3.1 Fusion of the subject and topic roles

Eastern Mansi (EM) texts recorded between 1868 and 1905 show this now extinct dialect to be strictly SOV, displaying a fusion of the subject and topic roles. The Eastern Mansi subject also functions as the topic of the sentence, denoting a discourse-given referent, that which the sentence is about. Accordingly, it must be represented by a [+referential], and [+specific] constituent. If the underlying subject is not appropriately topical, i.e., it is [-referential] and/or [-specific], passivization is used to demote it to a by-phrase, and to raise the highest [+referential, +specific] argument into subject-topic position (Kulonen 1989; Kiparsky 2013). In (2), a [+referential, +specific] 2nd person pronoun assumes the subject-topic role. As is common in Ugric, the overt pronoun, cross-referenced on the verb, is dropped. The verb has a -w- passive morpheme, and the underlying subject, if spelled out, is supplied with the -nə, -n, -ən lative case ending. (According to Honti (1982), -nə, -n, -ən has also assumed the instrument role.)

Passivization is invariably triggered if the underlying subject of the sentence is an indefinite or interrogative pronoun, and the internal argument is referential and specific, as illustrated in (3)–(4):

A subject question only occurs in unaccusative sentences where the subject is the only argument of the verb. Such examples are extremely rare; they are versions of (5), which does not contain enough material to establish whether its subject is externalized, and whether the verb agrees with it (as the 3SG agreement suffix is phonologically null):

Passivization also takes place in unaccusative and unergative sentences with a non-specific subject if a goal, or location, or temporal constituent satisfies the referentiality and specificity criteria of topichood:

Presentative sentences with a non-specific underlying subject are also often passivized, with the only complement demoted to adjunct. The subject position apparently remains empty, unless we hypothesize there an invisible spatiotemporal pro:

As is clear from the above examples, NP-movement in Ob-Ugric is motivated not by a need for case but by discourse-structural requirements. A topical constituent can be NP-moved also when it has inherent (e.g., lative or locative) case. The inherent case suffix or case-like postposition of the NP-moved constituent is overwritten in subject position by nominative case. A [+human] goal, for example, is marked by the postposition pālt ʻto’ (8a). When the goal argument is targeted by NP movement, it surfaces in unmarked nominative case (8b-c):

In (9), a locative argument is moved into subject position, losing its locative -t suffix:

Multiple case-assignment to a constituent is not unique to the Ob-Ugric languages. It has been argued for in the case of English pseudo-passives by Richards (2017), and it has also been pointed out in different syntactic environments in Cuzco Quechua and Korean (Baker 2015: 281–284), and in Amis (Chen 2018). It can result in case stacking, or the higher case can overwrite the lower one, as happens in Ob-Ugric. An alternative account of the Ob-Ugric facts in (6)–(9), suggested by an anonymous reviewer, would be to assume that the inherent cases are P heads, which are stranded in passive constructions, and P is not pronounced when its complement is null.

The non-standard profile of the Ob-Ugric passive construction suggests that the landing site of NP-movement is a position with both A and A-bar features. Ob-Ugric NP-movement is A-movement in as much as it feeds case assignment, and it is obligatory (satisfying the EPP). At the same time, it is A-bar movement in as much as it is dedicated to a particular scope-discourse interpretive property. A further criterion of A-bar movement is that its landing site is a so-called criterial position with a freezing effect. The Eastern Mansi subject satisfies this criterion, as well: it cannot move any further. Mansi has no wh-movement; it is a wh-in-situ language – see (4a–c). Its relative clauses are non-finite prenominal gap relatives with no relative pronoun, e.g.:

Furthermore, Mansi has no subordinate constructions that could harbor cross-clausal subject movement; it has no raising, and no long topicalization.

