A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

case grammar 67
been devoted to this point, in particular to criticism of traditional grammars
of English which insisted nonetheless on analysing the English noun in terms of
cases. In some languages, highly complex morphological systems are encountered
– according to some, Finnish can be analysed as having sixteen cases, for
example – along with a correspondingly complex descriptive terminology (using
such terms as inessive (‘in’ a place), elative (‘from inside’ a place) and illative
(‘into’ a place)).
(2) When written with a capital C (Case), the term refers to an abstract notion
which is distinct from the morphologically marked case described under
(1) above. Abstract Case (or deep Case) is present even in languages (such as
Chinese) which lack morphological case on noun phrases; it is usually assumed
to be congruent with morphological case when such features are present. Case
theory is one of the (sub-)theories of government-binding theory: it deals
with the assignment of abstract Case and its morphological realizations, restricting
the distribution of lexical NPs at S-structure. Structural Case is assigned
to NPs at S-structure; inherent Case is assigned to NPs in D-structure. Casemarking
rules assign structural Case to certain NP positions (e.g. objective,
where the NP is governed by a transitive verb or preposition), and the
Case filter restricts the range of sentences which can be generated in this way,
making movement of the object-NP to the subject position obligatory in passives,
and preventing the appearance of an adverbial between a verb and its object.
Case theory in this sense must be clearly distinguished from that outlined in
case grammar. In the minimalist programme, Case-marking is expressed as
Case-checking.
case grammar An approach to grammatical analysis devised by the American
linguist Charles Fillmore (b. 1929) in the late 1960s, within the general orientation
of generative grammar. It is primarily a reaction against the standardtheory
analysis of sentences, where notions such as subject, object, etc., are
neglected in favour of analyses in terms of NP, VP, etc. By focusing on syntactic
functions, however, it was felt that several important kinds of semantic relationship
could be represented, which it would otherwise be difficult or impossible
to capture. A set of sentences such as The key opened the door, The door
was opened by/with the key, The door opened, The man opened the door with
a key, etc., illustrate several ‘stable’ semantic roles, despite the varying surface
grammatical structures. In each case the key is ‘instrumental’, the door is the
entity affected by the action, and so on. Case grammar formalizes this insight
using a model which shows the influence of the predicate calculus of formal
logic: the deep structure of a sentence has two constituents, modality
(features of tense, mood, aspect and negation, relating to the sentence as a
whole) and proposition (within which the verb is considered central, and the
various semantic roles that elements of structure can have are listed with
reference to it, and categorized as cases).
The term ‘case’ is used because of the similarity with several of the traditional
meanings covered by this term (see case (1)), but the deep-structure cases
recognized by the theory do not systematically correspond with anything in the
surface morphology or syntax. The original proposal set up six cases (agentive,
instrumental, dative, factitive, locative and objective) and gave rules
for their combination in defining the use of verbs, e.g. a verb like open can be