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31
C H A P T E R VIII
NOUN: CASE
§ 1. Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun manifested in the forms of noun declension
and showing the relations of the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena. Thus, the case form of the
noun, or contractedly its "case" (in the narrow sense of the word), is a morphological-declensional form.
This category is expressed in English by the opposition of the form in -'s [-z, -s, -iz], usually called the
"possessive" case, or more traditionally, the "genitive" case (to which term we will stick in the following
presentation*), to the unfeatured form of the noun, usually called the "common" case. The apostrophized -s
serves to distinguish in writing the singular noun in the genitive case from the plural noun in the common case.
E.g.: the man's duty, the President's decision, Max's letter; the boy's ball, the clerk's promotion, the Empress's
jewels.
* The traditional term "genitive case" seems preferable on the ground that not all the meanings of the genitive case are
"possessive".
The genitive of the bulk of plural nouns remains phonetically unexpressed: the few exceptions concern only
some of the irregular plurals. Thereby the apostrophe as the graphic sign of the genitive acquires the force of a
sort of grammatical hieroglyph. Cf:. the carpenters' tools, the mates' skates, the actresses' dresses.
Functionally, the forms of the English nouns designated as "case forms" relate to one another in an
extremely peculiar way. The peculiarity is that the common form is absolutely indefinite from the semantic
point of view, whereas the genitive form in its productive uses is restricted to the functions which have a
parallel expression by prepositional constructions. Thus, the common form, as appears from the presentation, is
also capable of rendering the genitive semantics (namely, in contact and prepositional collocation), which
makes the whole of the genitive case into a kind of subsidiary element in the grammatical system of the English
noun. This feature stamps the English noun declension as something utterly different from every conceivable
declension in principle. In fact, the inflexional oblique case forms as normally and imperatively expressing the
immediate syntactic parts of the ordinary sentence in "noun-declensional" languages do not exist in English at
all. Suffice it to compare a German sentence taken at random with its English rendering:
Erhebung der Anklage gegen die Witwe Capet scheint wun-schenswert aus Rucksicht auf die Stimmung der
Stadt Paris (L. Feuchtwanger). Eng:. (The bringing of) the accusation against the Widow Capet appears
desirable, taking into consideration the mood of the City of Paris.
As we see, the five entries of nounal oblique cases in the German utterance (rendered through article
inflexion), of which two are genitives, all correspond to one and the same indiscriminate common case form of
nouns in the English version of the text. By way of further comparison, we may also observe the Russian
translation of the same sentence with its four genitive entries: Выдвижение обвинения против вдовы Капет
кажется желательным, если учесть настроение города Парижа.
Under the described circumstances of fact, there is no wonder that in the course of linguistic investigation
the category of case in English has become one of the vexed problems of theoretical discussion.
§ 2. Four special views advanced at various times by different scholars should be considered as successive
stages in the analysis of this problem.
The first view may be called the "theory of positional cases". This theory is directly connected with the old
grammatical tradition, and its traces can be seen in many contemporary text-books for school in the English-
speaking countries. Linguistic formulations of the theory, with various individual variations (the number of
cases recognized, the terms used, the reasoning cited), may be found in the works of J.C. Nesfield, M.
Deutschbein, M. Bryant and other scholars.
In accord with the theory of positional cases, the unchangeable forms of the noun are differentiated as
different cases by virtue of the functional positions occupied by the noun in the sentence. Thus, the English
noun, on the analogy of classical Latin grammar, would distinguish, besides the inflexional genitive case, also
the non-inflexional, i.e. purely positional cases: nominative, vocative, dative, and accusative. The uninflexional
cases of the noun are taken to be supported by the parallel inflexional cases of the personal pronouns. The
would-be cases in question can be exemplified as follows.*
* The examples are taken from the book: Nesfield J.C. Manual of English Grammar and Composition. Ldn., 1942, p. 24.
The nominative case (subject to a verb): Rain falls. The vocative case (address): Are you coming, my