CASE GRAMMAR

Case Grammar

• Proposed by Fillmore in 1968 in favor of Generative Semantics

• Best understood as an analysis in terms of predicates and arguments.

• Largely emphasis on Arguments.• Consider a trio sentence to best understand

WHAT IS SASE GRAMMAR?

The key opened the door.

The door opened.

John opened the door with a key.

According to Grammatical

Subjects Verb• In all three sentences the

verb is OPEN . • Known as Predicate

• John• The key• The door• Known as ARGUMENTS

• In all the three arguments there is a term Case relation.

• Case relation is not directly related to grammatical subjects and objects.

Grammatical nouns• Grammatical nouns are

same…• John• The key• Door

Case Grammar nouns• Case grammar nouns are

different• John is Agentive• The key is Instrumental• The door is Objective

Case Notions according to Fillmore

• “a set of universal, presumably, innate, concepts”

• Began with six cases. • An agentive noun is created from a verb.• It is the name given to a noun that does the

action the verb describes.• e.g. Write -> Writer

• Instrumental is inanimate force or object.• A noun or pronoun is in the Dative Case when

it is used as an indirect object.• Ex. Oma gave me a puppy.• Factitive is object or being resulted from the

action• Locative is related with location.• bjective is the most neutral case.

1971a Fillmore `s work

• Dative renamed as Experiencer• Fatitive renamed as Result• Addition of Counter-Agent, Source and Goal• In addition he talks` Agents`, `Objects` instead

of `Agentive`, `Objective`,

Case Relation can be applied also for converse verbs

• John taught French to Mary

• Where• John is agent• French is object• Mary as experiencer

• Mary learnt French from John

• Where• John is experiencer• French is object• Mary as agent

Case Grammar can account difference in sentences

• John ruined the table• Where• John is agent• And• The table is Object

• John built the table• Where• John is agent• And• The table is Result

• So, we can say that THERE IS no ONE-TO-ONE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN IN CASE AND GRAMMATICAL SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS because

• John(agent), the door(object) and the key (instrumental) are all Grammatical Subjects.

• In Case Grammar there are some rules governing what case will surface as the Subject

• We cannot conjoin two different cases. For Example

• * john and the key opened the door.• There is HIERARCHICAL order• Agent>experiencer>instrument>object.

• The Case Grammar works well in these sentences.

• This ordering overruled by a transformation such as Passive where object will be the grammatical subject. For Example

• The door was opened by john with a key.

FLAW

• The early version of Case Grammar was apparently unable to distinguish between such stances…

• John smeared the wall with paint OR John smeared paint on the wall

• John sold a book to Henry OR Henry bought a book from John

• Fillmore suggests in his latter work that it is a matter of PERSPECTIVE…