Case grammar

Case grammar is a system of linguistic analysis, focusing on the link between the valence, or number of subjects, objects, etc., of a verb and the grammatical context it requires. The system was created by the American linguist Charles J. Fillmore in (1968), in the context of Transformational Grammar. This theory analyzes the surface syntactic structure of sentences by studying the combination of deep cases (i.e. semantic roles) -- Agent, Object, Benefactor, Location or Instrument—which are required by a specific verb. For instance, the verb "give" in English requires an Agent (A) and Object (O), and a Beneficiary (B); e.g. "Jones (A) gave money (O) to the school (B).

According to Fillmore, each verb selects a certain number of deep cases which form its case frame. Thus, a case frame describes important aspects of semantic valency, of verbs, adjectives and nouns. Case frames are subject to certain constraints, such as that a deep case can occur only once per sentence. Some of the cases are obligatory and others are optional. Obligatory cases may not be deleted, at the risk of producing ungrammatical sentences. For example, Mary gave the apples is ungrammatical in this sense.

A fundamental hypothesis of case grammar is that grammatical functions, such as subject or object, are determined by the deep, semantic valence of the verb, which finds its syntactic correlate in such grammatical categories as Subject and Object, and in grammatical cases such as Nominative, Accusative, etc. Fillmore (1968) puts forwards the following hierarchy for a universal subject selection rule:

Agent < Instrumental < Objective

That means that if the case frame of a verb contains an agent, this one is realized as the subject of an active sentence; otherwise, the deep case following the agent in the hierarchy (i.e. Instrumental) is promoted to subject.

The influence of case grammar on contemporary linguistics has been significant, to the extent that numerous linguistic theories incorporate deep roles in one or other form, such as the so-called Thematic structure in Government and Binding theory. It has also inspired the development of frame-based representations in AI research.

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