3.2 Fusion of the object and secondary topic roles

Eastern Mansi also displays a fusion of the object and secondary topic roles, as argued by Virtanen (2014, 2015). The term ʻsecondary topic’ has been introduced into Uralic syntax by Nikolaeva (2001). It denotes the lower topic in the sentence structure with two topicalized constituents. In Eastern Mansi, the higher, primary topic slot is only accessible to the subject, and the lower, secondary topic slot is only accessible to the object. Discourse-new, non-presuppositional objects are VP-internal caseless constituents, eliciting no agreement (11a). Discourse-old, topical objects are extracted from the VP into a topic position below the position of the subject-topic, where they participate in verbal agreement, and receive an accusative morpheme (-mø, -m, or -øm) – see (11b) (Riese 2001; Skribnik 2001; Virtanen 2014). Singular and plural 1st and 2nd person pronominal objects bear special allomorphs of the accusative morpheme that are non-distinct from possessive agreement suffixes sharing the person and number of the pronominal stem (Kulonen 2007: 87).⁴ The object agreement suffix on the verb, encoding the number of the object, precedes the subject agreement suffix encoding the number and person of the subject. In the examples below, the gloss of object agreement spells out the singular, dual, or plural number of the cross-referenced object, while the gloss of subject agreement spells out the person and number of the cross-referenced subject. When subject and object agreement appear in a portmanteau morpheme, they are separated by the symbol <. For perspicuity's sake, the objects and the object agreement suffixes will be spellt in bold letters, and the accusative morphemes and the object agreement suffixes will also be underlined.

Compare (11a) and (11b), cited from Virtanen (2014). As she established on the basis of the contexts of these sentences, the caseless object of (11a), eliciting no verbal agreement, occurs for the first time in the text. The case-marked object in (11b), triggering agreement on the V, on the other hand, is discourse-old.

The claim that agreeing objects in the Ob-Ugric languages are presuppositional topics, whereas non-agreeing objects are part of the domain conveying new information was first made by Nikolaeva on the basis of Northern Khanty (NK) data (1999, 2001; see also Dalrymple & Nikolaeva 2011), and it has been confirmed by Skribnik (2001) and Sipőcz (2015) with respect to Northern Mansi, and by Virtanen (2014, 2015) with respect to Eastern Mansi. Nikolaeva studied an Ob-Ugric dialect which has lost the accusative suffix, so she only focussed on the role of object–verb agreement. She analyzed a corpus of more than a thousand transitive clauses, and also worked with informants – hence she could also obtain negative judgments, which is impossible in the case of Eastern Mansi. Her claim that agreeing objects are preposed topics whereas non-agreeing objects are part of the VP, the domain of new information, is based on the different interpretation and the different licensing conditions of the two object types.

Nikolaeva found that only a referential and specific object can elicit agreement. An object represented by a wh-phrase, or an existential or negative quantifier does not leave the VP, and the verb does not agree with it:

Referentiality, and specificity in the epistemic sense are necessary but not sufficient conditions of object–verb agreement; the object must also be discourse-old (13a). Object–verb agreement is impossible in sentences answering the questions What happened? or What did x do? – whether the object is indefinite, or definite preceded by a demonstrative (13b).

Object–verb agreement is obligatory in sentences where a constituent other than the object is narrow focus, whereby the object is necessarily part of the presupposition. The VP-external position of the object is shown by the fact that it precedes the locative adjunct.

When analyzing the sentece structure of Eastern Mansi, which has no speakers any more, Virtanen (2015) could only rely on corpus data. She examined more than 2000 active or passivized transitive clauses, and she found the same pattern of object–verb agreement that was identified by Nikolaeva in Khanty – except that in Eastern Mansi, an object-topic is marked not only by verbal agreement but also by an accusative case morpheme. Thus a non-referential and/or non-specific object, e.g., a noun phrase introducing a new referent (11a), or an indefinite in the scope of negation (15) is always caseless, and the verb does not agree with it:

Definiteness is not sufficient to license accusative marking and agreement; discourse-new definite objects, e.g., the possessive constructions in (16a,b), and the noun phrase with a unique referent in (16c) are caseless and trigger no agreement:

The information-structural role and the morphosyntax of the object change in parallel in the course of discourse. When the object introduces a new referent, as in the first clauses in (17a) and in (17b), it is caseless, and triggers no verbal agreement. In the subsequent clauses, the same (by now familiar) referent is denoted by a pronominal object, eliciting agreement. The Ugric languages tend to drop pronouns cross-referenced by agreement suffixes. In the 2nd and 3rd clauses of (17a), and in the 2nd clause of (17b), we attest both subject and object pro-drop.

