28) The category of case. Different approaces.

Case is a grammatical category of the noun which serves to express relations between a substance denoted by a noun and other words in a sentence and which is manifested in some formal sign in a noun itself. In accordance with this definition there is a classification of cases: the Common case and the Genitive.

But the points of view connected with the problem of the category of case may be roughly divided into two extreme and contrary assertions:

1) that there are more than two cases in Modern English nouns;

2) that there is no category of case at all in Modern English nouns.

The first point of view was expressed by Max Deutschbein and was supported by some foreign grammarians. He thinks that in Modern English there are four cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Accusative, and the Dative. He distinguishes between the Nominative and the Accusative cases with the help of the order of words and syntactical functions in which this or that noun may be found in a sentence. In his point of view if a noun precedes a predicate verb it is a subject and accordingly is used in the Nominative case. If a noun follows a predicate verb it is an object and is used in the Accusative case.

E.g. The boy reads many books. ( The boy here is the subject used in the Nominative case while books is an object used in the Accusative case)

This consideration may be hardly accepted on account of the fact that in Modern English there are many sentences in which the word-order may be an inverted one. Cf.Я читал книгу. Я читал всю ночь.

According to Deutschbein the Dative case is expressed by the form the preposition to - noun.

If we accept the possibility of expressing cases with the help of prepositions then we may say that in Modem English there are many more than four cases, for example, the Instrumental case which may be expressed by a noun with the preposition by or with.

The point is that this consideration cannot be accepted because prepositions present quite an independent part of speech in a sentence having its own lexico-grammatical meaning. That is why it is impossible to use one preposition instead of another.. Therefore there are not any analytical forms which may express case relations in Modern English.

The English grammarian Briant doubts strongly that the category of case exists in Modern English as she considers that the structure with - 's should be taken rather as an adjective in the function of an attribute. e.g. A bov's hat in which boy's should be taken as an adjective.

The majority of our grammarians and a number of foreign grammarians hold to the point of view that there are two cases in Modern English: the common case which is expressed by the zero inflection and the genitive or possessive case expressed by the -'s inflexion. These two forms serve to express grammatically the relation of a substance denoted by a noun to other words in a sentence which is the grammatical meaning of the category of case. The common case is an unmarked member of the opposition of the category of case whereas the genitive case is a marked member, both in form and function.