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The study examines structural conditions for subject case assignment and the mechanism driving A-movement, using evidence from nominative versus non-nominative subjects. A proposal contrasts structural nominative case valued by finite T with lexical non-nominative case assigned by involitive verbs, where volitive subjects raise to spec-TP.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/volitivity-and-subject-case-marking-in-sinhala/289840/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/volitivity-and-subject-case-marking-in-sinhala/289840.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Marry","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-27","2026-09-17",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":44},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does volitivity mean in Sinhala verb classification?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Sinhala verbs are classified as volitive or involitive based on how far the external argument is involved in the action. Volitive verbs typically allow nominative subjects, while involitive verbs allow a broader range of non-nominative cases.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What case-marking pattern does the paper propose for nominative and non-nominative subjects?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Nominative case is treated as a structural case assigned/valued by finite T, while non-nominative case is lexical and assigned by the involitive verb.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the proposal connect subject raising and A-movement to case?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The paper argues that the subject of a volitive verb must raise to spec-TP for case assignment/valuation by finite T. It also claims A-movement can be triggered by structural case valuation rather than a universal EPP requirement on T.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},289840,1789637701,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":44,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":144,"preview_page_count":4},5909892079670,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Volitivity and Subject Case Marking in Sinhala  \nChao-Ting Chou and Sujeewa Hettiarachchi  \n1. Introduction  \nSinhala, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Sri Lanka, has a well-known semantic classification of verbs. All Sinhala verb roots occur in one or two stem classes, commonly known as volitives and involitives (see Gair 1990 ; Gair & Paolillo 1997 ; Inman 1993; Beavers & Zubair 2010, 2013) . The (in)volitivity of a verb denotes the extent to which the external argument is involved in the action denoted by the verb. For example, in (1a), the verb natəәnəәwa ‘dance’, in the volitive form, is both volitional and intentional on the part of the subject Lal. By contrast, in (1b), with the involitive verb, the act of dancing is either non-volitional or unplanned as far as Lal is concerned. 1,2  \n(1) a. lal natəәnəәwa.  \nLal.NOM dance.VOL  \n‘Lal (actively/voluntarily) dances.’  \nb. lal-ʈəә nætenəәwa.  \nLal-DAT dance.INVOL  \n‘Lal (involuntarily) dances.’  \nThis volitive/involitive contrast correlates with different case marking possibilities on the external argument of a finite clause (see Gair 1990; Inman 1993 ; Beaver & Zubair 2010, 2013): a volitive verb almost always takes a nominative subject3 (1a) and (2), while an involitive verb most often takes a range of non-nominative subjects, including dative (1b) and (3), instrumental (4), and accusative (5):  \n(2) lal/*lal-ʈəә/*lal-athiη/*lal-wəә natəәnəәwa  \nLal.NOM/*-DAT/*-INST/*-ACC dance.VOL.PRES  \n‘Lal (actively/voluntarily) dances.’  \n(3) a. lal-ʈəә nætenəәwa  \nLal-DAT dance.INVOL.PRES  \n‘Lal (involuntarily) dances.’  \nb. lal-ʈəә induwa-k kiyəәuna.  \nLal.DAT song-INDEF sing.INVOL.PAST  \n‘Lal (involuntarily) sang a song.’  \n*Chao-Ting Chou, Taipei Medical University, [chaotingchou@gmail.com. Sujeewa Hettiarachchi](chaotingchou@gmail.com. Sujeewa Hettiarachchi), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, [sujeewa@umich.edu. Thank you](sujeewa@umich.edu. Thank you) to Samuel Epstein, Acrisio Pires, Daniel Seely, Dylan Tsai, Niina Zhang, Roger Liao, and the audiences at the 33rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics and GLOW in Asia IX. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan (MOST-104-2410-H-038-001), Humanities Candidacy Research Fellowship, and the Predoctoral Fellowship from the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan.  \n1In this paper, our focus is on standard colloquial Sinhala as spoken in and around the western province of Sri Lanka. Our informants (age: 30-40 years old), including one of the authors of this paper, are native Sinhala speakers who use it as their most dominant language in day-to-day communication. However, subject case marking and scopal interpretation in Sinhala can be subject to dialectal variation (see e.g., Beavers & Zubair 2010, 2013) .  \n2 Notice that volitive verbs do not strictly entail volitionality. The semantic/pragmatics of the use of volitive and involitive verbs in Sinhala is not the focus of this paper. See Inman (1993) Beavers & Zubair (2010) for details.  \n3 Beavers & Zubair (2013) and Gair (1990) observe that some volitive verbs such as dannəәwa ‘know’can occur with DAT subjects. However, we observe that this is commonly found among Sinhala speakers whose dominant language is Tamil.  \n© 2016 Chao-Ting Chou and Sujeewa Hettiarachchi. Proceedings of the 33rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Kyeong-min Kim et al., 99-108. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.  \n100  \n(4) a. sita-athiη4 karame kæduna.  \nSita-INST tap.ACC break.INVOL.PAST  \n‘Sita (involuntarily) broke the tap.’  \nb. amma-geη sinhala kæməә hondəәtəә hædenəәwa.  \nmother-INST Sinhala food.ACC well make.INVOL.PRES  \n‘Mother makes Sinhala food well.’  \n(5) lameya-wəә waturəә-ʈəә wætuna.  \nchild-ACC water-into fall.INVOL.PAST  \n‘The child (involuntarily) fell into water.’  \nThe major goal of this paper is to investigate the syntactic (structural) conditions of subject case assignment and","cbCaifNOBU0DbONg","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifNOBU0DbONg","pdf",480394,11,"English","# 1. Introduction\n# 2. Gair’s (1990) analyses of subject case marking and A-movement in Sinhala","[{\"question\":\"What does volitivity mean in Sinhala verb classification?\",\"answer\":\"Sinhala verbs are classified as volitive or involitive based on how far the external argument is involved in the action. Volitive verbs typically allow nominative subjects, while involitive verbs allow a broader range of non-nominative cases.\"},{\"question\":\"What case-marking pattern does the paper propose for nominative and non-nominative subjects?\",\"answer\":\"Nominative case is treated as a structural case assigned/valued by finite T, while non-nominative case is lexical and assigned by the involitive verb.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the proposal connect subject raising and A-movement to case?\",\"answer\":\"The paper argues that the subject of a volitive verb must raise to spec-TP for case assignment/valuation by finite T. It also claims A-movement can be triggered by structural case valuation rather than a universal EPP requirement on T.\"}]","Volitivity and Subject Case Marking in Sinhala | PDF",28]