Case variation in coordination: Danish vs. Faroese

Abstract

This paper is primarily concerned with inter- and intra-individually variable case-form mismatches inside coordinate determiner phrases (CoDPs). For English, the phenomenon is both socially salient (e.g., O'Conner & Kellerman 2009, among many others) and well studied (Angermeyer & Singler 2003, Quinn 2005, Grano 2006, Parrott 2007: Ch. 6). The most prominent theory of (default) case (Schütze 2001, incorporating Johannessen 1998) explains English variation in CoDPs mostly with parameterized syntactic mechanisms. The parametric theory does not make clear cross-linguistic predictions, and accordingly there has been little cross-linguistic investigation of case variation in CoDPs. This paper therefore has two main purposes. The first is to argue for a theory of (default) case (Parrott 2007, 2009a, following Emonds 1986, and incorporating McFadden 2004, 2007) within the Distributed Morphology (DM) framework (Halle & Marantz 1993, Embick & Noyer 2007). In contrast with the parametric theory, the DM theory makes testable cross-linguistic predictions that, inter alia, connect the (non) attestation of case mismatches in CoDPs with Germanic case typology. Thus, the paper’s second purpose is to present some results from investigations, utilizing diverse empirical methods, into case variation in CoDPs for Danish and Faroese. These results are consistent with predictions made by the DM theory.