Kurdistan Regional Government-Iraq

Ministry of Higher Education and

scientific research

University of Garmian

College of Education

English Department

Case Theory

Prepared by
Zainab Hashim Majeed
Supervised by;
Dr. Azad Fatah
June, 2017
Table of Content

Abstract ………………………………………………………………………….………………………… II

1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
2. The evolution of Case Theory……………………………………………………………….. 2
3. Types of Case ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
3.1. Morphological case …………………………………………………………………….. 4
3.1.A. Nominative Case ……………………………………………………………………. 5
3.1.B. Accusative Case ……………………………………………………………………… 6
3.1.C. Genitive Case …………………………………………………………………………. 6
3.2. Case Assignment and M-command …………………………………………….. 7
3.3. M-command as a barrier ……………………………………………………………. 7
3.4. Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) ……………………………………………….. 8
3.5. Case filter …………………………………………………………………………………… 9
4. Conclusion …………………………………………………….…………………………………….. 10
Bibliography ………………………………………..………………………………………………. 11

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 Abstract

Case theory deals with a special property that all noun phrases are assumed to have.
Case is a very important term used in syntax. It has many divisions and relations with
other grammatical concepts which cause a kind of difficulty in identifying its types.

The present paper deals with the notion of Case Theory. It aims at classifying and
defining the different types of case so as to bring the reader into a closer understanding of
it.

In order to achieve the aims of the present study and solve its problem, a theoretical
background has presented. It includes a number of comprehensive definitions of the case
theory. Moreover, a classification and a detailed explanation of the case types are also
presented.

The conclusion reveals that English does not have a covert morphological system
to assign Case. So an assumption was made to put an abstract Case system that is rich
and full with which the paper is dealing.

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III
1. Introduction
Case theory is the study of thematic roles and grammatical case in languages in the
world. Case and Case Theory can be defined in different ways according to many authors:

David Crystal defined case as a grammatical category used in the analysis of word
classes to identify the syntactic relation between the elements of the sentence in terms of
NOMINATIVE, ACCUSATIVE etc. (Crystal, 2003, p. 63)

According to Cook and Newson (2007:146), case theory is a central part of

Government and Binding theory which plays an important role in the analysis of the
movements of words in sentences. It is of two main kinds: morphological case and
Abstract case.

Case Theory, said Haegeman, accounts for some of the formal properties of overt
NPs and integrates the traditional notion of case in the grammar. Abstract case is a
universal property, while the overt realization of abstract case by means of morphological
case . (Haegeman, 1994, p. 155)

Radford argued that the different case forms of a pronoun are the different forms
which the pronoun has in different sentence positions. It is traditionally said that English
has three cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive. Personal pronouns inflect overtly for
all three cases, whereas noun expressions inflect only for genitive case. (Radford, 2004, p.
326)

Fromkin et al defined Case theory as the study of thematic role and grammatical
case in languages of the world. Case is a characteristic of nouns and pronouns, and in
some languages articles and adjectives, determined by the function of the sentence, and
generally indicated by the morphological form of the word, e.g., (I) is in a nominative case
of the first person singular pronoun in English and functions as a subject; ( me) is in the
accusative case and functions as an object. (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2003, p. 576)

The present study aims at identifying, defining, classifying, and explaining case
types so as to clarify all the ambiguities accompanying the study of case system.

Case system can be divided into two major types, morphological and abstract.
Morphological case is further classified into nominative, accusative, and genitive. Types
of case will be introduced in the third chapter. The next chapter will be devoted to the
evolution of case theory.

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2. The evolution of Case Theory

Current western methods of analyzing language follow a tradition that can be traced
back to Greeks, who developed criteria for determining word classes and terminology
for describing word classes and grammatical categories. One of the main criteria was
case, which for Greeks was a system of word forms that signified relationships in
sentences. The main word class to exhibit case forms was the noun, which for the
Alexandrine Greeks included the adjective. Other word classes to show variation for
case were pronouns, articles, and participles. (Blake, 2012).
The study of case took a central position in grammars of the classical tradition
before the twentieth century. Example of Latin pervaded much of this tradition for
many centuries. But many of the ideas of the tradition were taken from the Greeks,
particularly the Stoics. But they did not give a precise characterization of all the types
of case, they introduced only two cases: the casus rectus, the nominative, which
marks the subject of the finite verb, and the oblique cases, which at least in
some uses signal a semantic relation to the verb, as explained in (1):

(1) Missı¯ le¯ga¯tı¯ Athe¯na¯s sunt

Sent envoys:NOM Athens:ACC are
(‘Envoys were sent to Athens’)
(Gildersleeve & Lodge, 1968, p. 214).

