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1) the Case Rules for English Nps: A

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1) the Case Rules for English Nps: A Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 5: Case, 1 Case Many linguistic phenomena reflect the interaction of the morphological and syntactic components of the grammar. An important example of this interaction involves case, which indicates an NP’s grammatical role in the sentence (see Chapter 4, Section 4). The sole case marker used with nouns in Modern English is -’s, which marks an NP that occupies the specifier position within a larger NP, as depicted in Figure 1. (We extend our system of phrase structure by allowing an NP to serve as specifier of an N.) However, a richer system of contrasts is found in English pronouns, whose forms reflect a three-way case distinction (see Table 1). One way to account for these contrasts is to have heads of particular types assign case features to NPs in their specifier or complement positions. 1) The Case Rules for English NPs: a. I assigns a nominative case feature to the subject NP. b. V and P assign an accusative case feature to their complement NP. c. N assigns a genitive case feature to an NP in its specifier position. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 5: Case, 2 To see how this works, consider the sentence She saw him, with the structure shown in Figure 2. (Case features are written as subscripts; we treat pronouns as a type of N.) This sentence is well formed, since the pronoun in the subject position has the nominative form required by 1a) and the pronoun in the complement position has the accusative form required by 1b). Had we used the accusative form in the subject position and the nominative in the direct object position (*Her saw he), the sentence would have been ungrammatical because of the mismatch between the pronoun’s form and the case feature that is assigned to the position it occupies. The Case Filter You may have noticed that the case rules are formulated in such a way that any NP occurring in the right position—not just a pronoun—will receive case. This means that in a sentence such as Robert saw Jean, Robert will be assigned nominative case and Jean will receive accusative case even though Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 5: Case, 3 there is no inflection to show this. Case that need not be visible is known as abstract Case. (An upper case ‘C’ is used in discussing this notion.) Contemporary versions of transformational syntax require all NPs to have a Case feature, even if it is not expressed inflectionally. This requirement is known as the Case Filter. 2) The Case Filter: Every NP in a grammatical sentence must be assigned a Case feature. A major advantage of the Case Filter is that it helps explain why NPs can occur in some positions, but not others. As you may have already noticed, the Case rules do not assign a Case feature to all positions in syntactic structure. For instance, while the complements of V and P have accusative Case (rule 1b), the complement of an A or N does not—since no Case is assigned to that position. This in turn helps explain why NPs can occur as complements of V and P, but not A or N. 3) V with NP complement: P with NP complement: criticize [NP the speaker] near [NP the speaker] N with NP complement: A with NP complement: *criticism [NP the speaker] *critical [NP the speaker] Phrases such as criticize the speaker and near the speaker satisfy the Case Filter, since the NP the speaker can receive an accusative Case feature in that position, in accordance with 1b). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 5: Case, 4 In contrast, the ill-formed phrases *criticism the speaker and *critical the speaker in 3) above violate the Case Filter, since the NP the speaker is not in a position to which a Case feature is assigned, as shown in Figure 4. In order for these phrases to be grammatical, the complement must be realized as a PP, as shown in Figure 5. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 5: Case, 5 Because P assigns accusative Case to its complement, these phrases are perfectly well formed. Sometimes, an NP’s Case is determined by its position prior to movement. A good example of this involves wh questions, in which the wh word appears in a position (the specifier of CP) to which no Case feature is assigned. Under such circumstances, the NP must receive its Case feature based on the position that it occupies prior to Wh Movement. Direct evidence for this comes from conservative varieties of English, in which who is associated with the subject position and the special accusative form whom with the direct object position. How, precisely, is Case assigned to the wh word in these sentences? According to one idea, the moved wh word and the trace that it leaves behind form a chain. Case features are then assigned to the trace, which then transmits it to the wh word. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 5: Case, 6 In summary, then, although Case is a morphological category, it encodes syntactic information. This is captured by means of the rules outlined in 1), which associate each of the various Case forms of English with a different position in syntactic structure (subject, specifier of N, complement of V, and so on). Taking this idea and extending it one step further, the Case Filter then ensures that NP must occupy a position to which a Case feature is assigned at some point in the derivation. This explains why an NP may serve as complement of a V or P (Figure 3), but not of an N or A (Figure 4). .
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