Case Grammar and its Application in English Vocabulary Teaching

Abstract

In 1968, Fillmore published his theory of Case Grammar, which highlighted the fact that syntactic structure can be predicted by semantic participants. It focuses on the link between the number of subjects, objects and so on of a verb and the grammatical context it requires. Fillmore's case theory is not produced to be applied in foreign language teaching at the beginning. However, people have realized that some research findings of case grammar can indeed be applied in foreign language teaching, vocabulary teaching is in the case. This article will briefly introduce what case grammar is and its application in vocabulary teaching. Index Terms - Case grammar, English vocabulary teaching, application 1. How did Case Grammar Come into Being? In Latin, 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, an animal 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. 2. What is Case Grammar? In 1968, Fillmore published his theory of Case Grammar (Fillmore 1968), which highlighted the fact that syntactic structure can be predicted by semantic participants. It focuses on the link between the number of subjects, objects and so on of a verb and the grammatical context it requires. The underlying structure of the syntactic and semantic relationships between nouns and verbs related with it is deep case. This kind of case doesn't have to be shown through the change of the morphology of nouns and pronouns. 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. 门开了。