Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

 
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O. Jespersen
 (1933) speaks of the genitive and the common case. Some 
grammarians (R. W. Pence (1947), H. Whitehall (1965), H. Shaw (1952)) give 
three cases in English - nominative, genitive (possessive) and accusative 
(objective). This three-case system, based on the analogy of the form of pronouns, 
remained extremely popular in the grammars of the 20th century, including some 
structural grammars (H. Whitehall). H. Whitehall, however, does not reflect the 
general situation in the school of structural grammar: structuralists at large 
recognize the existence of two cases - the genitive and the common. 
Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or 
sentence (my sister’s coat). The category of case correlates with the objective 
category of possession. The case category in English is realized through the 
opposition: The Common Case :: The Possessive Case (sister :: sister’s). However, 
in modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive 
case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of 
possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following: 
1.
 
Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father, 
2.
 
Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived, 
3.
 
Objective Genitive :  The man’s release – The man was released, 
4.
 
Genitive of origin: the boy’s story – the boy told the story, 
5.
 
Descriptive Genitive:  children’s books – books for children 
6.
 
Genitive of measure and partitive genitive: a mile’s distance, a day’s trip 
7.
 
Appositive genitive: the city of London. 
To avoid confusion with the plural, the marker of the genitive case is 
represented in written form with an apostrophe. This fact makes possible 
disengagement of –`s form from the noun to which it properly belongs. E.g.: 
The 
man I saw yesterday’s son
, where -`s is appended to the whole group (the so-called 
group genitive). It may even follow a word which normally does not possess such 
a formant, as in 
somebody else’s book
.  
There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English. 
Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.  

 
30
1.
 
There are two cases. (limited case theory) The Common one and The 
Genitive; 
2.
 
There are no cases at all, the form `s is optional because the same 
relations may be expressed by the ‘of-phrase’: 
the doctor’s arrival – the arrival 
of the doctor
; 
3.
 
There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due 
to the existence of objective pronouns 
me, him, whom
; 
4.
 
The theory of positional cases.  
5.
 
The theory of prepositional cases. 
We adhere to the view that English does possess the category of case, which 
is represented by the opposition of the two forms - the genitive vs. the non-
genitive, or the common. The marked member of the opposition is the genitive and 
the unmarked the common: both members express a relation - the genitive 
expresses a specific relation (the relation of possession in the wide meaning of the 
word) while the common case expresses a wide range of relations including the 
relation of possession, e.g. Kennedy’s house vs. the Kennedy house. While 
recognizing the existence of the genitive case, we must say that the English 
genitive is not a classical case. Its peculiarities are:  
1) the inflection -‘s is but loosely connected with the noun (e.g. the Queen of 
England’s daughter; the man I met yesterday’s son); 
2) genitive constructions are paralleled by corresponding prepositional 
constructions (e.g. Shakespeare’s works vs. the works of Shakespeare); 
3) the use of the genitive is mainly limited to nouns denoting living beings;  
4) the inflection -‘s is used both in the singular and in the plural (e.g. a boy’s 
bicycle vs. the boys’ bicycles), which is not typical of case inflexions. 
 

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