IN THE NAME OF GOD A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF CASES OF NOUN PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND PERSIAN WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF FILLMORE’S CASE THEORY BY FARZANE TAJADDODI THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (M.A.) IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS. SHIRAZ UNIVERSITY SHIRAZ, IRAN EVALUATED AND APPROVED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE AS: EXCELLENT xn rancho Mee By, YARMOHAMMADI, Ph.D., PROF. OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS. (CHAIRMAN) M. YAMINI, Ph.D., ASSISTANT PROF OF TEFL. F. SADIGHI, Ph.D., PROF. OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS. JULY 2001 vy talABSTRACT A Contrastive Analysis of Cases of Noun Phrases in English and Persian within the Framework of Fillmore’s Case Theory BY Farzane Tajaddodi The primary purpose of this study is to investigate and describe the cases of noun phrases in Persian in order to provide case features for 50 Persian simple verbs. The semantic framework within which the study has been carried out is Fillmore’s case grammar (1968, 1977). In this model, the ‘verb’ plays a crucial role in the semantic structure and it is the verb that assigns case relations to noun phrases. Prior to the study of verbs, as the interaction between the lexical meaning of verbs and the case assigned to the noun phrases may contribute to the aspectual character of the sentence; aspects of the verbs have been investigated. The study is oriented towards comparison with English. The contrastive investigation of Persian and English sentences indicates that Persian and English are similar to each other with iit VHENErespect to stative versus active aspects. But they differ from each other in syntactic exponents of case. One of these differences is the variety of the prepositions used to point out the case, and the other aspect refers to the characteristics of Persian which is a pro-drop language. So, in Persian pronouns in subject position may be deleted when they are in dative or agentive cases. In_ terms of morphological exponents of case in English, there exist specific forms of pronouns for accusative case, e.g. me, him, her, , except you, and also for genitive case, e.g. my. your, her, his, .. Regarding genitive case in English, nouns take apostrophe ‘s’, such as Ali’s book. In Persian, pronouns have inflected and uninflected forms for genitive and accusative cases. Again with respect to genitive case in Persian, just as English kasra is added to the end of nouns to represent the case.TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgment Abstract Table of Contents Key to the Phonemic Symbols Notational Conventions Symbols Table of Figures CHAPTER ONE 10 1 12 13 CHAPTER TWO 20 24 2.2 2.3 24 INTRODUCTION Preliminaries Objective of the study Significance of the study Organization of the study REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE Introduction Characterization of case Historical background About case grammar Aspect Roo2.6 27 CHAPTER THREE 3.0 3, 3.2 33 2.4.0 Aspectual distinctions 2.4.0.0 Stative versus active 2.4.0.1 Durative versus non-durative 2.4.0.2 Iterative versus semelfactive 2.4.0.3 causality 2.4.1 Fillmore’s distinction of aspect 2.4.2 Aspect in Persian 2.5 Concepts of grammatical relations 2.5.0 Grammatical relations as primitives 2.5.1 Grammatical relations as derived notions 2.5.1.0 Configurational definitions of grammatical relations 2.5.1.1 Non-configurational definitions of grammatical relations Studies of case in Persian Contrasting cases in different languages METHODOLOGY Introduction Data collection Procedures of the data analysis Definition of key words 14 16 24 25 25 26 27 30 30 30 31 31CHAPTER FOUR 4.0 41 43 CHAPTER FIVE Appendix 1 5.0 a ee 5.3 54 DATA ANALYSIS Introduction Principal case relations 4.1.0 Patient 4.1.1 Agent 4.1.2 Dative 4.1.3 Instrumental 4.1.4 Locative 4.1.5 Factitive 2 Ambiguity of surface grammatical relations Case markers CONCLUSION Introduction Summary Discussion Implications 5.3.0 Theoretical Implications 5.3.1 Practical Implications Further research 33 33 35 35 36 a 38 39 41 49 54 54 54 56 59 39 60 60 61Appendix 2 References vu 82 93Key To The Phomic Symbols Vowels and Diphthongs a Ll a [a7 Tbaabaal father” = IxTzabaanl Tyaavar! “promise”NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS AG agentive case DAT dative case FAC Tactitive case TMPR imperfective marker TMPVE imperative INS instrumental case TIN ‘subordinator e TOC Tocative case NEG negative marker NIN ‘non-indicative marker NPS ‘non-past stem OnjM ‘object marker PERF perfect auxiliary Bud-an PL Plural marker Pos, PROG possessive marker progressive auxilary Daasht-an I PS past stem PICEL participle PID patient case 2 PTO Patient case T R | eae ———] SG singular ee |SYMBOLS [ star indicates that what follows is ungrammatical question mark indicates that the acceptability of what follows is questionable. slash shows phonological description. the line indicates the position of the element, ‘parentheses indicate optional elements, ‘square brackets enclose relevant case feature for a verb. Tinked parentheses indicate that at least one of the linked elements must be chosen. ‘shows where the elements are non-segmental. Tine is used where the elements are segmental. @es) ‘double parentheses show either A or B is used. JTABLE OF FIGURESCHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1. 0. Preliminaries Case theory, which is part of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar, is connected with the semantic relationships of the verb and its various noun phrases. This theory is one of the basic theories of Government and Binding whereby certain lexical categories called “case assigners” can assign case to each noun phrase in the sentence. Case assigners are often verbs or prepositions. In this sense, case is an assigned property under government. Apart from Chomsky’s case theory, two main approaches to case can be distinguished: (a) the case grammar introduced by Fillmore (1968, 1977), and (b) the so-called ‘Localistic theory’ introduced by Anderson (1971, 1977) and Jackendoff (1972, 1987). Fillmore’s case grammar is an approach to grammar which stresses the semantic relationships in a sentence and itis a type of Generative Grammar. In Fillmore’s case grammar, the verb is considered the key element in the sentence in the sense that it provides the link between all other major constituents of the sentence. Because theaspect of a verb is related to the case of its noun phrases, more Tecent approaches have proposed a classification of semantic roles on the basis of the aspect of the verb (Dik, 1978; Dowty, 1991). Thus the verb denotes an action, state, or event, and the nouns denote various participant roles whatever the verb denotes. These participant toles are termed ‘case relations’. There are two kinds of case: surface case (nominative, accusative, and genitive) and deep case, or semantic role, (agentive, benefactive, dative, factitive, etc.), Nominative case marks the subject of the sentence, accusative case generally functions syntactically as a direct object. In addition, this case also occurs after certain Prepositions. The following sentences illustrate the point. [1] E. Martha opened the door with her key. a) surface case: i) nominative: Martha which marks the subject of the sentence. ii) accusative: 1) the door which marks the object of the sentence. 2) her key which marks the object of preposition. enitive: her b) deep case: i) agentive: Martha ii) objective: the doorinstrumental: her key [2] P. /maryam ketaab-ash raa be u daad-2Y Maryam book-PosM ObjM to s/he give.PS-38G E. Maryam gave her book to her/him. a) surface case: i) nominative: /maryam/vhich marks the subject of the sentence. ii) accusative: 1) /ketaab/ which marks the object of the sentence. 2) /w/ which marks the object of preposition. genitive: Aash/ b) deep case: 4) agentive: /maryam/ ii) objective: /ketaab/ ili) benefactive (dative): /u/ We see in [1,2], that Martha and “maryam" (Maryam) have the same case, nominative. The door and “ketaab” (book) are accusative as well as “wu” (him). With regard to deep case, we see that Martha, “maryam” (Maryam), the door and “ketaab” (book) are similar but her key and “u”" are not. It is clear that in Persian the pronoun “u”” has not been inflected for accusative case, while in English, there exist specific forms of pronouns for this case, and also for nominative and genitive cases. It should be noted that in Persian, pronouns have