Object-topics occupy a position that follows the subject-topic and can also follow clausal adjuncts (18a), but precedes VP-adjuncts (18b,c):

The floating quantifier construction in (19), where the object-oriented quantifier follows the object-topic, also supports the assumption that the agreeing, case-marked object occupies a VP-external derived position. Whether the floating quantifier is a stranded determiner in the base position of the object, or an adverb adjoined to VP, its placement after the VP-external object is predicted.⁶

3.3 The secundative construction

Further evidence of the fusion of the secondary topic and object roles is provided by the fact that in Eastern Mansi, and in the Ob-Ugric languages, in general, the oblique argument of a ditransitive verb can only be topic if it is promoted to object in a so-called secundative construction (Virtanen 2015; see also Skribnik 2001, Sipőcz 2015, 2016; Bárány 2018a). In the alternative directive construction, the theme is a caseless object, and the recipient bears lative case. The directive alignment is the only possibility if the recipient is discourse-new or is a narrow focus, as in (20a). In the secundative alignment, the recipient is the object, and the theme bears instrumental case (20b). In (20b), like in all the active secundative examples of the annotated databases of Eastern Mansi, the recipient object is a [+referential, +specific] element, which acts as a secondary topic eliciting verbal agreement.

The recipient can be primary topic if it is constructed as the object in a secundative construction, and the structure is passivized:

The question arises how to analyze secundative ditransitive constructions; whether the secundative alignment is to be derived from the directive alignment transformationally, or ditransitive verbs are associated with two distinct argument realization patterns in the lexicon. The relation of the two alignments is similar to the relation of the English double object construction and the oblique dative form, hence accounts of the latter can be extended to the former. According to Larson (1988) the double object and the oblique dative are alternative constructions derived from the same underlying structure. The oblique dative construction preserves the underlying hierarchy of arguments, whereas the double object construction involves the NP-movement of the dative argument to the specifier of a higher projection. The prevalent accounts of the English dative shift base-generate both variants. According to the Uniform Multiple Meaning Approach, the oblique dative and the double object versions of an English ditransitive verb phrase are two distinct argument structures with different meanings; the former expresses caused motion, the latter expresses caused possession (Harley 2003; Beck & Johnson 2004; Levin 2008). Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2008) argue that in the case of give-type verbs, the difference of the two alignments lies in information structure: the oblique dative variant is used when the recipient is new information, and the double object variant is used when the recipient is given, topical. Topical elements precede focal elements in the default case. The dative shift/secundative pattern evolved in languages with a rigid word order to allow human, familiar recipients to appear in the topic domain. In the case of Eastern Mansi, there are no more informants to be asked about semantic differences, but reports from Eastern Khanty informants point out a meaning difference between the directive and secundative alignments similar to that observed in English (Sosa 2017: 111). The motivation for the use of the secundative alignment identified by Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2008) is also clearly present in Eastern Mansi. Crucially, neither the multiple meaning approach, nor Rappaport Hovav and Levin's single meaning account compels us to assume a derivational relation between the two Eastern Mansi structures.

The data surveyed in Sections 3.2 and 3.3 indicate that object preposing, similarly to subject movement, has both A-movement and A-bar movement properties in Eastern Mansi. It is A-movement in as much as it feeds case assignment – even if it is not movement for case. (If it were motivated by the lack of case, it would affect all objects.) It is A-bar movement in as much as it is movement to a position associated with a scope-discourse interpretive property (topichood), and it only targets referential and specific constituents matching the requirements of this discourse function. It is a criterial position for object topics, involving freezing, i.e., blocking further movement.

3.4 Sentence structure

The simultaneous presence of both A and A-bar properties has been pointed out in subjects in Italian and various other languages, as well, by Rizzi (2006) and Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007). In these languages, the movement of the subject from its thematic position is not only A-movement for Case, motivated by requirements of the syntax-morphology interface, but also A-bar movement because it endows the subject with a special discourse property (topic, or subject-of-predication, role). Further evidence of the A-bar status of the subject is that it occupies a position with a criterial freezing effect, blocking further movement.

Rizzi associates the A- and A-bar properties of the moved subject with separate chain-links: the subject obtains Case in Spec,TP, and it assumes topic function in the specifier of a higher projection called SubjP. In Eastern Mansi, however, there is no reason to presume that case and topic function are assigned in different positions; both are associated with the highest projection of sentence structure, to be labeled as SubjP.

The object-topic of the Eastern Mansi sentence has a similar dual character, obtaining both case and topic function simultaneously; hence it seems plausible to analyze its landing site as the specifier of an ObjP projection, a position with both A- and A-bar properties. The claim that the subject-topic and the object-topic fill the specifiers of two distinct projections is supported by examples like (18a), where an adjunct intervenes between them. (In the Ob-Ugric languages, wh-pronouns appear in situ. In (18a), the interrogative pronoun nän ‘why’, adjoined to ObjP, appears in the position of a sentence adverbial.)

In view of these considerations, the Eastern Mansi sentence is assigned the following structure:

(22)

Theta roles are assigned within the vP. The Voice head is either active or passive. An active Voice selects a thematically complete verb phrase, whereas a passive Voice head (akin to Buering's (2013) Pass) selects a verbal projection (vP or VP) whose thematically highest argument is existentially bound but syntactically unrealized. The Obj and Subj heads both have a [+topic] feature (a bundle of the features [+referential] and [+specific]). They assign their topic feature to the constituents in Spec, ObjP and Spec,SubjP, which value their phi features. The filler of Spec,Obj values the number feature of Obj, and the filler of Spec,SubjP values the person and number features of Subj. Obj and Subj are manifested as agreement suffixes on the verb.

Spec, ObjP is not accessible to the subject, which follows from the [-highest relation] feature of Obj. Subj is specified as [+highest relation]. (The [+/-highest relation] feature also plays a role in Kiparsky's (2001) analysis of the case system of Finnish, another Uralic language.) SubjP shows an EPP effect (in passivized presentative sentences such as (7), Spec,SubjP may be filled by a spatiotemporal expletive).

As object agreement goes hand-in-hand with accusative assignment, and subject agreement goes hand-in-hand with nominative assignment in Eastern Mansi, case assignment could be regarded as a result of agreement. This move, however, would have the consequence that VP-internal, discourse-new objects remain caseless, i.e., the Case Filter has to be given up. The lack of case on VP-internal objects cannot be attributed to the incorporation or pseudo-incorporation of the object because the caseless object is often clearly referential – as was illustrated in (16a–c).

The Case Filter can be maintained if we account for the distribution of case in the framework of dependent case theory (Marantz 1991; Baker 2015). vP and SubjP represent two phases, hence two spellout domains, for case assignment. If the object, NP₂, is discourse-new, NP₂ and NP₁ get cases in separate domains: NP₂ in the VP, and NP₁ in SubjP, and each of them is assigned unmarked case. If NP₂ is topic-moved into Spec, ObjP, both NPs are assigned case in the higher domain; NP₁ gets nominative, and NP₂, c-commanded by NP₁, gets accusative. If the Spec, SubjP position of an intransitive sentence is filled by the NP-movement of an inherently case-marked constituent, the nominative assigned in Spec, SubjP overwrites the inherent case.

Morphological evidence (e.g., the preservation of the Proto-Uralic -m accusative suffix) suggests that Eastern Mansi represents the most conservative dialect of the Ugric languages (Abondolo 1998). Syntactic reconstruction led to the same conclusion. É. Kiss (2020a) adopted the comparative method to syntax, forming correspondence sets from syntactic elements. The comparison of the Ugric languages has shown that SOV word order, the fusion of discourse roles and grammatical functions, and the marking of topical objects by object agreement on the verb and by accusative case on the object represent Proto-Ugric heritage in Eastern Mansi.

