Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Тивьяева И.В. - 29 стр.

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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.