10. Case
1. Personal pronouns have three distinct cases, and these case-forms are typically used
in
different sentence-position:
He lives here. (=nominative case) (John lives here.)
I can’t stand him. (=objective case) (I can’t stand John.)
His car has broken down. (=genitive) (John’s car has broken down)
*Him lives here.
*I can’t stand he.
*Him car has broken down
Any adequate grammar of English must contain a set of case-marking rules which assign
to NPs some case appropriate to their sentences-position.
2. Case-marking rule by traditional grammars
(1) NP is assigned the case-feature [+Objective] if it is governed by a preposition.
He ran towards me/*I/*my
(2) NP is assigned the case-feature [+Objective] if it is governed by a transitive verb.
John hit me/*I/*my
(1)+(2): NP is assigned the case-feature [+Objective] if it is governed by a transitive verb
or preposition.
# In PP, [p towards] governs [NP me], and in VP, [v hit] governs [NP me] as follows:
(13) (a) PP (b) VP
P NP V NP
towards me hit me
3. The definition of ‘govern’:
A preposition or verb governs any constituent which it c-commands.
C-commands(=constituent commands) is defined as:
X c-commands Y iff (=if and only if) the first branching node dominating X domi-
nates
Y, and X does not dominate Y, nor Y, X.
(The preposition towards c-commands the NP me in the structure (13a).
The verb hit also c-commands the NP me.)
=> Hence it might seem plausible at first sight to equate the relation governs with
c-commands.
‘He ran towards me’ (16) VP
V PP
ran p NP
towards me
# If we (wrongly) equate the traditional notion govern with the structural notion
c-command, we find that both the verb ran and the preposition towards actually
c-command the NP me. In informal terms, this amounts to saying that me is the object
of both towards and ran in (16). This is clearly counterintuitive, since the NP me is the
object of (and hence governed by) only the preposition towards, not the verb
ran.
(18) PP
P PP ▶c-command하면서 동시에 case를 부여해야
from P NP govern이 성립한다. 따라서 inside가 NP인
inside the house the house에 case를 주므로 govern한다.
◈ The NP the house is governed only by the preposition inside, not by the preposition from.
4. Nominative case marking
(20) VP1 ‘I think that John left’
V S’
think COMP S
-WH NP VP2
that John left
nominative case
Notice that the transitive verb think actually c-commands the NP John since the first branching node
above think is VP1, and VP1 dominates the NP John. Since think is a transitive verb, then if we say
that transitive verbs assign objective case to NPs which they c-command, the NP John will wrongly be
marked [+Objective] in (20).
Wrongly, because we see if we replace John by an appropriate pronoun
that
we must have a nominative NP here, not an objective one: cf.
(21) (a) I think that he left (= nominative)
(b) *I think that him left (=objective)
So it seems clear that we cannot define the relation governs in terms of c-command.
5. Genitive case marking
(29) Many people are baffled by linguists’ theories.
(30) PP
P NP1 by가 NP2를 govern한다면 목적격을 준다는 것이다. 그러나 NP2는
by NP2 N’ 목적격이 아니라 소유격을 가져야한다. 따라서 by는 NP2를 govern하지
linguists’ theories 못한다. 또한 NP1은 by가 NP2를 govern하지 못하게 하는 barrier가 되
기도 한다
(Barrier Condition참고, p. 323)
According to the definition of govern with c-command(see p. 319, (26)), it turns out that the
preposition by governs not only (correctly) NP1, but also (incorrectly) NP2. The net result of this is
that NP2 linguists’ is assigned objective case, by virtue of being governed by the preposition by.
However, this is wrong, since NP2 must be marked genitive, not objective, since if we replace
linguists’ in (29) by a pronoun which is morphologically marked for case, we need a genitive, not
an objective pronoun:
(31) (a) Many people are baffled by their theories (=genitive)
(b) *Many people are baffled by them theories (=objective)
(32)
(30) PP
P NP1 by가 NP2를 govern한다면 목적격을 준다는 것이다. 그러나 NP2는
by NP2 N’ 목적격이 아니라 소유격을 가져야한다. 따라서 by는 NP2를 govern하지
linguists’ theories 못한다. 또한 NP1은 by가 NP2를 govern하지 못하게 하는 barrier가 되
기도 한다
.
(33) [pp by [NP1 [NP2 linguistis’ ] theories]]
barrier
We see that the reason why the preposition by cannot govern NP2 linguists’ is because of the
presence of the intervening NP-boundary, NP1. Thus, if we tighten our definition of ‘govern’ to in-
clude
the condition (32) that NP is an absolute barrier to government, we reach the correct conclusion
that
by in (30) governs NP1, not NP2. Hence only NP1 is marked objective, not NP2.
NP is an absolute barrier to government (i.e. one category
cannot
govern another across an intervening NP boundary)