3.5 Interim summary

Agreement and structural case assignment go hand-in-hand in Eastern Mansi: the subject and the object get nominative and accusative case, respectively, if and only if they elicit agreement on the verb. The correlation of case and agreement must be due to the dual functions that the agreeing subject and object fulfill. As argued by Givón (1975: 185) on the basis of a wide variety of languages, among them emerging languages such as child language and Creol languages, “grammatical agreement is fundamentally a topic related phenomenon, arising from anaphoric pronominalization in topical discourse contexts.⁷ The diachronic rise of grammatical agreement from pronouns, as well as many synchronic functions universally characteristic of grammatical agreement, cannot be explained otherwise. This is not to say that a system, once established, cannot change independently of its point of origin … Our fundamental understanding of the synchronic phenomenon, however, could not be separated from our understanding of its natural diachronic origins. For in a number of subtle ways, those origins persist …" Whereas the fundamental role of agreement is to cross-reference the topic in the verb phrase, the function of structural case is to mark the relative prominence of a noun phrase in the thematic hierarchy of arguments. Case and agreement correlate in Eastern Mansi because they target the same structural level.

4.1 The loosening of word order

In most of the extant Khanty and Mansi dialects, SOV word order and the fusion of discourse roles and grammatical functions is still a strong tendency, but the influence of Russian has loosened their strict correlation; presentative VS (23a), as well as SVX (23b) and SVO (23c) orders have also appeared – see Nikolaeva (1999: 57) on Northern Khanty; Csepregi (1997, 2019) and Asztalos, Gugán, and Mus (2017) on Eastern (Surgut) Khanty; and Riese (2001: 69) on Northern Mansi. According to Asztalos et al. (2017), the proportion of sentences with postverbal constituents is 8–9% both in Eastern Khanty records from the beginning of the 20th century and in contemporary Eastern Khanty texts. What has changed is the function of the postverbal elements; whereas in the old texts, they are topical afterthoughts clarifying the content of the sentence by spelling out a dropped pronoun, an implicit participant or a spatiotemporal element, in the modern texts, the majority of postverbal elements convey new information; they are part of the predicate phrase. For example:

These facts suggest that the rigidly SOV word order determined by structure (22) is slowly giving way to a more flexible, SOV/SVO word order, a mixed type, in these languages.

In Northern Khanty, Eastern Khanty, and Northern Mansi, the roles ‘subject’ and ‘primary topic’ are still mostly fused, often via passivization. A non-referential and/or non-specific underlying subject is demoted, and the highest referential and specific argument (whether a theme, a goal, or a locative) undergoes NP-movement (see Kulonen 1989; Nikolaeva 1999, 2001; Skribnik 2001; Sosa 2017, etc.). The subject-topic is assigned nominative case, and elicits agreement on the verb. Object-verb agreement, too, still mostly follows the pattern inherited from Proto-Ugric: the object elicits verbal agreement if it is topic. Accusative marking, however, has become largely independent of agreement.

4.2 Objects in Eastern Khanty

In the Surgut dialect of Eastern Khanty, an object represented by a 3rd person pronoun is always case-marked by a -t suffix, the same suffix that marks accusative case in Hungarian – see (24a,b) (Csepregi 1998). Since pronominals refer to contextually or situationally given referents, they are the most common, most likely targets of topicalization of all NP types. The overwhelming majority of Eastern Khanty pronominal objects are indeed topics, however, we also find focal personal pronouns in contrastive contexts (24b). Focal pronouns, though case-marked, trigger no verbal agreement.

