scrambling; in other words: the local property of a given sentence to exhibit morphological Case on its NPs is tied not to the local property of actual scrambling in that sentence, but rather to the global property that the language permits scrambling in minimally different sentences. In order to solve this problem, I develop an approach in terms of sympathy theory (McCarthy (1999)) according to which morphological Case can arise on an NP in situ without actual scrambling, because of a ❀-constraint that demands faithfulness to a competitor that does involve scrambling (and, hence, bear morphological Case). Free Word Order, Morphological Case, and Sympathy Theory Gereon Müller (IDS Mannheim) [email protected] November 30, 2001