Az Egri Ho Si Minh Tanárképző Főiskola Tud. Közleményei. 1982. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 16)

I. TANULMÁNYOK A TÁRSADALOMTUDOMÁNYOK KÖRÉBÖL - Dr. Szabó István: Esetgrammatika, grammatikai eset, mondatszerkezet

CASE GRAMMAR, GRAMMATICAL CASE, AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE BY DR. ISTVÁN SZABÓ The above paper is a critical review of Ch. Fillmore's case grammar. A comparison is drawn between the Chomskyan-type of formal description of language and case theory. It is emphasised that the latter is superior to the former in that it grasps the intricate relationship between meaning and structure and, hence, is a more adequate description of natural language. However, we take issue with Fillmore on a number of points. E. g., his original claim that the Instrumental case is marked in the deep structure by ,with' (which is realised in the surface structure as ,use sg to do sg') can now be regarded as untenable; so can the contention that one deep case appears only once in a sentence. That the semantic markers of nouns [such as (+animate), (—animate)] determine the functioning of nouns in the given case is another controversial tenet not borne out by linguistic facts. Cf. the Hungarian ex-s (22a—c). W. Chafe's, otherwise insightful, new approach in analysing the use of the verb in the common aspect from the point of view of genericness (a notion hitherto applied to nouns only) is also given a critical scrutiny, and some problems arising from this stand are pointed out. Cf. ex-s (28), (29), (30). Finally, to be frank, this present paper also has some deficiencies of its own. (They stem partly from circumstances outside my control.) Fillmore has changed and amended some of his original tenets in his The Case for Case Reopened, which I read only after completing this paper. Nor had I been able to read Valence, Semantic Case and Grammatical Relations edited by A. Werner (Amsterdam, 1978) before writing this article. These insufficiencies notwithstanding, the Reader interested in Case grammar will, I hope, benefit from reading my review. .297