CASE AS DENOTATION: VARIATION IN ROMANCE

Recent minimalist approaches have reduced case to independent primitives — but without any connection to its morphological expression. To solve this dichotomy, we conclude that case inflections are associated with denotational properties. These are briefly studied with reference to Latin, and more in detail for the two-case declension of medieval Gallo-Romance and for Romanian. Specifically we construe the oblique (genitive/dative) as the inclusion operator, saying roughly that the argument to which it attaches 'includes' (possesses, etc.) the head noun (genitive) or the internal argument of the verb (dative). The same quantificational properties can be read as the set forming operator yielding the plural; this explains the pervasive (and otherwise not explained) syncretism in the languages quoted between oblique singular and non-oblique plural (cf. especially -s, -i morphology). We conclude by examining pronominal systems, which preserve case differentiations in many more Romance varieties, especially in the 1 st and 2 nd person singular (stressed pronouns) and in the clitic series (3 rd person).