Article determination

NOUN: CASE.

LECTURE 4

1. The problem of the category of case in English. Various approaches to the category of case in English language study: “the theory of positional/prepositional/limited case/possessive postposition”; their critical assessment.

2. The word genitive and the phrase genitive. The semantic types of the genitive. The correlation of the noun case and the pronoun case.

3. The article as a grammatical determiner of the noun. The system of articles in English: the definite/indefinite/article. The semantic presentation of the articles. Articles with different groups of nouns. Correlation of articles with other determiners.

4. The problem of establishing the lexico-grammatical status of the article (+Bloch, Ilyish, others available)

Key terms: declension, “the theory of positional cases”, nominative/genitive (possessive)/dative/ accusative/vocative cases, “the theory of prepositional cases”, “the theory of limited case”, “the theory of the possessive postposition” (“the theory of no case”), the genitive (possessive)/common case, transformational diagnostic test, absolute genitive

- determination, determiner (lexical or grammatical), definite/indefinite article, zero article (absence of an article), identification, individualization, classifying (relative)/absolute generalization, abstraction, substitution/insertion/contrast tests, omission, lexicalization, situational rules, unique objects, thematic information and rhematic information, limiting (restricting, particularizing) and descriptive attributes, the semantic category of “definiteness–indefiniteness–generalization”

1. The problem of the category of case in English. Various approaches to the category of case in English: “the theory of positional/prepositional/limited case/possessive postposition”; their critical assessment.

The category of case in English constitutes a great linguistic problem. Linguists argue, first, whether the category of case really exists in modern English, and, second, if it does exist, how many case forms of the noun can be distinguished. The main disagreements concern the grammatical status of “noun + an apostrophe + –s” form (Ted’s book, the chairman’s decision) cf.: the chairman’s decision – the decision of the chairman.

The following four approaches, advanced at various times by different scholars, can be distinguished in the analysis of this problem.

1. The approach which can be defined as “the theory of positional cases” was developed by J. C. Nesfield, M. Deutchbein, M. Bryant and other linguists, mainly in English-speaking countries. They follow the patterns of classical Latin grammar, distinguishing nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative cases in English. Since there are no special morphological marks to distinguish these cases in English (except for the genitive) like in Latin or other inflectional languages, the cases are differentiated by the functional position of the noun in the sentence, e.g.: the nominative case corresponds with the subject, the accusative case with the direct object, the dative case with indirect object, and the vocative case with the addressee. Thus, “the theory of positional cases” presents an obvious confusion of the formal (morphological) characteristics of the noun and its functional (syntactic) features. The comparative analysis of the noun in English and in Latin within “the theory of positional cases” approach can be used only to show that the grammatical meanings expressed by case forms in inflectional languages are regularly expressed in English by other means, in particular by syntactic positions, or word-order.

2. The approach which can be defined as “ the theory of prepositional cases ” supplements the previous one and follows the same route of Latin-oriented grammar traditions. The linguists who formulated it, G.Curme among them, treat the combinations of nouns with prepositions as specific analytical case forms, e.g.: the dative case is expressed by nouns with the prepositions ‘ to’ and ‘ for’, the genitive case by nouns with the preposition ‘ of ’, the instrumental case by nouns with the preposition ‘ with ’, e.g.: for the girl, of the girl, with a girl. They see the system of cases in English as comprising the regular inflectional case (the genitive), “positional cases”, and “prepositional cases”. This approach is not recognized by the majority of linguistics, because, again, syntactical and morphological characteristics of the noun are confused. Besides, as B. Ilyish noted, if we are consistent in applying this theory, each prepositional phrase should be considered as a separate case form and their number will be almost unlimited.

3. The approach which can be defined as “the theory of limited case ” is the most widely accepted theory of case in English today. It was formulated by linguists H. Sweet, O. Jespersen and further developed by Russian linguists A. Smirnitsky, L. Barchudarov and others. It is based on the oppositional presentation of the category; the category of case is expressed by the opposition of two forms: the first form, “the genitive case”, is the strong, featured member of the opposition, marked by the postpositional element ‘–s ’ e.g.: the girl’s books, the girls’ books; the second, unfeatured form is the weak member of the opposition and is usually referred to as “the common case” (“non-genitive”). The category of case is realized in full in animate nouns and restrictedly in inanimate nouns in English, hence the name – “the theory of limited case”. Besides being semantically (lexically) limited, the category of case in English is limited syntactically, as the genitive case form of the noun is used only as an attribute, and it is also positionally limited: it is used predominantly in preposition to the word it modifies (except so-called “double genitive”, e.g.: this idea of Tom’s).

