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Лекция №3. The category of case

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Lecture #3. The category of case

  1. The definition

  2. The declinable and the indeclinable nouns.

  3. The relation expressed by the Possessive case.

  4. Different views on the category of case.

The definition: The category of case of the noun expresses relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other things of properties or actions by means of the grammatical morpheme.

The most general view is that the category of case of an English noun is expressed by the opposition of the Common case and the Possessive case. The Possessive case is the marked member of the opposition. It is marked in form by means of the apostrophe s and it is marked in meaning because the meaning in the Possessive case is rather narrow. The Common case is the unmarked member of the opposition. It is not marked in form because it is characterized by the zero morpheme, and it is not marked in meaning, because its meaning is very wide. It includes the meaning of the six cases of the Russian nouns and their shades of meanings.

II. The declinable and the indeclinable

Not all the nouns in Modern English can form the Possessive case. With regard to the category of case nouns fall into two lexico-grammatical subclasses:

declinable and indeclinable.

The subclass of declinable nouns is limited. It includes

  1. Nouns which denote living beings i.e. animate nouns: Pete’s friend, sister’s copybook.

  2. Some inanimate nouns which denote groups of people (government, party, committee). E.g. the committee’s decision.

  3. Nouns which denote units of time and space: week, year, mile, kilometer.

E. g. a week’s absence, a mile’s distance.

  1. Nouns which denote names of countries and cities: Moscow’s population, England’s export.

  2. Nouns in set expressions: at a stone’s throw, to one heart’s desire, at arm’s length.

  3. Some substantivised adverbs (today, yesterday): today’s newspaper, yesterday’s report.

In Modern English there is a tendency to use the –s inflection even more widely, practically with all the nouns. For example, A.Hailey uses in his books such words as engine, telephone, car, room in the Possessive case:

e. g. The telephone’s ringing was an interruption. He was conscious of the room’s simplicity.

III. The relation expressed by the Possessive case

The meaning of the possessive case is rather narrow and it is limited to the meaning of the following relations:

1. The possessive case denotes the relations of possession or belonging (my sister’s book, Pete’s bed);

2. Personal or social relations (my friend’s parents – the possessive case denotes personal relations, the dean’s secretary – the possessive case denotes social relations).

3. The relations of the whole and its part (the cat’s tail, the boy’s leg).

4. Subjective relations (my father’s arrival).

The noun in the possessive case denotes a person who performed a certain action and the noun following it, it denotes an action performed.

Their relations are subjective because they remind us of the relation between the subject and the predicate: my father’s arrival → my father arrived.

5. The relations of authorship (Byron’s poems, my friend’s letter).

6. Adverbial relations (yesterday’s meeting → meeting which was held yesterday).

7. Quantitative or qualitative relations: a month’s leave- quantitative (how long it lasts), man’s clothes – qualitative (Whose? What kind of?).

Due to the fact that the possessive case denotes not only the relations of possession but a number of other relatives (as we have just seen), some linguists call this case the Genitive case. This term is used in the book “English grammar” by Kobrina and others (например «Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка» Бархударова). In the text-books for secondary schools they use the term the Possessive case (it’s easier to use the term the Possessive case at school – it denotes possession).

IV. Different views on the category of case

Different theories are put forward in connection with the category of case of the English noun. First of all some linguists deny the existence of the category of case of the English noun. They base their theory on the fact that in Modern English the apostrophe s inflection may be added not only to nouns but to whole groups of words. This phenomenon is called group possessive or group genitive. For example we have the group possessive when the apostrophe s is joined to two nouns connected by the conjunction “and”: Smith and Brown’s company, Mum and Dad’s room.

The apostrophe s may be joined to a group of words ending to a numeral.

E.g. He answered my question after a minute or two’s pause.

The apostrophe s may be joined to a noun phrase which may even contain a subordinate clause. E.g. The man I saw yesterday’s son is in Kiev now. The girl I have been dancing with’s name is Helen.

The linguists who deny the existence of the category of case of the noun say that the ‘s is no longer a grammatical morpheme of the possessive case but it has become a certain syntactical element. Prof.Vorontsova called this syntactical element “a postposition” (послелог).

Professor Bloch considers that this extreme point of view can hardly be accepted at present because as a rule, in the greatest majority of cases the apostrophe s is attached to join to nouns. Word combinations like “Smith and Brown’s company” or “a minute or two’s pause” are very rare in English. Statistics show that in 96% of examples the apostrophe s is added to word combinations.

Yet apostrophe s has peculiarities of its own. It is different from the case morphemes in other languages and it is clear that the case system of the modern English noun is undergoing (претерпевает) changes.

There are theories according to which the English noun has more than two cases. One of such theories is the theory of positional cases (позиционных падежей). According to that theory the unchangeable forms of nouns are understood as different cases because of the different positions of the nouns in the sentence. There are such cases as the Nominative case, the Dative case, the Accusative case, the Genitive case, the Vocative case.

Such four cases as the nominative case, the dative case, the accusative case and the vocative case are named in addition to the genitive case which is expressed morphologically by S. The Nominative case is the case of the subject, the Dative case is the case of the indirect object, the Accusative case is the case of the direct object and the Vocative case is the case of the address.

E.g. Peter (The Nominative case) gave his sister (The Dative case) an apple (The Accusative case). Come along, Peter (The Vocative case)!

The theory of positional cases can be easily criticized. The case is a morphological category and it must be expressed by grammatical morphemes, but the so-called nominative, dative, accusative and vocative cases are not expressed by morphological morphemes.

Some linguists put forward the theory which is called the theory of prepositional cases. According to that theory the cases of the English nouns may be expressed by means of prepositions and word-order. The Genitive case is expressed not only by means of the apostrophe and ending, but by the preposition as well. The Dative case is expressed by the preposition TO. The Accusative case is distinguished from the Dative case by the word order only.

This theory has the same drawbacks as the theory of positional cases. Linguists try to find in the English language the same cases which are to be found in German and other languages. But the fact is that in the English language only one case is characterized by the grammatical morpheme “apostrophe s”, and it is opposed to the common case which is characterized by the zero morpheme. Consequently, most linguists consider that the category of case of the English nouns is expressed by the opposition of the common case and the possessive case.

Nevertheless it is very important to know the meanings of English prepositions which render the meaning of the cases in other languages. Thus when we teach pupils we explain that the English preposition OF renders the meaning of the Russian Genitive case. The English preposition TO renders the meaning of the Russian Dative case. The prepositions BY and WITH render the meanings of the Russian Instrumental case.