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Case and configurationality: scrambling or mapping?

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Abstract

Kanum, a language of southern New Guinea, displays nonconfigurationality only for arguments marked with an overt structural case. After examining a variety of constraints on scrambling, in main and subordinate clauses, I argue that nonconfigurationality is a process of scrambling, rather than independent mapping from functional structure to constituency, and further is dependent on features associated with overt morphological case, and that alternative accounts in terms of grammatical function identity cannot be sustained.

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Donohue, M. Case and configurationality: scrambling or mapping?. Morphology 21, 499–513 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-010-9180-3

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