The Instrumental Case in English: Syntactic and Semantic Considerations 9783110815498, 9789027923875

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
I. Syntactic Tests
II. Semantic Tests
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA edenda curat C. H. V A N S C H O O N E V E L D Indiana University

Series Minor,

156

THE INSTRUMENTAL CASE IN ENGLISH Syntactic

and semantic

considerations

by

D O N L. F. N I L S E N Director of Linguistics and T.E.F.L. The University of Northern Iowa

1973 MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1973 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 72-94490

Printed in Belgium by NICI, Ghent.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction I. Syntactic Tests A. B. C. D. E.

The Relative Pronoun Test The Use-With Test The One-Casei-per-Simple-Predicate Test The Conjunction Test The Preposition Test 1. Introduction 2. The Preposition with a. The Possessive with b. The Objective with (1) With Datives (2) With Locatives (3) With Comitatives (4) With other cases c. The Comitative with d. The Proximity with e. The Extent with f. The Instrumental with (1) The Tool with (2) The Material with (3) The Natural Force with (4) The Body-Part with g. The Manner with h. The Associative with 3. The Preposition by a. A Comparison of Agent and Instrumental Cases

9 15 15 17 23 29 32 32 32 32 39 40 42 43 44 46 50 52 53 53 55 56 57 58 62 65 65

6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

b. A Comparison of Locative, Time, and Instrumental Cases c. A Comparison of Manner and Instrumental Cases d. The Passive by e. Summary of by Expressions f. The Causal by 4. Associative and Causal Markers in Other Languages 5. The Prepositional Phrase Node F. Syntactic Tests: Conclusion II. Semantic Tests A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I.

66 67 68 69 70 71 73 80 87

Introduction 87 The Feature Intent 90 The Feature Cause 95 The Feature Control 103 The Feature Animate 112 The Feature Concrete 115 The Feature Count 118 The Feature Source 119 Semantic Tests: Conclusion 120 1. Matrix of Features and Cases 120 2. Advantages of Semantic Tests over Syntactic Tests 122 a. Universality of Semantic Features 122 b. Internal Consistency of Semantic Features . . 123 c. Subject Marking 129 d. Object Marking 133 e. Case Deletion 134 f. The Explanatory Adequacy of Semantic Features 135 (1) re: Subject Marking, Object Marking, and Case Deletion 135 (2) re: Passivization 142 (3) re: Case Frames 153 (a) The Material Case 155

TABLE OF CONTENTS

7

(b) The Force Case 156 (c) The Body-Part Case 157 (d) The Tool Case 163 i. with Verbs of Sound 163 ii. with Verbs of Location 164 iii. with Verbs of Motion 166 iv. with Verbs of Contact 167 v. with Verbs of Change of State . . 169 vi. with Verbs of Cause 171 (4) re: Eligibility of Lexical Items for Case Membership 173 Conclusion

175

Bibliography

176

Index

181

INTRODUCTION

One of the major difficulties with case grammar as it is presently emerging is the widespread disagreement on how cases should be defined. One effect of this disagreement is that probably no two case grammarians have exactly the same array of cases in their inventories. Unless case grammarians can agree on what tests can be used for distinguishing one case from another, so that each case grammarian will have basically the same inventory of cases in his universal grammar, much of the discussion in the case model will later have to be revised. Because case grammarians are not in agreement as to which tests should be used to determine cases, it is theoretically possible on the one hand, to have only a single case in the deep structure of each sentence, or on the other hand to have an almost infinite number of cases. Let us compare two extreme positions with the intermediate one advocated by Fillmore, Stockwell, Langendoen, and others. At the one extreme, it is possible that every proposition contains only one argument, i.e., not only statives, but non-statives as well, can be broken down into one-place predicates. Thus, the sentences (1) John is happy, and (2) John fixed his hotrod with bailing wire last night in the city park, could be analyzed as follows: (1) (2)

(3 state) (s TO John) event) (e BY John) (e WITH bailing wire) (e DURING last night) (e IN city park) (e OF hotrod) (3

The first sentence would be read: There is a state (happiness) in which John is the EXPERIENCED The second sentence would be read: There was an event (fixing) in which John was the AGENT

