IX. Noun. The category of case

Case is a morphological category of a noun showing its relations to other objects or phenomena, manifested in the noun declension.

There are four theories concerning the case system of English. The first is the ‘limited case theory’ and recognizes the system of two cases, the common, non-marked member of the opposition and possessive or genitive case, expressed by the suffix ‘s [-s, -z, -iz]. The genitive case of the bulk of the plural nouns is expressed only by the graphic sign of the apostrophe, phonetically unexpressed. The genitive case has several meanings:

- the genitive of possessor: the manager’s desk – the diagnostic test is the transformation into a construction expressing the idea of possession – the desk belongs to the manager;

- the genitive of integer (целое, неотъемлемая часть): the patient's health - the health as part of the patient's state;

- the genitive of received qualification: the computer’s reliability – the reliability received by the computer;

- the genitive of agent: the great man’s arrival – the great man arrives;

- the genitive of author: Beethoven’s sonatas – Beethoven composed the sonatas;

- the genitive of patient: the team’s defeat – the team is defeated;

- the genitive of destination: children’s books – books for children;

- the genitive of dispensed (распределенная) qualification: a girl’s voice – a voice characteristic of a girl;

- the genitive of comparison: the lion’s courage – the courage like that of a lion;

- the genitive of adverbial: yesterday’s newspaper – the newspaper issued yesterday;

- the genitive of quantity: an hour’s delay – a delay which lasted an hour.

The limited case theory is most broadly accepted by linguists (O.Jespersen, A. Smirnitsky).

However, it is opposed by the theory, according to which English has lost all the cases in the course of its historical development. The genitive case is considered to be a noun with a postposition, as ‘s is only loosely connected with the noun and can be used with different ports of speech as well as with the whole word groups: somebody else’s daughter, the young moon’s light. Thus, ‘s is a syntactic means, a particle. Also, the ‘s construction is parallel to the preposition ‘of’ construction. Besides, the usage of this case is limited to animate nouns and a limited list of modifiers of time and place. However, the existence of clear opposition of the marked and non-marked member proves the correctness of this limited case system. The phrasal use of ‘s is stylistically marked, which shows its transpositional nature. As for parallelizm with the prepositional form, the latter doesn’t have the meaning of the subject: My Lord’s choice of the butler.

The third theory is the ‘theory of positional cases”. The unchangeable forms of the noun are differentiated as different cases by the functional positions in the sentence. Thus, we can distinguish one inflectional genitive case, and 4 non-inflectional: nominative, vocative, dative, and accusative. These cases are supported by the parallel cases of the personal pronouns: Rain falls – position of a subject, nominative case; Are you coming, children? – function of the address, vocative case; I gave John a penny – indirect object, the dative case; direct object, the accusative case. However, the invariable form doesn’t allow us to consider them to be different morphological forms. This only proves that the functional meaning rendered by case forms in inflectional languages, like Russian or Latin, can be expressed by other grammatical means, in particular, by word order.

The fourth theory is that of “prepositional cases”, according to which, the combinations of nouns with certain prepositions can be considered morphological case forms: dative – to, for; genitive – of, instrumental – by, with. But, if we follow this theory, every combination of a noun with a preposition can be considered another case, which will lead to redundancy in terminology.

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

1. declension - склонение

2. common case – общий падеж

3. genitive case – родительный падеж

4. possessor - обладатель

5. integer – неотъемлемая часть

6. received qualification – приобретенное свойство

7. agent – агенс, осуществляющий действие

8. patient – пациенс, ощущающий на себе действия

9. destination - адресат

10. dispensed qualification – качество, распространенное на предмет

11. comparison - сравнение

12. adverbial – относящийся к обстоятельству места или времени

13. quantity - количественный

14. limited case theory – теория ограниченных падежей

15. nominative - именательный

16. vocative - звательный

17. accusative - винительный

18. inflectional languages – языки, где слова изменяют форму при помощи окончаний

19. dative - дательный

20. instrumental – творительный

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