Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T15:10:01.917Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Does English really have case?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Richard Hudson
Richard Hudson
Affiliation:
University College London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Does English have morphological case (as opposed to abstract Case)? Evidence is presented which suggests that it may be a completely case-less language like Chinese, contrary to the widely held view that the distinct pronoun forms and the ‘genitive’ 's involve morphological case. The existence of case in English has recently been accepted almost without question, but the question at least deserves serious discussion as it is easy to find alternative analyses. According to the analysis offered here, I and me are both personal pronouns whereas my, mine and 's are possessive pronouns; and the difference between I and me, like the one between my and mine, is handled by a very specific and local lexical rule which is sensitive to the syntactic structure but does not involve case.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , September 1995 , pp. 375 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abney, S. (1986). Functional elements and licensing. Paper presented to the GLOW meeting, Gerona.Google Scholar
Abney, S. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspects. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Anderson, S. (1992). A-morphous morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borsley, R. (1994). In defence of coordinate structures. Linguistics Analysis 24. 218–246.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (ed.) (1982). The mental representation of grammatical relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language. Its nature, origin and use. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Denison, D. (1993). English historical syntax. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Emonds, J. (1976). A transformational approach to English syntax. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Emonds, J. (1985). A unified theory of syntactic categories. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finegan, E. & Besnier, N. (1989). Language: its structure and use. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Fowler, H. (1965). Dictionary of modern English usage. (2nd ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R. (1974/1993). An introduction to language. New York; Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Gazdar, G., Klein, E., Pullum, G. & Sag, I. (1985). Generalized phrase structure grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gleason, H. A. (1965). Linguistics and English grammar. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Haegeman, L. (1991). Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Huddleston, R. (1988). English grammar: an outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, R. (1990). English word grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hughes, A. & Trudgill, P. (1979/1987). English accents and dialects: an introduction to social and regional variation of British English. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Jesperson, O. (1924). The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Katamba, F. (1993). Morphology. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Klima, E. (1964). Relatedness between grammatical systems. Language 40, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M. & Aronoff, M. (1989). Contemporary linguistics: an introduction. New York: St Martins Press.Google Scholar
Palmer, H. E. (1928). A grammar of spoken English on a strictly phonetic basis. Cambridge: Heffer.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. & Sag, I. (1987). Information-based syntax and semantics. I: Fundamentals. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Radford, A. (1988). Transformational grammar: a first course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sapir, E. (1921). Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Sweet, H. (1875). Words, logic and grammar. Transactions of the Philological Society. 470–503.Google Scholar
Sweet, H. (1891). A new English grammar, logical and historical. I: Introduction, phonology and accidence. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Trask, L. (1993). A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zwicky, A. (1987). Suppressing the Z's. Journal of Linguistics 23, 133–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar