Referential scales and case alignment: reviewing the typological evidence

It has often been claimed that the distribution of case marking is systematically affected by a universal scale of referential categories. Th is can be understood as a universal correlation between the odds of overt case marking and scale ranks (a negative correlation for subjects, a positive one for obj ects), or as an implicational universal proposing that, if a language has a split in case marking, this split fits a universal scale. We tested both claims with vario us versions of scale definitions against a sample of over 350 case systems worldwi de, controlling for confounding factors of genealogical and areal relationships. We find no statistical evidence for a universal correlation that is independen t of family membership and has any appreciable predictive power. Formulated as an implicational universal, we find that there are only few areally independent fa milies that show a trend towards fitting scales, and that each family fits differ ent scales. What we do find, by contr ast, is a strong area effect: once genealogical relationships are controlled for, differential argument marking shows a frequency peak in Eurasia and nowhere else. We conclude that the currently available empirical evidence is too weak to reject the null hypothesis that splits in case markin g develop through individual diachronic changes ‐ such as innovations of case morphology in nouns but not pronouns (Filimonova, 2005), reanalyses of instrumentals as ergatives on inanimates (Garrett, 1990), contact-induced calquing of definite vs. indefinite contrasts by means of case marking, or other idiosyncracies.