The generalization of accusative marking to all 3rd person object pronouns must have happened recently in Eastern Khanty. Filchenko (2007), describing the most archaic, Vasyugan subdialect of Eastern Khanty (VK), still found "occasional examples" of uncasemarked VP-internal pronominal objects:⁸

In the case of 1st and 2nd person pronominal objects, accusative marking must be a new development both on VP-internal and on topicalized pronouns. In the system of object marking reconstructed for Proto-Ugric by É. Kiss (2017), based on various fragments of an Inverse Accusative-marking Constraint and an Inverse Agreement Constraint preserved in Hungarian and in some Ob-Ugric dialects, the case-marking of 1st and 2nd person objects and verbal agreement with them are blocked. Versions of these constraints are attested not only in several Uralic languages, among them languages of the Samoyedic branch (Dalrymple and Nikolaeva 2011: 130, 197), but in several non-Uralic languages, as well (Comrie 1980; Bobaljik and Branigan 2006; Béjar and Rezac 2009; Bárány 2015, 2018a, b; etc.).¹⁰ É. Kiss (2013; 2017) analyzed the two constrains as manifestations of an Inverse Topicality Constraint, forbidding that the structural hierarchy of topic constituents contradict the hierarchy of their referents in a so-called Animacy (Comrie 1980) or Topicality (Moravcsik 1974; Givón 1975), or Person Hierarchy (Silverstein 1976; Dixon 1994). The Animacy/Topicality/Person Hierarchy ranks referents on the basis of their activity in a discourse situation, namely:

3rd person participants can be further ranked, for example, with animate referents preceding inanimate ones. Languages tend to collapse this articulated hierarchy into a three-grade or two-grade scale (Comrie 1980). Eastern Khanty has only preserved the Inverse Agreement Constraint. Based on a two-grade animacy scale (1st/2nd person >3rd person), the constraint blocks the assignment of the [+topic] feature to 1st and 2nd person object pronouns, i.e., it blocks their topicalization. Though we can still find caseless 1st and 2nd person objects in Vasyugan texts sporadically (27), the majority of them are accusative-marked (28a,b). Crucially, however, 1st and 2nd person objects – whether caseless or case-marked – never elicit verbal agreement:

In contrast to pronominal objects, objects represented by lexical noun phrases are always caseless in Eastern Khanty, whether they are discourse-new with no verbal agreement (29a) or topical, eliciting agreement (29b).

Like in Eastern Mansi, object–verb agreement is licensed by the [+topic] feature of the object. Referentiality and definiteness are not sufficient; the object must also be discourse-given for agreement to appear. In the secundative construction in (30), the definite recipient is presented as new information, hence it does not trigger agreement:

In sum: accusative marking does not depend on the discourse function of the object in Eastern Khanty any more; pronominal objects are always case-marked (except for sporadic archaisms), whereas lexical objects never bear an overt accusative morpheme. At the same time, object–verb agreement continues to be elicited by the [+topic] feature of the object. These facts indicate that Eastern Khanty has severed accusative marking from object topicalization. The distribution of the allomorphs: -t on personal pronouns, and zero elsewhere, still reflects the former discourse motivation of accusative assignment: inherently topical pronominal objects are the ones that bear a visible accusative suffix, and lexical objects, introducing a new referent in the majority of cases, are the ones that are seemingly caseless.

The Khanty clause structure is similar to the Mansi clause structure represented in (22).¹¹ In this structure, however, vP and SubjP do not represent two separate domains for case assignment any more; the subject and the object are assigned case in the same domain whether the object is in Spec, ObjP, or in Spec,VP. The subject receives unmarked nominative case, and the object, c-commanded by it, assumes dependent accusative.

4.3 Objects in Northern Khanty

Pronominal objects are always case-marked in Northern Khanty, as well – but they bear special allomorphs that are identical with the morphemes of the possessive agreement paradigm (for a diachronic explanation of this fact, see É. Kiss 2020b). Pronominal objects bear the same possessive-accusative endings whether they are VP-internal with no verbal agreement (31a), or they are in topic position, eliciting agreement (31b).

Objects represented by lexical noun phrases receive no morphological marking either in topic or in VP-internal position, but in topic position they trigger verbal agreement:

The facts surveyed so far display a situation similar to that attested in Eastern Khanty: accusative marking is generalized to all objects, with overt accusative morphemes on pronouns and null accusative morphemes on lexical noun phrases – as opposed to object-verb agreement, which is still licensed by the topicality of the object. In Northern Khanty, however, a sign of the dissociation of object–verb agreement and object-topicality has also appeared. As shown by Dalrymple and Nikolaeva (2011: 148–149), the recipient of a secundative construction, and the causee argument of a causative construction always elicit agreement whether or not they are [+referential, +specific]. E.g.:

Apparently, the movement of recipient and causee objects to Spec,ObjP has grammaticized in Northern Khanty.

