Case role

Using these semantic values gives the base for considering case roles in a specific language.

[6] The reasons for having more than one case role is due to the differences in the sentences’ semantic effects.

[6] This is not done by a transformational rule, but due to the deep structure representations (the core semantic relations of the sentence).

The difference in meaning is attributed to a transformation that takes both identical deep structures and chooses the direct object as it appears in the surface form.

Evidence is found from the meaning distinctions of exhaustiveness: bekkucat(NOM)maravannutree(ACC)hattituclimbedbekku maravannu hattitucat(NOM) tree(ACC) climbed"The cat climbed the tree.

The common feature of these two uses is that whenever an element occurs as the object case role, it gets the added meaning of being exhaustively affected by the action denoted by the verb as seen in (2a) (like climbing up the tree completely from the ground upwards).

No such additional meaning is observed in sentences in which the element has been used as a Location case role (as in 2b).

How NPs can be assigned either agent or experiencer case roles: Evidence found from the meaning distinctions of volition.

ra:juRaju(NOM)pa:thavannulesson(ACC)maretidda:nehas-forgottenra:ju pa:thavannu maretidda:neRaju(NOM) lesson(ACC) has-forgotten"Raju has forgotten the lesson.

"ra:juvigeRaju(DAT)pa:thalesson(NOM)maretideforgottenra:juvige pa:tha maretideRaju(DAT) lesson(NOM) forgotten"The lesson has been forgotten by Raju.

Morphological case (such as accusative, ergative, dative, genitive, and sometimes also partitive) reflects the ranking of arguments, while semantic case (such as instrumental, comitative, locative, and directional) encodes a semantic relation between the DP[clarification needed] and the governing head.

By contrast, semantic case is typical of adjuncts; it is only licensed by the meaning of the head.

[8] In much of the transformational grammar literature, morphological cases are viewed as determined by the syntactic configuration.

[10] It must be acknowledged that it is not the accusative alone that is structural, rather the specifier of a NP is in the genitive in many languages, and so is the direct object of a nominalized verb.

These typically code core grammatical relations which are semantically dependent on the verb, such as subject and object.

[13] This distinction is characterized by the type of clauses a language allows, such as ergative, absolutive, accusative, and nominative.

[3]: p.3 Languages such as Russian and Japanese follow a similar mechanism of case assignment as that seen in Latin.

Russian is like Latin, in that it does have genitive and dative case that is assigned by the N (noun) and A (adjective or adverb).

The following table demonstrates Latin case morphology assignment for a masculine noun somnus, meaning 'sleep'.

The distribution of nominals in languages such as English, where there is a lack of case morphology, is governed by the same precise laws that also regulate nominative and accusative case in morphologically overt case-marked languages such as Latin and Russian.

[15] For example the distribution of accusative case: In English, the object of a noun phrase is assigned a Case by the closest c-commanding V (verb) or P (preposition) head, which is usually the verb or preposition that selects it as a complement.

A proposed answer has been that since pronouns are a closed category and don't partake in productive morphology, then they are in a way "memorized" by speakers of English.

[14]: p.149  The fact that they may be just memorized forms suggests that there is no significant reason for why members of this category should undergo a drastic change, losing morphologically overt Case marking.

Considering this argument, why then do noun phrases receive genitive Case marking in English?

[15]: p.10  For example (* indicates an ungrammaticality):[15]: p.10 There have been arguments made for case role to be considered a universal in language, for several reasons.

[1] These methods involved illustrating semantic relationships of given case forms and did not come from a primarily syntactical standpoint.

[1] Because there have been several such problems analyzing case role cross-linguistically when using one language as a standard, it is not common practice to take traditional Latin or Greek classifications.

When discussing case features, it is commonly stated that they have no associated semantic interpretation, regardless of their syntactic position.

A Venn diagram demonstrating how case role (semantic roles) relates to the morphological case, and how morphological case in turn relates to Case (structural case).
Example of transliterated Japanese morphologically overt case assignment. The dative particle '-ni' assigns a recipient case role to the NP 'neko', and the accusative particle '-o' assigns a theme case role to the NP 'sakana'.
Schematic representation of nominative-accusative alignment. Subject of intransitive verb (S) and subject of transitive verb (A) are treated similarly while object of transitive verb (O or P) is treated differently.
Schematic representation of ergative-absolutive alignment. Subject of intransitive verb (S) and object of transitive verb (O or P) are treated similarly while subject of transitive verb (A) is treated differently.