Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

116(apples) and a Dative (Pete). However, case frames are subject to certain constraints.Firstly, a deep case can occur only once per sentence (note that in the previous exampleeach case occurs only once). Secondly, some cases are obligatory whereas others areoptional. Thirdly, if an obligatory case is deleted, the sentence will be ungrammatical.For example, sentence [2] below is ungrammatical because the verb‘s obligatory Dativecase is not present:[2] *Mary gave the apples.Another fundamental hypothesis of Case Grammar is that grammaticalfunctions, such as subject or object, are determined by the semantic valency of the verband not by deep structure. For Fillmore, the relation called subject is an exclusivelysurface-structure phenomenon (as opposed to deep-structure phenomenon). This wouldexplain subjectless sentences and languages appearing to lack entities corresponding tothe subjects of the grammatical tradition.Case Grammar is often considered the beginning of Fillmore‘s work on lexicalsemantics (1976, 1977a, 1982, 1985) as well as the linguistic basis of FrameNet (cf.Fillmore et al. 2003a: 240). As the following section will reveal, the author eventuallycame to realize that the rather spare deep cases that he had identified were not enough tocapture the full range of meanings expressed in language.3.1.2. Semantic framesThe previous section has just referred to the importance of the contributions of Tesnièreand Chomsky for the theoretical model that Fillmore elaborated in 1968 and which hecontinued developing since then. Although Fillmore had used the term frames as whenof the proposal of Case Grammar, it was not until his 1976 paper, ―Frame semantics and