ABSTRACT
Patterns of objective case in Finnish, or, more precisely, case marking on internal arguments and quasi-arguments, are problematic for Case Theory for a number of reasons and so have attracted scrutiny in the previous literature on Finnish. In simple transitives, subjects appear in nominative case and objects in accusative (identical in form to singular genitive case in full DPs) or partitive case. However, despite predictions made by Case Theory and Burzio's Generalization, full DP 'nominative objects' (here referred to as 'zero accusatives') surface in certain well-defined syntactic contexts, but alternate with accusativemarked animate pronouns in the same environments. Moreover, the distribution of both of these accusative forms alternates freely with partitive case. A separate form for plurals also exists, which is identical for nominative and accusative cases.
