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Does English really have case?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Richard Hudson
Richard Hudson
Affiliation:
University College London
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Extract

Does English have morphological case (as opposed to abstract Case)? Evidence is presented which suggests that it may be a completely case-less language like Chinese, contrary to the widely held view that the distinct pronoun forms and the ‘genitive’ 's involve morphological case. The existence of case in English has recently been accepted almost without question, but the question at least deserves serious discussion as it is easy to find alternative analyses. According to the analysis offered here, I and me are both personal pronouns whereas my, mine and 's are possessive pronouns; and the difference between I and me, like the one between my and mine, is handled by a very specific and local lexical rule which is sensitive to the syntactic structure but does not involve case.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , September 1995 , pp. 375 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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