Gildersleeve and Lodge noticed that the use of the accusative in (1) is limited to
‘Names of Towns and small Islands’, while 'Countries and large islands being looked
upon as areas, and not as points, require prepositions'(1968: 213–14) as in (2):

(2) In Graeciam pervenit

in Greece:ACC s/he.arrived
(‘S/he arrived in Greece’)

A firm establishment belongs to the nineteenth century of a distinction between

grammatical and notional or ‘local’ cases, not just between nominative and oblique
cases. The suggestion that some other cases as well as the nominative should be
defined syntactically being associated particularly with the name of Theodor
Rumpel (1845; 1866). For him the nominative is the case of the subject of the verb,
the accusative that of the ‘direct object’, the dative that of the ‘indirect object’, and
the genitive marks subjects or ‘objects’ of nouns.

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 A return to a concern with grammars of case was attempted in a variety of work
in the late 1960s and 1970s, some of which came to be referred to as ‘case grammar’.
Such a development is first evident in the work of Fillmore (1965; 1966; 1968a; 1971),
but it is also manifested, independently to begin with, in a range of other contemporary
works, including Anderson( 1968a; 1969; 1971b), Brekle (1970), and Chafe (1970), as
well as to some extent in variants of ‘functional grammar’. (Anderson, 2006)

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3. Types of Case
In general, there are two notions to refer to case: morphological case and abstract
case. Morphological case is the realization of abstract case, it states the change in form
under the government of another element in the sentence.

3.1. Morphological Case

Morphological case is the realization of abstract Case. In English, it involves three

types of changes in the pronouns and proper nouns: nominative, accusative, and
genitive, as it is shown in table (1) below:

Table (1) Case Types:

features Nominative Accusative Genitive

Proper Name Jane Jane Jane’s
NP the man the man the man’s
1sg I me my
2sg You you your
3sg.m He him his
3sg.f She her her
3sg.n It it its
1pl We us our
2pl You you your
3pl They them their

As shown in the above table, one of the interesting things about pronouns is that they
change their form according to their function in the sentence. For instance, when the first
personal pronoun is used as a subject, it takes the form I (Nominative Case), when it is
used as the object of the sentence it takes the form me ( Accusative Case), and when
possessive, the form my is used as illustrated in the table. (Poole, 2011)

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 Case is assigned by certain elements:

-Verbs assign Accusative case to their objects

-Prepositions assign Accusative case to their objects.

-Nouns assign Genitive case to their ‘subjects’.

Abstract Case
English does not have the overt morphological case-marking that we find, for
example, in Latin and German that have a morphologically rich case system where
distinct cases are overtly marked on nouns, adjectives, determiners, etc. as well as on
pronouns. So English was assumed to have a fully-fledged system of abstract case similar
to that of Latin and German, which is part of universal grammar. In English, the abstract
case is not realized morphologically. (Haegeman, 1994)

Abstract Case is distinguished by the use of capital C at the beginning.

3.1.1. Nominative Case

It is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which

generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective,
as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing
something" is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in
dictionaries.
Consider the following example:

(3) He saw him.

He is the Nominative Case form of the pronoun and is associated only with the
subject of finite clauses, that is to say those having tense, number, etc. (Cook &
Newson, 2007, p. 75)

Another example is:

(4) John saved the cat.

here the proper noun John is a Nominative Case.

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 3.1.2. Accusative Case

It is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. A
noun occurring after a verb with no preposition is often, not always, in Accusative
Case. (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2003, p. 508)

In the sentence:

(5) He sees the woman.

he is the subject of the sentence, while in

(6) The woman sees him.

him is the object.

In English the two uses are distinguished by different forms of the pronoun:
he/him. If, however, instead of a pronoun, we use a noun, we make no such distinction
in the form of the word. Thus, we use the same word "man" in both The man sees the
woman and The woman sees the man. In many languages, however, different forms of
the word are used not only for pronouns, but for nouns too.

3.1.3. Genitive case

When a noun is a possessor, it is in the Genitive Case.

(7) The teacher's car is red.

Genitive case is indicated by the use of apostrophe 's, e.g. john's dog, the man's head,
and so on. In the case of pronouns, possessive pronouns (my, your, his, etc.) are used.

3.2.Case Assignment and M-command

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 Another question to be raised here, under what conditions is a given DP assigned
Case? through the previous examples, objects of verbs and prepositions are found to be
assigned accusative Case, subjects are assigned nominative Case and the DP possessives
are assigned genitive Case by 's.

If one has a look on these examples:

(8) a. She stopped the bus.

b. *She\Her to stop the bus would be good.

It is clear that when the subject is finite, it assigned nominative Case as in (8a). When
the subject is non-finite, it does not, as in (8b).

The same is with the accusative case:

(9) a. John hit the ball.

b. *John slept the ball.

The accusative Case is assigned on the object only when the verb is transitive (9a),
when the verb is intransitive, (9b), the sentence will be wrong. So, there should be a
connection between the assignor and the assignee, the Case assignment is taking place
within the maximal projection of the Case assignor (m-command). (Poole, 2011, pp. 100-
102)

3.3. M-command as a barrier

If Case assignment depends on only m-command and nothing else, it would be a
problem. notice the following example:

(10) I read the book in Moscow.

The book is assigned accusative Case because of the m-command of the verb. But
Moscow needs to be protected from being assigned Case by the verb. To do this, one
7
should assume that heads exert a "zone of control" within their maximal projection,
preventing Case assignment by anything from outside. So maximal projection forms a
barriers to Case assignment within the following rules:

a assigns b if and only if:

a) a is a Case assignor,

b) a m-commands b, and

c) no barrier intervenes (where any maximal projection is a barrier).

3.4. Exceptional Case Marking (ECM)

There are many exceptions to the rules that are introduced earlier, as in the following
example:

(11) I believe Mary to be the best actress.

This case is exceptional. It is not obvious whether Mary is of nominative Case or

accusative case. If Mary was replaced by a pronoun, the following will result:

(12)a. I believe her to be the best actress.

b. *I believe she to be the best actress.

It became clear that Mary is of accusative Case not nominative. It is not surprising that
it does not assign a nominative Case because it is known that the subject of infinite
clauses does not assign nominative Case, what is surprising is the accusative Case. In
higher clauses, the only source for accusative Case is the verb. In this example, Mary is
not the direct object of the verb believe, it is the subject of the infinite clause. This is why
it is called Exceptional Case Marking. The common accusative Case assigned to Mary will
be in the following sentence:

(13) I expect Mary to be the best actress.

here Mary is the object of the expectation. (Poole, 2011, p. 104)

3.5. Case filter

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 Case filter is a filter which requires an NP argument to be case marked, or be
associated with a case position. It introduces that a nominal element that does not
display morphological case distinctions cannot occupy a position to which no Case is
assigned. Thus the requirement that a nominal element have Case is nothing to do with
the impossibility of the choice of morphological form when no Case is assigned. Instead,
it appears to be a general requirement that all DPs must occupy a Case position. We call
this requirement the Case Filter:

the Case Filter

All DPs must be assigned Case

The last thing to be mentioned is that most modern English grammarians no longer
use the Latin Case model, though they tend to use the terms objective for oblique for
accusative, subjective for nominative, and possessive for genitive.

4. Conclusion
9
 After giving a full description of Case Theory and classifying its different types, we
conclude that Case Theory is the study of thematic role and grammatical case of a
language. It is a module of the grammar that determines the distribution of NPs. We
found the following points:
- Nominative Case is assigned to the subject of the finite clauses by the nouns
and the prepositions.
- Accusative Case is assigned to the objects of the transitive verbs and
governed by the verb.
- Genitive Case is the possessive case of the noun. It is indicated by the
apostrophe 's.

There is a filter for the process of assigning Case theory to language. These are the
rules of applying Case that have some exceptions that was introduced through the paper.
M-command is discovered to be the barrier of these rules that govern the assignment of
Case in its different kinds.

There are languages that have a rich morphological system of Case. English is not
one of those languages for some reasons that were introduced previously.

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References:

Anderson, J. M. (2006). Modern Garmmars of Case. US: Oxford University Press.

Blake, B. J. (2012, Sep.). Oxford Handbooks Online.

Cook, V. J., & Newson, M. (2007). Chomsky's Universal Grammar: an Introduction. USA:
Blackwell.

Crystal, D. (2003). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. USA: Blackwell.

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2003). An Introduction to Language (Vol. 7). USA:
Maple Vail printers.

Gildersleeve, B., & Lodge, G. (1968). Latin Grammar. London: Macmillan.

Haegeman, L. (1994). Introduction to Government & Binding Theory (Second ed.). USA:
Blachwell.

Poole, G. (2011). Syntactic Theory (Vol. 2). UK: Palgrave Macmillan .

Radford, A. (2004). English Syntax an introduction. UK: university press, Cambridge.

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