UC San Diego

This dissertation draws on original fieldwork data from two Mongolic languages – Khalkha Mongolian (henceforth Khalkha) and Kalmyk Oirat (henceforth Kalmyk) – to investigate issues pertaining to clausal nominalisation, syntactic locality, differential argument marking (DAM), and case assignment. The empirical focus is on four embedded clause types in Khalkha, supplemented by comparative data from Kalmyk. These clause types include three types of complement clauses – finite bare CPs, finite nominalised clauses (NCs), and nonfinite NCs – and one type of adjunct clause – converbial adjuncts. Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction to the Mongolic language family, fieldwork context, and the basic morphosyntactic profiles of Khalkha and Kalmyk.Chapter 3 shows that each of the four embedded clause types under consideration in Khalkha can be uniquely characterised along three dimensions: finiteness, nominalisation, and the presence or absence of a DP layer within the nominal superstructure. I argue that converbial adjuncts are small nominalised clauses in that they show evidence of both being nominalised and lacking a DP layer within the nominal superstructure above the clause. I further argue that, assuming some form of parallelism between clausal and nominal domains, NCs projecting a “smaller” nominal structure above a “larger” clausal structure are unattested both in Khalkha and cross-linguistically. I propose a novel explanation that links their absence to more general constraints on structure building formalised via the Williams Cycle.Chapter 4 investigates the distribution of embedded subjects across the four clause types, using diagnostics from long-distance extraction and cross-clausal binding. I argue that accusative subjects occupy the highest phase edge of embedded (nominalised) clauses, genitive subjects occupy Spec,nP within a full DP superstructure, and case-unmarked (“nominative”) subjects occupy Spec,TP of the embedded clause. A key finding is that binding and extraction differ in their locality domains: while extraction appears to obey phase-locality, binding appears to be possible out of nominal domains irrespective of the presence of nominal phases. This suggests that locality domains for extraction and binding may not uniformly align with locality domains imposed by a standard conception of phases.Chapter 5 shows that accusative-based DAM in Khalkha adheres to two similar but ultimately distinct referentiality scales. I propose a movement-based account of DAM that results in accusative objects being located in Spec,vP and accusative subjects being located in the highest phase edge of an embedded (nominalised) clause. Building on previous work, I argue that accusative is best analysed as a dependent case in Khalkha and show how it interacts with the movement-based account of DAM for dependent accusative case assignment on objects and subjects. Next, I discuss novel data from subjects of subject clauses in Khalkha that reveal that containment relations between nominals, in addition to local c-command ones, are relevant for dependent accusative case assignment. That containment relations are relevant for dependent accusative case assignment offers novel support for an Agree-based approach to dependent case over a configurational one. Under the Agree-based approach, accusative arises as the spell out of the features of a previous goal of Agree on another DP. I extend this analysis to account for genitive subjects in Khalkha, and show how it may offer an underlying explanation for the absence of case marking on certain objects and subjects in the language.Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that a detailed investigation of clausal nominalisation not only contributes to our understanding of Mongolic morphosyntax, but also yields important insights into issues of broader theoretical significance in syntax, such as the interactions between clausal and nominal structure, syntactic locality, and dependent case theory.