Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

parts (jeans), names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.
3. The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition
here is not expressed formally but is revealed only lexically and syntactically in
the context: e.g. Look! A sheep is eating grass. Look! The sheep are eating grass.
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3. The category of case
In present-day linguistics case is used in two senses: 1) semantic, or logic,
and 2) syntactic.
The semantic case concept was developed by C. J. Fillmore in the late
1960s. Ch. Fillmore introduced syntactic-semantic classification of cases. They
show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to him,
verbs may stand to different relations to nouns. There are 6 cases:
1. Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;
2. Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the
door;
3. Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate
being affected by the state of action identified by the verb);
4. Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged (the result of the action or state
identified by the verb);
5. Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;
6. Objective case (O) John stole the book.
The syntactic case concept dates back to the grammars of Ancient Greece
and Ancient Rome. It is a case whose main role is to indicate a relationship
between constituents. To put it otherwise, its role is to indicate a construction in
syntax. Thus genitive is a case which marks one noun as dependent on another, e.g.
John’s car. The conception of case as a marker of a syntactic relation or a
construction can be found in prescriptive, non-structural descriptive and structural
descriptive grammars. Prescriptivists spoke of the nominative, the dative, the
genitive, the accusative, and the ablative.