Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

We investigate case-marking on clausal complementizers in CAUSE and PURPOSE adjunct clauses in French, Modern Greek (MG), and Hungarian (Hu). We show that the set of cases involved is highly restricted and coincides with a subset of spatial cases independently attested in the nominal domain. Crucially, their distribution is not arbitrary: distinct case markers systematically correlate with distinct types of causal relations (e.g. source-like vs. goal-like dependencies). We show how these spatial relations are transferred to the causal domain. Building on Pancheva’s (2009/2011) path hierarchy, we propose that causal relations are organized along a containment-based hierarchy transferred from the spatial path structure. Crucially, this hierarchy is inferred from cross-linguistic case syncretisms.