In sum: Northern Khanty, like Eastern Khanty, has generalized accusative marking from topical objects to all objects. The accusative morpheme has a phonologically null allomorph on lexical noun phrases, and special overt allomorphs on personal pronouns represented by possessive agreement suffixes of the same person and number as the pronominal stem. At the same time, agreement depends on whether the object has been raised to Spec, ObjP. In Northern Khanty, recipient objects – whether definite or indefinite – always trigger verbal agreement; apparently, their movement to Spec, ObjP is obligatory.¹²

4.4 Objects in Northern Mansi

Northern Mansi object marking is similar to Northern Khanty object marking in most respects. Personal pronouns bear accusative morphemes which are non-distinct from possessive agreement suffixes of the same person and number as the pronominal stem (Kálmán 1976a, b). Northern Mansi pronominal objects bear such possessive-accusative suffixes whether they are non-agreeing carriers of new information inside the VP as in (34a), or they are agreeing topics (34b).

Whereas pronominal objects are always case-marked, objects represented by lexical noun phrases never bear any visible case ending; their topic status is only encoded by verbal agreement. Compare (35a) and (35b): the non-agreeing focal object in (35a), and the agreeing topical object in (35b) are both caseless. (35a) also illustrates the loosening of the former, strictly SOV word order: the focal object is not immediately preverbal, and there is a postverbal constituent.

In Northern Mansi, similarly to Eastern Khanty but in contrast to Northern Khanty, the recipient object of secundative constructions does not obligatorily elicit object-verb agreement:

Bíró and Sipőcz (2017) observe that in their Northern Mansi database, the recipient objects that fail to elicit verbal agreement are all objects that are of a higher person than the subject, and they raise the possibility that this is a consequence of the Inverse Agreement Constraint. However, they also have both monotransitive (37a,b) and ditransitive examples (37c) where an object that is of a higher person than the subject elicits agreement, which provides evidence against the hypothesis that the Inverse Agreement Constraint is active in Northern Mansi:

Recapping the relevant properties of Northern Mansi: accusative marking has become independent of discourse functions in Northern Mansi, as well. All pronominal objects bear overt accusative markers, which are non-distinct from possessive suffixes (similarly to Eastern Mansi - see footnote 4, and to Northern Khanty). The accusative marker of lexical objects, by contrast, is always null. Generalized accusative marking indicates that vP and SubjP form a shared domain for case assignment: whether the object of a transitive construction is in Spec,VP, or in Spec, ObjP, it is c-commanded by the subject in Spec, SubjP, and receives dependent accusative. At the same time, agreement is only elicited if the object has been raised to Spec, ObjP.

4.5 Interim summary

Eastern Khanty, as well as Northern Khanty and Northern Mansi still preserve the correlation of nominative case and subject–verb agreement. This must be a consequence of the fact that the subject of these languages, nearly always occupying the specifier of a SubjP projection, still fulfills a dual, subject-topic role. Although Nikolaeva (1999) reports the occurrence of presentative VS orders in the Russified speech of the younger generations, such sentences are still exceptional. The parallelism of accusative marking and object–verb agreement, on the other hand, is disappearing, which must be due to the fact that objects and oblique complements more and more often appear in non-canonical positions, e.g., in SVO and SVX orders. Object agreement on the verb still encodes the topic function of the object, however, accusative marking has been generalized to all objects. This means in terms of dependent case theory that the subject and the object are always assigned case in the same domain. In terms of Baker (2015: 149), v has become a soft phase head, as a consequence of which the contents of the VP remain active in the SubjP phase. The morphological realization of generalized accusative case (with an overt allomorph on pronouns, and a phonologically empty allomorph on lexical objects) is the fossilization of the two most common syntactic scenarios of the former stage of these languages: pronominal objects functioning as topical, hence case-marked elements, and lexical objects introducing new, hence caseless information.