Grammatical category of case – GC which marks the semantic role of the noun in the sentence & finds a grammatical expression in the language.
Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun, showing the relations of the object to other objects and phenomena. In modern Eng is limited to the system of 2 cases: common & possessive which replects the relations bween Ws on the level of the phrase
In highly inflectional, synthetic lges the relations bween verb and other parts of the [] are expressed morphologically. Case relations may also be expressed syntactically: by the position of the N in the [] in its reference to the position of the V
The morphological expression of case in modern Eng is limited to the system of 2 cases. The Cat of case of the Eng N is constituted by the binary privative opposition of the common & possessive cases. The formal marker of the PC is the morpheme -'s [z, s, iz] The origin of it is rather obscure (a remnant of the OE Genitive case or the result of the contraction of the phrase the King his head – The King’s head). This morpheme can be joined to the phrases (someone else’s problems), and even []s (I forgot the woman I danced yesterday’s name)
The apostrophy serves to distinguish in writing the singular noun in the possessive case from the plural noun in the common case. The possessive of the most of plural nouns remains phonetically unexpressed: the few exceptions concern only some of the irregular plurals: e.g. the actresses' dresses, the children's room.
. The Gram Meaning of the PC is the idea of possessivity (pure possessivity my sister’s money)
The secondary Gr Meanings are:
1. agent or subject of the action my brother’s arrival
2. object of the action the criminal’s arrest
3. authorship Shakespeare’s sonnet
4. destination a sailor’s uniform
5. measure a day’s wait
6. location at the dean’s
7. description or comparison a lion’s courage
Four special views should be considered in the analysis of this problem.
1) The Theory of Positional Cases
Linguistic formulations of the theory may be found in the works of Deutschbein and other scholars. In accord with the theory of positional cases the unchangable forms of the noun may express different cases due to the functional positions occupied by the noun in the sentence. Thus, the English noun, on the analogy of classical Latin grammar, would distinguish, besides the inflexional posessive case, also the non-inflexional, i.e. purely positional cases: nominative, vocative, dative and accusative.
E.g. the nominative case: The letter is here. (subject to a verb)
the vocative case: (address) Are you ready, students?
the dative case: (indirect object to a verb) She gave the students some books.
the accusative case: (direct object and also object to a preposition) The books were given by the teacher.
The case form is the morphological form of the noun, but the positional case theory substitutes the functional characteristics of the part of the sentence for the morphological features of the part of speech.
2) The Theory of Prepositional Cases
It is also connected with the old school grammar teaching. According to it, combinations of nouns with prepositions on some object and attributive word-groups should be understood as morphological case forms. Here belong the dative case (to + noun, for + noun) and the posessive case (of + noun).
Curme calls these prepositions “nflexional prepositions”, i.e. morphemes. It should follow from this that only the of-, to-, and for- phrases, but also all the other prepositional phrases in English must be regarded as “analytical cases”. As a result, the total number of such cases would become indefinitely large (Ilyish).
3) The Limited Case Theory
It is most broadly accepted among linguists at present. It was formulated by Sweet, Jespersen and was developed by Smirnitsky, Barkhudarov. It is based on the opposition of the possessive or posessive form as the strong member and the common, or “non-posessive” from as the weak member.
It is shown in full with animate nouns, and is restricted with inanimate nouns.
4) Postpositional Theory (No-Case Theory)
Thus view insists that the English noun has completely lost the category of case in the course of its historical development. The view is advanced by G.N. Vorontsova.
First, the postpositional element -'s is loosely connected with the noun, as it is used not only with single nouns, but also with whole word-groups. E.g. Somebody else's daughter. The blonde I had been dancing with's name was Bernice (Salinger). The girl in my class's mother.
Second, the 's can be attached to few nouns denoting living beings, in other cases the parallel prepositional construction is used.
Opposing this theory linguists consider the previous examples stylistically marked, the more self-dependent the construction with the case-sign 's, the stronger the stylistic colouring. Besides, according to statistical observation, the 's sign is attached to individual nouns in 96 percent of its textual occurrences.
Though the main meaning of the posessive case is possession, it undergoes modifications depending on the lexical meaning of the noun:
John's house - John has a house;
John's happiness - John is happy;
John's smile - John is smiling.
The meaning of possession is limited to nouns denoting animate things while the posessive of the nouns denoting lifeless things is metaphoric. E.g. the river's brink.
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