volume: 13 (2018)
pages: 29–55
author: Mark Newson
title: Default Case
keywords: default case, Dependent Case Theory, hypercorrective nominative, case domain, unmarked case
abstract: The notion of default case has been around for a long time, but standard Case Theory gave it no room due to its clash with the Case Filter. With the demise of the Case Filter several attempts have been made to incorporate default case into the theory. Schütze (2001) has argued that default case emerges when a licensed DP is not assigned case and proposes a list of ‘default contexts’ in which this would seem to happen. McFadden (2007) adopts Dependent Case Theory and argues that default case is unmarked. In the present paper, I agree with Schütze that default case arises when no case is assigned and with McFadden that accusative is unmarked in most English domains. However, I point out a problem facing both of these approaches: not every instance that they identify as default behaves in the same way. Specifically some ‘default contexts’ are susceptible to nominative hypercorrection and others are not. I argue that those that are are real cases of default and those which are not are instances of unmarked case. Hence the two are separate, contra McFadden, and not all contexts that Schütze identifies involve the default. I propose an analysis based on Dependent Case Theory which identifies correctly the true default contexts and accounts for the others as the emergence of the unmarked accusative.
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