Case grammar studies the relationship between a verb’s contextual requirements and its valence, determined by the number of subjects and objects. Valence types include avalent, monovalent, divalent, and trivalent. Charles J. Fillmore created the theory in 1968, building on Noam Chomsky’s transformational grammar. A verb chooses its deep cases, which can be used to study the surface structure of a sentence. Linguists like Stanley Starostas and Walter A. Cook continued Fillmore’s research, developing case grammar for teaching methodology and linguistic analysis.
Case grammar is the study of the links between the contextual requirements of a verb and its valence. Valence is determined by the number of objects and subjects within a sentence. These subjects and objects are called arguments. The theory holds that the verb determines its cases according to the number of chords present. It should not be confused with the grammatical case, which indicates the grammatical form of a noun or pronoun.
The valence is important to the idea of case grammar. There are different types of valence depending on the number of subjects and objects. Both subjects and objects need not be present. When there are no arguments, such as “It’s snowing”, we talk about avalent. If there is only one subject or one object, then it is monovalent. Having both makes it a divalent and having three is a trivalent.
Charles J. Fillmore created the theory of case grammar in 1968 as part of his studies in linguistic analysis. His theories formed a development on Noam Chomsky’s ideas regarding transformational grammar. Transformational grammar studies the differences between the surface structure of a sentence and its deep structure. Chomsky believed that multiple languages share basic ideas about deep structure, but these deep relationships between words and cases are hidden by their surface structure. The surface structure provides the outer meaning of the sentence.
Fillmore’s theory is that a verb chooses its deep cases. These deep cases can be used to study the surface structure of a sentence. A deep case is the doer, object, or beneficiary of the verb. These are the counted arguments within the valence. “Dave plays football” has a subject-agent, “Dave”, and an object, “football”.
The verb “to sell” often takes three arguments. “Sarah sold Jacob an apple” has Sarah as the agent, the apple as the item, and Jacob as the beneficiary. If the verb is changed to “buy”, the sentence changes to “Jacob bought an apple from Sarah”. In this case, Sarah and Jacob’s roles are reversed, so she is the beneficiary and he is the agent. In both sentences, the apple remains the object.
The verbs in the grammatical case, therefore, are placed at the center of the sentence structure. In addition to indicating the agent, the beneficiary and the object, the verb in the grammatical case can also determine factors such as place, time and instrument. Using all of them might create a sentence like “After lunch, Gerald cut the cake in half with a knife so he could share it with Mary.”
Linguists such as Stanley Starostas and Walter A. Cook took inspiration from Fillmore and continued his research. Cook spent the 1970s and 1980s developing case grammar and using it to develop teaching methodology and linguistic analysis. Starostas developed the idea of ”lexicon”, which applied case grammar to grammatical dependence.
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