The category of case of English nouns. Meaning of case (R.Quirk et al). The six cases of nouns (Charles Fillmore).

is the morphological category of the noun manifested in the forms of noun declension and showing the relations of the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena. is a very speculative issue, so different scholars stick to a different number of cases. The following four approaches, advanced at various times by different scholars

Theory of positional cases J. C. Nesfield, M. Deutchbein, M. Bryant et al follow the patterns of classical Latin grammar, distinguishing

• NOMINATIVE (case corresponds with the subject),
•  GENITIVE, DATIVE (indirect object),
• ACCUSATIVE (direct object),
• VOCATIVE (with the address).
• “The theory of positional cases” presents an obvious confusion of the formal, morphological characteristics of the noun and its functional, syntactic features.

Theory of prepositional cases (G. Curme)

• Latin-oriented, dased on old school grammar traditions: treats the combinations of nouns with prepositions as specific analytical case forms,
•  e.g.: the DATIVE case is expressed by nouns with the prepositions ‘to’ and ‘for’,

§  the GENITIVE case by nouns with the preposition ‘of’, the instrumental case by nouns with the preposition ‘with’, e.g.: for the girl, of the girl, with a key.

§ Theory of limited case H. Sweet, O. Jespersen, developed by Russian linguists A. Smirnitsky, L. Barkhudarov

•  the most widely accepted theory of case in English
• The category of case is realized in full in animate nouns and restrictedly in inanimate nouns in English, hence the name – “the theory of limited case”
• the category of case is expressed by the opposition of two forms: the first form, “the genitive case”, is the strong member of the opposition, marked by the postpositional element ‘–s’ after an apostrophe in the singular and just an apostrophe in the plural; the second, unfeatured form is the weak member of the opposition and is usually referred to as “the common case” (“non-genitive”).

• “the theory of the possessive postposition” G. N. Vorontsova, A. M. Mukhin
• The main arguments to support this point: first, the postpositional element ‘s is not only used with words, but also with the units larger than the word, with word-combinations and even sentences, e.g.: his daughter Mary’s arrival, the man I saw yesterday’s face

In present-day linguistics case is used in two senses: 1) semantic, or logic, and 2) syntactic.
The semantic case concept was developed by C. J. Fillmore in the late 1960s. Ch. Fillmore  ntroduced syntactic-semantic classification of cases. They show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to him, verbs may stand to different relations to nouns. There are 6 cases:

1. Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;

2. Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door;

3. Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of action identified by the verb);

4. Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged (the result of the action or state identified by the verb);

5. Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;

6. Objective case (O) John stole the book.

Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sister’s coat). The category of case correlates with the objective category of possession. The case category in English is realized through the opposition: The Common Case :: The Possessive Case (sister :: sister’s). However, in modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following:

1. Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father,

2. Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,

3. Objective Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released,

4. Genitive of origin: the boy’s story – the boy told the story,

5. Descriptive Genitive: children’s books – books for children

6. Genitive of measure and partitive genitive: a mile’s distance, a day’s trip

7. Appositive genitive: the city of London.

⇐ Предыдущая12345678910Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: