Ebook: Grammatical Case in Estonian

In this thesis I explore the semantic underpinnings of grammatical cases in Estonian.
Estonian is one of the Finnic languages and has an extensive case system which
includes alternations in the case marking of all the core arguments. Although there is
an abundance of literature on a similar language, Finnish, in which the Finnic data
appears to be explained exhaustively and the factors conditioning differential case
marking well illuminated, I focus here on the very same topics – namely grammatical
cases and case variation – in the closely related language Estonian. I demonstrate that
the apparent exhaustiveness of the conclusions or analysis is not only just apparent,
but that there is also a need for (re-)exploration of the data, if case is viewed from a
different perspective. Specifically, current accounts of Finnic data (or rather Finnish)
take primarily a structuralist point of view of case (e.g. Vainikka 1993, Nelson 1995,
Kiparsky 2001, Ritter and Rosen 2001, Kratzer 2002, Svenonius 2002, Asudeh 2003,
among others), which means that the alternations in case-marking are described and
interpreted from the structuralist, morphosyntactic perspective. However, as Butt
(2006:199) notes in her comprehensive overview of theories of case, there is hardly
any literature on case alternations which tries to explain the semantically motivated
variation in case from an entirely semantic point of view. Indeed, even if some
semantic factors have been identified (e.g. control, aspect, modality) they ‘are not
well understood’; hence there is a need for a ‘serious exploration of the semantics of
case alternations’. This exploration is undertaken in this thesis with the hope that data
from Estonian, which is slightly dissimilar to Finnish and undeservedly less studied
and a different perspective to case-marking, will contribute to a better understanding
of case in Finnic in particular and case-marking more generally.

Merilin Miljan