Case-marking of Core Arguments and Syntactic Alignment in Old Japanese

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, a theory has gained currency according to which Old Japanese, the oldest attested an.cestor of the modern Japanese language, exhibited a split system of syntactic alignment: active-stative in nominalized clauses (most of them subordinate), and nominative-accusative (the default) elsewhere. I attempt to show that the evidence and arguments offered in support of this theory are entirely insufficient to establish its authenticity.1