The category of case of English nouns

It’s a form of a noun showing the relations of that noun to other words in the sent. It helps to define the syntactic function of the N. in the sent. It’s a morphological category in English, because it’s represented by dif. w-forms of one and the same noun. Most linguists regard it as such & agree that the Eng. noun has 2 distinct cases, because it has 2 distinct form cases.

The genitive case- is built up by the opposition of 2 forms (the com.case & the genet.case). The form of the gen. case is marked. The formal marker is the case morpheme is represented by a number of phonol. conditioned allomorphs [s, z, iz]. It’s characterized by a number of points limit in its use in the lang. Its mainly applied to names of human beings, but it can be used with some inanimate nouns: esp. denoting time & space relations (yesterday’s paper) and some adverbs…

The common case- this form is unmarked & is represented by a zero morpheme. In plural nouns the case morpheme & the number morpheme are very often expressed by one & the same morpheme “ ‘ “: boys’ toys. In nouns that build up the plural with the help of other means but “s” (children, women) the case morpheme is expressed separately by the suffix ‘s which follows the morpheme of number.The mean-g of the common case is very broad & extensive, it simply shows that this or that N is non-genetive. It can be used in any syntactic positions in the sent. The use of nouns in the common case is very frequent (98%).

The method of transformational analysis: the mean-g of gen.case:

1) possessive (John’s car, the bird’s nest) = John has a car

2) the subjective genitive (doctor’s advice, my husband’s arrival). Can be transformed: the doctor adviced…- the doer/subject of the action

3) the objective mean-g (John’s punishment, surprise) 2 ways of transformation: John was punished, smb surprised John- the sufferer of the action.

4) adverbial genitive (2 hours’ work)

5) genitive of destination (men’s shoes)

The number of cases in Modern English: there are dif. views on this problem. Historically there was one common case system for both nouns & personal pronouns in old English. Some scholars try to introduce a 3 case system. According to them nouns & personal pronouns have nominative case. Other scholars(J.Curme): find 4 cases –nominative, genitive, dative, accusative. Prof. Voroncova thinks that the category of case doesn’t exist in English because it’s not a case inflection(окончания).