Synthesising Nominal Declension: Model-Theoretic Case Relativity

We deal here with a model of a relatively diachronic dialect—Histrian—and its positioning within the relative languages, namely Slovenian and Croatian. The initial data are from the lyrics of a song by Tamara Obrovac which show the nominal declension property of the Histrian language (in bold).

z prahon ću te posipati
z prahon ću te posipati
da ne zabi brižno moje tilo
da je čekalo da te je volilo

Let us assume Histrian (A), Slovenian (C), and Croatian (B) as sets (for the sake of the argument, despite its over-formalisation) with the latter  nominal-case example as the member of each set.

A = {z prahon}
B = {prahom}
C = {s prahom}
________________
∴ B ∩ C ≊ A

Nothing blasphemous at this point. However, according to Bezlaj (1978: 2), there is a distinction we need to make as both a premise and pivot to this matter and theory:

(1) Synthetic Case, versus
(2) Analytic Case.

The discussion on this distinction has been started in one of my previous articles. I resume it here by giving an initial parse-disctinction of the syntactic structure.

(3) & (4)

Note that the PP (in (3)) has the same NP (as in (4)) embedded. The question raised here is that of historical preference to embedd an analytic NP to sythesise the already analytic case as opposed to sticking with the analytic nominal base. The distinction, therefore, between (1) and (2) is insufficient (or at least does not completely suffice) here, as

(5) A & C := [+ANALYTIC [+SYNTHETIC] ]
(6) B := [+SYNTHETIC]
(6‘) B := [Ø [+SYNTHETIC]]

All three languages have the nominal property of being analytic. There is no transformation, it seems, from analytic to synthetic—there is syntactic embedding of the synthetic property into the analytic one. The synthetic case seems to be, therefore, more analytic than the primal postulate of the analytic one. I disagree with Neeleman’s (2001) stating, or at least what I think he’s saying, that PPs are in form of Prepositional Complementation. It is by no means true of Slavic: PPs are (when they are) in spec-head position, synthesising  case.

In this respect, there seems to be no transformational mechanism going on that would transform case-parameters in accord with minimalism. The image of embedding syntheticity (or supersetting analyticity) is not minimalist at all: it seems to be “maximalist.” Maximalist questions that this gives rise to:

• Why would language do something that’s already there?
• Why P-support what is perfectly stable on its own?

Copyright © 2008 Moreno Mitrovic