4. The approach which can be defined as “ the theory of the possessive postposition ”, or “the theory of no case” states that the category of case which did exist in Old English was completely lost by the noun in the course of its historical development. The authors of this theory, G. N. Vorontsova, A. M. Mukhin among them, maintain that what is traditionally treated as the inflectional genitive case form is actually a combination of the noun with a postposition denoting possession. The main arguments to support this point of view are as follows: first, the postpositional element ‘s is not only used with words, but also with the units larger than the word, with word-combinations and even sentences, e.g.: his daughter Mary’s arrival, the man I saw yesterday’s face; it may be used with no noun at all, but with a pronoun, e.g.: somebody else’s car; second, the same meaning of possession is rendered in English by prepositional of -phrases, e.g .: this man’s daughter – the daughter of this man.

The followers of this approach conclude that –s is no longer an inflection, but a particle-like postpositional word, so, “noun +–‘s” is not a morphological form of the noun, but a purely syntactical construction, so there is no longer a morphological category of case in English. One of the additional arguments is as follows: the genitive case of the noun in the plural is practically undistinguishable in oral speech from its common case form, and it is homonymous with the genitive case of the noun in the singular, cf.: boy’s, boys’.

Still, there are certain counter-arguments to “ the theory of the possessive postposition ” that prove the existence of the case category in English. First, cases when the possessive postposition –‘s is added to units larger than the word are very few in comparison to cases where it is added to the noun (some estimates show the correlation as 4% to 96% respectively), besides, these cases are often stylistically marked and most of them make intermediary phenomena between a word and a word-combination, e.g.: what-his-name’s hat; the same applies to the use of the genitive marker –‘s with certain pronouns. Second, the possessive postposition differs from regular particles: regular postpositional particles usually correspond to prepositions (to give up – up the hill), which is not the case with –‘s; the combinations of words with postpositional particles are usually lexicalized and recorded in dictionaries, while –‘s is grammatically bound to the use of the noun and their combinations are never recorded as separate lexical units; –‘s is phonetically close to regular morphemes, as it has the same variants distinguished in complementary distributions as the grammatical suffix –s: [-s], [-z], [-iz]; thus, actually the status of –‘s is intermediary between a particle and a morpheme.

As for the semantic parallelism between possessive postpositional constructions and prepositional of -phrases, there are definite semantic differences between them in most contexts: 1) genitive case forms are predominantly used with animate nouns, while of-phrases are used with inanimate nouns; 2) when used in textual co-occurrence with of -phrases, the noun in the genitive usually denotes the doer of the action, while the noun after the preposition ‘ of ’ denotes the object, cf.: the country’s choice of the President, the President’s choice of the country;

There are other subtle semantic peculiarities. The last-mentioned argument of the “no case theory” can be contradicted too: though phonetically the genitive of the plural is indistinguishable from its common case counterpart and the genitive of the singular, these three forms are clearly marked in writing, and besides, there are irregular forms of the plural, which make the genitive an unmistakably separate form, e.g.: children – children’s.

The solution to the problem of the category of case in English can be formulated on the basis of the two theories, “ the theory of limited case ” and “ the theory of the possessive postposition ”, critically revised and combined. There is no doubt that the inflectional case of the noun in English has ceased to exist. The particle nature of –‘s is evident, since it can be added to units larger than the word, but this does not prove the absence of the category of case: it is a specific particle expression of case which can be compared to the particle expression of the category of mood in Ukrainian, cf.: Я б пішов з тобою. A new, peculiar category of case has developed in modern English: it is realized by the paradigmatic opposition of the unmarked “ common ” (or direct) case form and the only “ oblique ” case form: the genitive marked by the possessive postpositional particle.

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