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Paper Summary/importnat quotes extracted:

WOOLFORD, E. (1997). Four-way case systems: Ergative, nominative, objective and accusative. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 15(1), 181-227.

Summary points: -“attempts have proposed that ergative and absolutive are simply alternate names for nominative and accusative” (p.2) → recent research “show that ergative is distinct from both nominative and accusative Cases, a position that is taken in recent work” (pg.3) - “absolutive is simply another name for the nominative Case” (pg.4) -“not all ergative languages assign absolutive/nominative Case to their objects” (pg.4) - “Case theory already predicts the existence of a Case whose properties are exactly those of the ergative Case. Case theory includes, in addition to its inventory of structural Cases, a series of lexical (also called inherent or quirky) Cases that are assigned at D-structure in con-junction with 0-role assignment.” (pg.3) -“Dative Case is a lexical Case associated with goals/experiencers and lexical accusative Case is associated with themes” - “missing Case in this series - the lexical Case associated with agents. This paper will present both empirical and conceptual evidence that ergative is this missing lexical Case” (pg.3)

“correlation between ergative Case and the agent theta role is not perfect, it is as close as the correlation between dative and goals/ experiencers is” (pg. 3) -“will see that ergative and dative subjects have the same effect on the Case marking of objects and that this effect is typical of lexical Cases, but not structural Cases” (pg.4) -“The existence of two structural object Cases in UG is, in a sense, anticipated by recent developments in Case theory” (pg.4) “standard Case theory, with the two additions to the Case inventory proposed above: that ergative is a lexical Case and that there are two structural object Cases, one inside and one outside the VP.” (pg.5)

“The inventory of core Cases in UG thus argued for in this paper is summarized below (ignoring the genitive): . (1) Structural Cases
 a. Assigned/checked by Functional Heads 
i. nominative- assigned/checked by Agr-S
(may be associated with subject agreement) 
ii. objective- assigned/checked by Agr-O
(may be associated with object agreement) 
b. Assigned/checked by Lexical Heads accusative- assigned/checked by V, P . (2) Lexical (Inherent, Quirky) Cases [not an exhaustive list] 
a. ergative(associated with agents)
b. dative(associated with goals, experiencers) 
c. accusative(associated with themes)” (pg. 5) “it is clear from the Case morphology that ergative is distinct from both nominative and accusative” (pg.7) “To show that ergative is a lexical Case, we must show that it is theta- related; that is, that a verb cannot assign lexical Case to an NP unless that verb also assigns a 0-role to that NP (Chomsky 1986, p. 194). There has been a tendency, however, to assume that the association between particular lexical Cases and particular 0-roles is much stricter than it actually is. It is well known that ergative Case is associated with the agent 0-role, but that this association is not perfect (e.g., Comrie1978;Kachru 1987; Blake 1994).” (pg.11)

“Based on this fact, one can argue against the idea that ergative Case is some sort of direct marker of the presence of an agent (Comrie 1978); nevertheless, the correlation between ergative Case and agents is strong enough to justify the view that ergative is the lexical Case associated with agents.” (pg.11)

“When we examine the actual degree of correlation between the dative Case and the goal/experiencer 0-role, we find that not all, nor only, NPs with this 0-role get marked with the dative. Although the class of verbs that mark their subjects with lexical dative Case is similar across languages, the membership in this verb class is not entirely predictable. Although lexical Cases such as dative usually mark predictable 0-roles, there is enough idiosyncratic behavior involved to conclude that a verb's ability to assign a lexical Case to one of its arguments has to be specified in that verb's lexical entry” (pg.11)

“we have seen that there are striking parallels between ergative and dative subject constructions. The two types of ergative languages (those that allow and those that prohibit ergative subjects in intransitive clauses)” (pg.19)

“neither ergative nor dative subject constructions allow a structural accusative object.” (pg. 19) “When a verb marks its subject with a lexical Case, such as ergative, that verb cannot assign structural accusative Case to its object.” (pg. 20) “Nominative-Accusative Constructions: 
If a verb does not take the option of assigning lexical ergative Case to its subject, the result is a nominative-accusative construction.” (pg.22)

“accusative Case assignment is obligatory in Nez Perce” (pg.23) “ The Maximum Accusatives (Max. Acc.) Generalization: There is an old observation that the number of accusative Cases a verb can assign always seems to be one less than the number of arguments that need structural Case. That observation covers intransitive verbs, regard- less of whether they have an internal or an external subject: verbs with only one argument never assign structural accusative Case. Transitive verbs assign a maximum f one accusative Case. However, if one of the arguments of a transitive verb gets lexical Case, then that verb assigns no accusative Case. We have seen that this is true for transitive verbs with dative and ergative subjects. A ditransitive verb may assign up to two accusative Cases, but this number is reduced if one or more of its argu- ments gets lexical Case.” (pg.26) “(i) that no verb assigns structural accusative Case to its subject, (ii) that a verb without an external subject cannot assign structural accusative Case to its object (the observation that motivated Burzio's generalization),and(iii) that a verb with a lexically Cased subject cannot assign structural accusative Case to its object (the generalization in (19))” (pg. 27)

“ Max. Acc. Formula
Max. Acc. = #Arguments - #Lexical Cases – 1 “ (pg 27) a descriptive generalization “the Max. Acc. Formula tells us only how many accusative Cases the verb can assign, but it does not tell us which arguments will get those accusative Case” (pg. 27/28) “The Max. Acc. formula also accounts for the data that originally motivated Burzio's (1986) generalization: verbs with internal subjects cannot assign structural accusative Case to those subjects” (pg. 28) “In fact, the ergative-accusative Case pattern appears to be universally barred” (pg. 44) “The typological differences among these languages is shown to be the result of a difference in whether ergative and/or dative Case assignment is optional or obligatory” (pg. 44)