Case Theory Reconsidered: From Jespersen's Point of View

Case Theory Reconsidered: From Jespersen's Point of View

The notions of abstract case, first brought up in 1980 by Rouveret and Vergnaud, are now something indispensable and incontestable in syntactic argumentation of Chomskyan persuasion The rationale behind this theoretical construct is that, even in languages like English where no morphological case distinctions are manifest in nominal expressions, abstract cases may be motivated by case forms being distinct on the part of the pronominal system This runs counter to the observation made some eighty years back by Jespersen that distinguishing cases in English substantives on the strength of their being distinct in some pronouns amounts to a fallacy of mixing up categories My paper deals with some serious empirical problems that have gone unnoticed in the theory of abstract case Examples are adduced that point to the necessity of what may be dubbed 'default case assignment', a situation that renders mane the raison d'?tre of the so-called "case filter", thereby undermining the theory under discussion at its very foundation In the final analysis, Jespersen's caveat against building up case theory on account of distinctions seen m some pronominal forms was right to the point