Turkic default agreement

Abstract

Baker & Vinokurova (2010) argue for a hybrid account of morphologically observable case, which involves both a configurational theory for accusative and dative, as in Marantz (1991), and case assignment by functional heads for nominative and genitive, as in Chomsky (2001). In the spirit of Levin & Preminger (2015), I argue that a configurational theory is enough to account for the assignment of genitive case. Based on the understudied phenomenon of default agreement with complex possessors in Turkic, I argue that a configurational theory is better equipped at handling the distribution of genitive case. I present a phase-based account of case blocking agreement in order to derive default agreement.