Abstract
The notion of case has been a controversial one, yet the grammatical terminology has survived right from traditional Grammar to the current grammatical theories. This paper critically examines the notion of case within different grammatical frameworks. Our interest is mainly on the role of syntax and semantics in case determination and the level of grammatical analysis (deep or surface) at which case is assigned. The paper looks at the notion of case as conceived in traditional grammar and the explores how the concept has been adapted to antecedent grammatical theories up to the Principles and parameters theory. The paper concludes that in all the grammatical models, Case has both syntactic and semantic relevance.
Highlights
The term „case‟ is a primitive concept in grammar
In the version of generative grammar developed in Chomsky (1965) popularly known as standard theory‟ or Aspects model, case is seen as a surface structure phenomenon and not present in the deep structure at all
Even in the Government and Binding theory which is a later development and modification of the generative grammar, case and theta roles are structurally assigned by the sentence but associated with the noun phrases
Summary
The term „case‟ is a primitive concept in grammar. It originated from the Greek word „ptois‟ meaning „deviation‟, which translated into „kasus‟ in latin. cf: lyons (1968:289). All In the traditional grammar, „case‟ was seen as the inflectional forms of nouns due to their different syntactic functions. According to Fillmore (1968:156), prepositions in English or the absence of a preposition before a noun phrase, which may be treated as corresponding to a zero or unmarked case affix are selected on the basis of several types of structural features, and in ways that are exactly analogous to those which determine particular case forms in a language like Latin”. In the version of generative grammar developed in Chomsky (1965) popularly known as standard theory‟ or Aspects model, case is seen as a surface structure phenomenon and not present in the deep structure at all It is merely the surface realization of particular syntactic relationships. These surface realizations include: noun inflections, prepositions, constraint on word order, etc These surface reflexes are introduced by rules of various kinds of deep and surface syntactic relationships. These show that case, according to the Aspects model is structurally assigned at the surface structure by means of prepositions, affixes, constraints on word order etc
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