Book excerpt: This manuscript is a revision of my 1982 MIT dissertation of the same name. A previous version of sections of chapters 1 and 5 appeared as 'Case Agreement in Russian', in The Mental Representation of Gram matical Relations, edited by Joan Bresnan, MIT Press, 1983. I am grateful to MIT Press for permission to reproduce parts of that article here. I would like to express my appreciation to Catherine V. Chvany, who has read several versions of this manuscript over the years, and provided encouragement and invaluable comments. Thanks go also to Johanna Nichols whose careful reading and useful suggestions have improved the book. I am also deeply grateful to Joan Bresnan, Ken Hale, Morris Halle, Beth Levin, and Jane Simpson for helpful discussions of the material contained herein. For sharing their native intuitions, special thanks go to Alina Israeli, Boris Katz, and Evgenij Pinsky, and to Liza Chernyak, Volodja Gitin, Victoria Koff, Larissa Levin, Victoria Schiller, and Elena Semeka-Pankra tova. Joyce Friedman, Beth Levin, and Jane Simpson kindly provided assistance with bibliographical references and proofreading. This manuscript was prepared using the computer facilities at Boston University, and lowe a large debt of gratitude to the following people for providing access to equipment and technical assistance: William H. Henneman, Philip Budne, Barry Shein, and Paul Blanchard. IX INTRODUCTION The study of case, once primarily of interest to philologists, has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves from syntacticians.