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- Title
A and O as each other's mirror image? Problems with markedness reversal.
- Authors
Fauconnier, Stefanie; Verstraete, Jean-Christophe
- Abstract
This article provides a critical examination of the widespread idea that A and O (and Agents and Patients) are each other's mirror image in terms of case marking and semantic features. We examine patterns of differential case marking for nouns in a sample of 185 languages, showing that the behaviour of A cannot be captured in terms of markedness reversal based on models for O marking. We highlight pecularities of A marking that are not found with O marking, like sensitivity to the feature of motivity, and syntactic restrictions on use as A, and use these to develop an independent account of A marking.
- Subjects
ANIMACY (Grammar); DEFINITENESS (Linguistics); MARKEDNESS (Linguistics); SYNTAX (Grammar); LINGUISTIC typology
- Publication
Linguistic Typology, 2014, Vol 18, Issue 1, p3
- ISSN
1430-0532
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/lingty-2014-0002