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32
friend? The dative case (indirect object to a verb): I gave John a penny. The accusative case (direct object, and
also object to a preposition): The man killed a rat. The earth is moistened by rain.
In the light of all that has been stated in this book in connection with the general notions of morphology, the
fallacy of the positional case theory is quite obvious. The cardinal blunder of this view is, that it substitutes the
functional characteristics of the part of the sentence for the morphological features of the word class, since the
case form, by definition, is the variable morphological form of the noun. In reality, the case forms as such serve
as means of expressing the functions of the noun in the sentence, and not vice versa. Thus, what the described
view does do on the positive lines is that, within the confused conceptions of form and meaning, it still rightly
illustrates the fact that the functional meanings rendered by cases can be expressed in language by other
grammatical means, in particular, by word-order.
The second view may be called the "theory of prepositional cases". Like the theory of positional cases, it is
also connected with the old school grammar teaching, and was advanced as a logical supplement to the
positional view of the case.
In accord with the prepositional theory, combinations of nouns with prepositions in certain object and
attributive collocations should be understood as morphological case forms. To these belong first of all the
"dative" case (to + Noun, for + Noun) and the "genitive" case (of + Noun). These prepositions, according to G.
Curme, are "inflexional prepositions", i.e. grammatical elements equivalent to case-forms. The would-be
prepositional cases are generally taken (by the scholars who recognize them) as coexisting with positional
cases, together with the classical inflexional genitive completing the case system of the English noun.
The prepositional theory, though somewhat better grounded than the positional theory, nevertheless can
hardly pass a serious linguistic trial. As is well known from noun-declensional languages, all their prepositions,
and not only some of them, do require definite cases of nouns (prepositional case-government); this fact,
together with a mere semantic observation of the role of prepositions in the phrase, shows that any preposition
by virtue of its functional nature stands in essentially the same general grammatical relations to nouns. It should
follow from this that not only the of-, to-, and for-phrases, but also all the other prepositional phrases in English
must be regarded as "analytical cases." As a result of such an approach illogical redundancy in terminology
would arise: each prepositional phrase would bear then another, additional name of "prepositional case", the
total number of the said "cases" running into dozens upon dozens without any gain either to theory or practice
[Ilyish, 42].
The third view of the English noun case recognizes a limited inflexional system of two cases in English, one
ot them featured and the other one unfeatured. This view may be called the "limited case theory".
The limited case theory is at present most broadly accepted among linguists both in this country and abroad.
It was formulated by such scholars as H. Sweet, O. Jespersen, and has since been radically developed by A.I.
Smirnitsky, L.S. Barkhudarov and others.
The limited case theory in its modern presentation is based on the explicit oppositional approach to the
recognition of grammatical categories. In the system of the English case the functional mark is defined, which
differentiates the two case forms: the possessive or genitive form as the strong member of the categorial
opposition and the common, or "non-genitive" form as the weak member of the categorial opposition. The
opposition is shown as being effected in full with animate nouns, though a restricted use with inanimate nouns
is also taken into account. The detailed functions of the genitive are specified with the help of semantic
transformational correlations [Бархударов, 1975, 89 ff.].
§ 3. We have considered the three theories which, if at basically different angles, proceed from the
assumption that the English noun does distinguish the grammatical case in its functional structure. However,
another view of the problem of the English noun cases has been put forward which sharply counters the theories
hitherto observed. This view approaches the English noun as having completely lost the category of case in the
course of its historical development. All the nounal cases, including the much spoken of genitive, are
considered as extinct, and the lingual unit that is named the "genitive case" by force of tradition, would be in
reality a combination of a noun with a postposition (i.e. a relational postpositional word with preposition-like
functions). This view, advanced in an explicit form by G.N. Vorontsova [Воронцова, 168 ff.] may be called the
"theory of the possessive postposition" ("postpositional theory"). Cf:. [Ilyish, 44 ff.; Бархударов, Штелинг, 42
ff.].
Of the various reasons substantiating the postpositional theory the following two should be considered as
the main ones.
First, the postpositional element -'s is but loosely connected with the noun, which finds the clearest
expression in its use not only with single nouns, but also with whole word-groups of various status. Compare