Non-structural case marking in Tibeto-Burman and artificial languages

This paper discusses the diachronic development of non-structural case marking in Tibeto-Burman and in computer simulations of language evolution. It is shown how case marking is initially motivated by the pragmatic need to disambiguate between two core arguments, but eventually may develop flagging...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Coupe, Alexander R., Lestrade, Sander
Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87444
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44461
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:This paper discusses the diachronic development of non-structural case marking in Tibeto-Burman and in computer simulations of language evolution. It is shown how case marking is initially motivated by the pragmatic need to disambiguate between two core arguments, but eventually may develop flagging functions that even extend into the intransitive domain. Also, it is shown how different types of case-marking may emerge from various underlying disambiguation strategies.