10. The system of opposemes of the category of case

The category of the case of nouns is the system of binary/two-member/privative oppositions such as girl – girl’s, девочка – девочке. The members of the opposition show the relations of the noun and other words in the sentence. John’s hat – possessivity

All case oppositions are identical in context in English, they convey the meaning of 2 cases – common case and possessive case. The case oppositions at the same moment: girl – girl’s, grils – girls’. The first member is weak/unmarked, the second is strong/marked.

11. Double nature of the category of case

Double nature of the category of case shows a close connection between 1) language and speech; 2) morphology and syntax.

Speaking about 1): a case opposeme is unit of the language system. But the differences between the members of it become evident only in the speech by the combinability. All these relation are called paradigmatic. In the speech the relations are syntagmatic (each case occurs in one particular syntagma.

Speaking about 2): at the same time the category of case has a distinct syntactical significance. If we take the common case, grammemes fulfill a number a number of syntactical functions not typical of possessive case grammemes. And vise versa.

Common case – syntactical functions in the sentence – Subject, Object. “The boy went to school” (Subj.), “I saw the boy there” (Obj.). Besides, they perform functions of attribute, adverbial modifier (in England), part of compound predicate (You are students).

Possessive case – syntactical functions – attribute mainly. Sometimes it can be a subject “Mary’s is an awesome outfit”.

12. Declinables and indeclinables

The majority of English nouns belong to indeclinables. The group of declinables includes: animate nouns, proper nouns (John’s car), common nouns (teacher’s desk), upper animals (cat’s paw, dog’s tail) BUT it is not so with lower animals (ant nest – муравейник). Besides those to the group of declinables belong collective nouns with the meaning of groups of people (government’s decision, our team’s victory), names of companies or business very often abbreviated (BBC’s correspondent=the BBC correspondent), noun with locative meaning (cities, villages, towns – England’s History), common nouns with locative meaning (city’s population), common nouns denoting time and place (a thousand miles’ road – not an absolute rule). Ex. John’s parents’ car=the car of John’s parents, in a year’s time – через год. Sometimes indeclinable nouns can become declinable: the pages of the book – the book’s philosophy (personalized). There is a tendency to use more and more indeclinables as declinables. Ex. train’s arrival. The belonging of the noun to the group of declinables or indeclinables may depend on its meaning. Ex. YOUTH, - all young people (collective noun) – declinable; - the state of being young (abstract noun) – indeclinable; young male person (class noun) – declinable.

13. The problem of analytical cases in Modern English

This theory was worked out by two scholars: M. Deutschbein and J. Meshchaninov. According to this theory different prepositions express different cases. “to the student” – analytical Dative, “of the student” – analytical Genitive, “by the student” – analytical Instrumental. But this theory is opposed by much bigger number of scholars who have their reasons why it is not grounded: 1. Prepositions in these phrases can’t be regarded as grammatical word morphemes because they keep some definite meaning. (Ex. We speak of the student; The speech of the student; What became of the student?

2. Any grammatical category is known to be represented by oppositions, comprising a definite number of members. But combination with different prepositions are too numerous to be interpreted as opposemes representing the category of case (Ex. to dispose of – ; to complain of ; to be informed of

3. Prepositional constructions can be used side by side with synthetic (regular) cases: a friend of John’s (means one of John’s friends). This phrase should have displayed double genitive which would be some kind of reality, if we accepted the theory of analytical cases.