Detail #438: Split Marked Nominative

Split Marked Nominative is a phrase that struck me out of the blue, and I felt like it needs a post. However, let's begin by looking at something slightly related.

We'll start, as usual, with Finnish. Because that's where some pretty crazy stuff can be found. Finnish, in some sense, has a "split marked accusative" system. But first, we need to disentangle the Finnish differential object and subject system:

Finnish marks existential subjects (but also objects) by the partitive. Existential verbs tend to be intransitive, so this doesn't affect the object marking much.

Finnish marks atelicity or negativity by having the object in the partitive case. Thus, only telic, positive verb phrases have the object in the accusative.

Now on to the "split marked accusative". First: plural accusatives and pronominal accusatives have no split: -t all the way (for nouns, -t is the nom/acc plural marker, for pronouns, -t is the accusative marker). For singulars, however, if the verb licenses a nominative subject, the noun is in the marked accusative (identical to the genitive). If the verb licenses no nominative subject, however, it is in the unmarked accusative. (Certain auxiliaries require a genitive subject, and e.g. the passive has no subject in Finnish - the object isn't raised to subject. Also, imperatives license no nominative subject.)

 

Now, on to the split marked nominative. In case the atypical constructions require the nominative marking, I think it would be better to describe it by some other term - e.g. quirky case. However, if the nominative marker is present in standard transitive and intransitive clauses, and only get dropped in some contexts, calling it "split marked nominative" makes more sense. If e.g. pronouns keep their nominative in all contexts, and maybe some other markers (optional quantifiers, demonstratives, etc) also signal nominative, this should be good.

So, now, where does the nominative go less marked or unmarked?

• subclauses
• with certain auxiliaries
• (negative) existential statements?
• with certain types of subjects? (E.g. proper nouns or mass nouns or something?)
• Certain TAMs?

How would a system like this come about? I guess a simple grammaticalization path would be "degenerate ergativity".