Mapping meaning to argument structure

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of morphological case in so-called ‘ergative-absolutive aligned’ languages, with a detailed case study of the Polynesian language Samoan. The focus is on the interaction of morphological case marking and the lexical semantics of verbs, proposing that the case marking pattern on a verb’s arguments are closely linked to the verb’s entailments, especially those relating to how the participants denoted by the verb’s nominal arguments participate in the event being described. Through empirical investigation of novel Samoan data, the chapter argues that ergative morphological case marking is linked to the agent argument’s status as a ‘self directed initiator’ of the event. In providing an analysis of this phenomenon, this chapter proposes a formal model of how a verb’s lexical semantics interacts with the morphological case component of grammar, employing insights from Optimality Theory.