The Dative in Modern Icelandic : Exploration of the Semantic Genotype of the Dative in Natural Languages

THE DATIVE IN MODERN ICELANDIC: EXPLORATION OF THE SEMANTIC GENOTYPE OF THE DATIVE IN NATURAL LANGUAGES* Mariko Saiki and Y asutaka Kaneko Kanazawa University, Kakuma, Kanazawa, 920-1192 JAPAN Email: {saiki, isl 1 991}@kenroku.kanazawa-u.ac.jp ABSTRACT This paper discusses distribution of the dative in Modern Icelandic. Similar to Latin, Modern Ice- landic exhibits occurrences of the possessive dative, i.e., the dative which marks the possessor of a noun. However, although Latin shows free occurrences of possessive datives, there is a syntactic re- striction imposed on the distribution of possessive datives in Modern Icelandic. The possessive dative in Modem Icelandic is limited within a PP which denotes the static position of an entity participating the semantics of the sentence. This difference between Latin and Modern Icelandic follows from the fact that the dative in Latin inherently possesses the locative semantics, while that in Modem Icelandic does not. 1. INTRODUCTION Studies in many languages have revealed that nominals in the overt dative case are carriers of tremen- dously differing kinds of semantics [1-9]. Languages also vary according to the kinds of semantic infor- mation their dative nominals encode [8-9]. Why is the dative semantically so variable? What is the factor that determines the semantics underlying this overt case? We believe the answers to these questions can be found through exploration of the semantic genotype of the dative, i.e., the semantic origin of the dative case, a term borrowed from genetics. We also believe that the nature of the dative can be seen through investigation of the semantics of the dative in many individual languages. In section 2 of this paper, we assume the set of semantic roles and hypothesize that the dative in Mod- em Icelandic (henceforth Icelandic) cannot project the locative role within the argument structure of the verb. In section 3, we discuss the distribution of the possessive datives in Icelandic, i.e. the dative nouns which occur as possessors attributively modifying nouns. Yip et al. [10] mention the following two con- ditions on the occurrence of possessive datives in Icelandic: (i) Icelandic possessive datives occur as the possessors of the objects of prepositions within PPs, and (ii) they occur as possessors of the inalienable possessor-possessed relation. Section 3 of this paper proposes modification to the first condition above. Finally, in section 4, we claim that the modified condition follows from our hypothesis from section 2 that the sentential dative NPs in Icelandic do not encode the locative role. This claim is further supported in the same section, in reference to the data from Latin. 2. SYNTACTIC REALIZATION OF THE LOCATIVE IN ICELANDIC In this section, we examine the possibility for the sentential dative NPs in Icelandic to encode the locative role within the argument structure of a verb. For this purpose, we follow Blake [1] and others, and assume that the locative designates the position of an entity participating in the semantics of a sentence. In addi- tion, we identify the possessors inside the so-called possessive constructions with the locative role. This …

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