Charles Fillmore and
his Case Theory
ERMEKOV NURLAN
MIF-61
In many languages, the role of words in a sentence or the word relationship with others is
reflected by the change of suffix forms. These specific suffix forms were given a specific
meaning. We call this particular mode as case of a word. Generally, there are six cases in Latin,
described as nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and vocative.
Nominative is usually the subject of the sentence, for instance, English pronouns She, I, You
etc. Accusative is the acceptor of the action, usually the case of direct object, for instance, me,
him she in English. Genitive is case of the attribute, such as my, her in English. Dative is the case
of indirect object. In English, it is modified by prepositions such as to, for and so on. Ablative is
used to express instrumental, method, concomitant. In English, it is modified by prepositions such
as by, with, in, from etc. Vocative is used to name a person, ananimal or an object.
All the above cases are connected with syntax, and so they are called syntactic case. The case
is varied as the position of the word is changed in the sentence. They are actually
transformational-generative grammar. Fillmore pointed out that these cases attached great
importance to grammar while ignoring semantics. As a result, he came up with the idea of case
grammar.
What is the Case Grammar?
Case Grammar is a system of linguistic analysis,
focusing on the link between the valence, or number
of subjects, objects, etc., of a verb and the
grammatical context it requires. The system was
created by the American linguist Charles J. Fillmore
in (1968), in the context of Transformational
Grammar.
The case is determined based on the underlying structure of the syntactic and
semantic relationships between nouns and verbs. Once these relationships
have been determined, they are fixed; no matter what position they are in the
surface structure, what grammatical relations they are with verbs. The case in
the deep structure has no correspondence relationships with any particular
language and grammar concepts in the surface structure, such as subject,
object, etc. As for the case of case grammar, Fillmore called the issuer of the
action agentive case; the affected substance of the action objective case; the
object caused the action instrumental case; the result of the action factitive
case and so on. Here is an example to have a better understanding of case
grammar:
The door opened.
The key opened the door.
The boy opened the door.
The door was opened by the boy.
The boy opened the door with a key.
Case frames are subject to certain
constraints, such as that a deep case can
occur only once per sentence. Some of the
cases are obligatory and others are optional.
Obligatory cases may not be deleted, at the
risk of producing ungrammatical sentences.
For example, Mary gave the apples is
ungrammatical in this sense.
The theory of positional case
The theory of positional cases is based on the functions of the unchangeable noun
forms in the sentence. This theory is directly connected with the old grammatical
tradition. In accord with the theory of positional cases, the unchangeable forms of
the noun are differentiated as different cases by virtue of 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 inflectional genitive case,
also the non-inflectional, i.e. purely positional cases: nominative, vocative, dative,
and accusative which can be exemplified as follows:
The nominative case (subject to a verb): Rain falls
The vocative case (address): Are you coming, my friend.
The dative case (indirect object to a verb): I gave John a penny.
The accusative case (direct object, and also object to a preposition): The man killed
a rat. The earth is moistened by rain.
The theory of prepositional cases
The second view is called “the theory of prepositional cases”. It is also connected
with the old school grammar teaching and was advanced as a logical supplement to
the positional view of the case. In accord with the prepositional theory,
combinations of nouns with prepositions in certain collocations should be
understood as morphological case forms. To these belong first of all the dative case
(to +noun, for + noun) and the genitive case (of + noun). These prepositions,
according to G. Curme, are “inflectional prepositions” equivalent to case
inflections. The prepositional cases are taken, by the scholars who recognize them,
as coexisting with positional cases together with the classical inflectional genitive
(possessive) completing the case system of the English noun.
Conclusion
The problem of case in Modern English nouns is one of the
most difficult problems in English grammar. The traditional
view presented in most practical grammars is that English
nouns have two cases: a common case (e. g. father) and a
possessive or genitive case (e. g. father’s). However, there are
some other views which can be divided into two main
groups: 1) the number of cases in English is more than two;
2) there are no cases at all in Modern English nouns.
