Case roles, according to the work by Charles J. Fillmore (1967), are the semantic roles of noun phrases (NP) in relation to the syntactic structures that contain these noun phrases. The term case role is most widely used for purely semantic relations, including theta roles and thematic roles, that can be independent of the morpho-syntax. The concept of case roles is related to the larger notion of Case (with a capitalised C), which is defined as a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of semantic or syntactic relationship they bear to their heads. Case traditionally refers to inflectional marking.
The relationships between nouns and their containing structures are of both syntactic and semantic value. The syntactic positional relationships between forms in sentences vary cross-linguistically and allows grammarians to observe semantic values in these nouns by examining their syntactic values. Using these semantic values gives the base for considering case roles in a specific language.
In addition to its inventory of structural cases, case theory includes a series of lexical cases that are assigned at deep structure in conjunction with theta role assignment. In addition to its relation to Case (case based on syntactic structures), these semantic notions of case role are also closely related to morphological case.
Inventory of case roles
The following list of case roles is frequently distinguished in literature but is not an exhaustive list, as there is no consensus on the universal inventory of roles, nor a universal agreement as to the correct assignment of constituents to roles.
Case Role Description Example Patient Fillmore refers to this case role as 'object' or 'objective' and can be described in three ways: an entity viewed as existing in a state or undergoing change an entity viewed as located or moving an entity viewed as affected by an entity 1. The sky is blue.2. The lion is in the cave.3. The bird ate the worm. Agent An entity that performs an activity or brings about a change of state The robots assembled the car. Instrument The means by which an activity or change of state is carried out She squashed the spider with a slipper. Experiencer The creature experiencing an emotion or perception They love music. Location The position of an entity, referring to both the temporal and spatial roles The vase is on the table. or Canada Day is on a Tuesday. Source The point from which an entity moves or derives They got news from home. Destination The point to or towards which an entity moves or is oriented He turned to the altar and walked towards it. Recipient A sentient destination She gave her spare change to the collectors. Purpose The purpose of an activity He went to the Red Rooster for some take-out. Beneficiary The animate entity on whose behalf an activity is carried out She did the shopping for her mother. Manner The way in which an activity is done or the way in which a change of state takes place He did it with great skill. Extent The distance, area or time over which an activity is carried out or over which a state holds It lasted the winter. Possessor The entity that possesses another entity I saw John's golf clubs.
Early contributions to case role
Roman Jakobson's work on case roles in Russian In his article on the case system of Russian, Roman Jakobson (1958) closely examines case assignment and argues for a feature decomposition of case on the basis of semantic considerations. Jakobson (1958) proposed a three-feature binary case system for Russian case which includes the following: ±marginal, ±quantifying, and ±ascriptive, where the negative value is considered to be unmarked. The term marginal distinguishes the direct and non-direct cases; only the -marginal cases may occur in subject and object position. Quantifying indicates the relevance of the extent to which the noun is a participant in the event. Ascriptive puts emphasis on directionality.
Jakobson considers cases to be bundles of these three features, which can be assigned to morphological cases:
Case Marginal Quantifying Ascriptive Nominative ---Accusative --+Genitive 1 -++Genitive 2 -+- Locative 1 +++ Locative 2 ++-Dative +- +Instrumental +- -
He uses these decomposed case features to account for the case alternations in subject and object position, and argues for how there should be a universal inventory of case roles.
Multiple case roles
There is a theory that multiple case roles can be assigned to noun phrases. The reasons for having more than one case role is due to the differences in the sentences’ semantic effects. Bhat (1997) proposed that the speaker of a language would have the option of assigning any single case role out of the multiple case role alternations available in a given context. This is not done by a transformational rule, but due to the deep structure representations (the core semantic relations of the sentence).
Examples (1a) || John sprayed the wall with paint. (1b) || John sprayed paint on the wall.
In comparing sentences (1a) and (1b), it demonstrates that the surface structure representation for each sentence (the structure following the phonological form of the sentence) is different. However, in order to account for the meaning distinctions that exist in (1a) and (1b), it has been demonstrated that these distinctions are due to the differences in the deep structures of each sentence and can be resolved by assigning a different case role to the NP. With 'paint' acting as an instrument, and 'the wall' being the location, sentence (1a) might infer that all the paint was used, but that not necessarily all the wall was covered. Sentence (1b) might imply that the whole wall is covered, but that John did not use all the paint he had available to him.
Fillmore's alternative theory Conversely, Fillmore (1968) suggested that in the case of sentences following the structure of the above examples, the noun phrases are not assigned multiple case roles, but instead retain the same case roles in both sentences (instrument for 'paint', and location for 'wall'). The difference in meaning is attributed to a transformation that takes both identical deep structures and chooses the direct object as it appears in the surface form.
Examples in Kannada Kannada (a language spoken in India with overt usage of case in its suffixes) affords some good evidence of how multiple case roles can be assigned to NPs in the following two examples: (1) how NPs can be assigned either Object or Location case roles, and (2) how NPs can be assigned either Agent or Experiencer case roles.
Evidence for multiple case roles demonstrated in Kannada: NPs can be assigned either object or location case roles. Evidence is found from the meaning distinctions of exhaustiveness:
(2a) implies that the cat climbed the tree from the ground itself, whereas (2b) has no such implication. The common feature of these two uses is that whenever an element occurs as the object case role, it gets the added meaning of being exhaustively affected by the action denoted by the verb as seen in (2a) (like climbing up the tree completely from the ground upwards). No such additional meaning is observed in sentences in which the element has been used as a Location case role (as in 2b).
How NPs can be assigned either agent or experiencer case roles: Evidence found from the meaning distinctions of volition.
Although both sentences indicate the same event, the meaning difference is due to the fact that in (3a) Raju, as the agent, is considered to have acted volitionally (not making any special effort to retain the lesson in his memory), and is hence held responsible for that event, whereas in (3b) he, being an experiencer, is involved in that event only non-volitionally, and hence one does not hold him responsible for it.
Relating case roles to morphological case and structural Case
Semantic vs. morphological
The semantic category of case (specifically case role) is related to morphological case. Morphological case (such as accusative, ergative, dative, genitive, and sometimes also partitive) reflects the ranking of arguments, while semantic case (such as instrumental, comitative, locative, and directional) encodes a semantic relation between the DP and the governing head. Morphological case is typical of complements and is licensed by structural Case. By contrast, semantic case is typical of adjuncts; it is only licensed by the meaning of the head. From the case roles proposed by Fillmore (1968), it was demonstrated that case roles appeared where the morphological cases of dative, genitive or instrumental appeared:
The experiencer case role (dative in many languages) The recipient case role (dative in many languages) The possessor case role (genitive in many languages) The partitive case role (genitive or partitive in many languages) The instrument case role (instrumental or dative in many languages)
The following are observations from Sigurðsson on the "case-semantics" in case-languages demonstrating how morphological case is not blind to semantics:
Agentive subjects are nominative Indirect objects are either dative or accusative Most benefactive (indirect or direct) objects are dative Most malefactive (indirect or direct) objects are accusative Instrumental DP-objects are dative If a lexical item has a choice between an accusative or a dative complement, then that choice is normally semantically controlled
Morphological vs. structural Morphological case is related to structural Case (based on syntax) in the following ways:
Structural Case is a condition for arguments that originates from a relational head (e.g. verb), while morphological case is a property that depends on the NP or DP complement. The relationship between morphological case and structural case is evident in how morphological case is subject to case agreement whereby the morphological case appearing on a DP must be licensed by the syntactic context of the DP.
In much of the transformational grammar literature, morphological cases are viewed as determined by the syntactic configuration. The accusative case is assigned through a structural relation between the verbal head and its complement. For example, the direct complement of a verb is assigned accusative, irrespective of any other properties that it might have. It must be acknowledged that it is not the accusative alone that is structural, rather the specifier of a NP is in the genitive in many languages, and so is the direct object of a nominalized verb.
Morphological case
Linguistic typology of morphological case
Case can be further divided into two categories: grammatical cases and semantic cases. Examples of grammatical cases are nominative case, accusative, dative, and ergative. These typically code core grammatical relations which are semantically dependent on the verb, such as subject and object. Semantic (or adverbial) cases are instrumental, comitative, and locative cases. These are semantically richer and less dependent on the verb. There exist cases, such as dative, that have both semantic and grammatical case features.
Eight commonly seen cases (Indo-European case): Case Characteristics Nominative Indicates the subject, as the specifier of a finite verb Recent research indicates nominative is distinct from ergative case Some research indicates nominative is synonymous to ergative case Accusative Indicates the direct object, as the complement of a transitive verb Lexical case associated with themes Ex. The teacher scolded us. Dative Indicates the indirect object of a verb Lexical case associated with goals/experiences Ex. The banker handed us a pamphlet. Ex. The banker handed a check to us. Instrumental Indicates an object used in performing an action Ex. We cleaned the table with a wipe. Ex. Written by hand. Locative Indicates a location Ex. We live in Canada. Vocative Indicates an addressee Ex. Becky, are you mad?