10

INTRODUCTION

of the event, bailing wire was the INSTRUMENT of the event, (during) last night was the TIME of the event, (in) the city park was the PLACE of the event, and (of) the hotrod was the OBJECT of the event. The small capital words are the cases, each of which represents in its most primitive form a one-place argument. Although such a procedure is revealing, it does not accurately reflect the situation in real life because it is too fragmented. I believe that when we think of an event, we think simultaneously of all the arguments that relate to that event, and the fact that all of the arguments aren't communicated simultaneously is a function of two things: first, that language (unlike actual real life) must deal with one item at a time; and second,a very common type of topicalization in human language is to place a particular argument (case) in front of (or in some instances behind) the other arguments. At the other extreme, some grammarians have postulated a very large number of cases. Frank Blake1 says, "It has been stated that the number of possible case relations is infinite and that therefore it is practically impossible to study case from the semantic point of view", though in Professor Blake's own view, "... case relations, are numerous but not infinite".2 Thomas Shroyer attempts to justify sixteen cases as being dominated by the Proposition node. Some of his cases are similar to those of other treatments, such as Agent and Locative.3 But in other instances he feels that it is better to have two homogeneous cases rather than one heterogeneous case. Thus, instead of Instrument, he has Controlled Instrument, Uncontrolled Instrument, and Agency.4 Rather than having a single Comitative case, he has Comitative Spatial and Comitative Temporal. 5 Rather than having 1 Frank Blake, "A Semantic Analysis of Case", in Curme Volume of Linguistic Studies (Language Monograph 7), ed. by J. T. Hartfield and W. Leopold (1930), 48. 2 Blake, "A Semantic Analysis of Case", 48. 3 Thomas G. Shroyer, "An Investigation of the Semantics of English as a Proposed Basis for Language Curriculum Materials" (unpublished Ph. D . dissertation, Ohio State University, 1969) 61. 4 Shroyer, "An Investigation", 61, 69. 5 Shroyer, "An Investigation", 92.

11

INTRODUCTION

a single Possessive case, he has four cases: Inalienable Possessor, Inalienable Possessed, Alienable Possessor, and Alienable Possessed.6 And rather than having the single Objective case, Shrover has Contactive, Reactive, Responsive, Resultative, and Affective.7 The effects of this decomposition of cases will be further treated during discussions about individual cases. James E. Hoard is another case grammarian who believes in having a large number of cases. In a paper presented at the Summer-1970 LSA convention,8 Professor Hoard proposed the following cases: Subject, Agent, Object, Instrument, Dative, Genitive, Measure, Deictic, Manner, Factive, Reason, Locative, Temporal, Conditional, Attributive, Existential, Quantifier, ... In his paper, Professor Hoard didn't further organize his cases, so that his case array is not only lengthy, but is also extremely heterogeneous, containing both Modal and Propositional Cases (e.g., Manner vs. Instrumental), both Deep and Surface cases (e.g., Agent vs. Subject), and some items which would probably best not be considered as cases at all, for example Quantifier. I would prefer to follow Fillmore in taking a middle position. In his "A Proposal Concerning English Prepositions",9 Fillmore suggested that the Proposition should be expanded into five cases, as follows: Prop->

V (Erg) (Dat)

(Loc) (Inst)

(Ag).

10

Later, in his "The Case for Case", he had changed his Ergative case to Objective and Factitive (depending on whether or not 6

Shroyer, "An Investigation", 104. Shroyer, "An Investigation", 61, 65. 8 This paper was presented on July 26, 1970 as part of Charles Fillmore's seminar in case grammar. 9 Charles J. Fillmore, "A Proposal Concerning English Prepositions", in Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics \lth Annual Round Table, 19 (Washington D . C.: Georgetown University Institute of Languages and Linguistics, 1966) 22. 10 Charles J. Fillmore, "The Case for Case", in Universals in Linguistic 7

12

INTRODUCTION

there was an embedded sentence), so that by this time he felt that the base component should consist of six cases. In his "Lexical Entries for Verbs", 11 Fillmore reiterated his belief that..." human languages are constrained in such a way that the relations between arguments and predicates fall into a SMALL number of types", (small capitals mine). During his Seminar in Case Grammar (Summer, 1970), Fillmore made only minor revisions to his inventory of cases. He changed the name of the term Dative to Experiencer. He dropped the Factitive case altogether, and he divided the Locative case into two more abstract cases (Source and Goal) that could be used for Temporal and other concepts as well as Locative. Thus, his inventory of Propositional Cases ended up to be Agent, Experiencer, Instrument, Objective, Source, and Goal, with the possible addition of Path, Possessive, Comitative, and Benefactive (the natures of which are less well understood). The first rule in the UCLA Airforce Grammar 1 2 expands the sentence as follows: ( CONJ S S fSJ* | MOD PROP and the fourth rule expands the proposition as follows: PROP-> (AGT)

V (ESS) (NEUT) (DAT) (LOC)

(INS)

We might note that in these two rules there are exactly the same elements as in the base structure of propositional calculus: Sentence, Connective (Conjunction), Predicate (Verb), and Arguments (Cases). The cases proposed by Stockwell et al. are basically the same as the cases proposed by Fillmore. Theory, ed. by Emmon Bach and Robert T. Harms (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968). 11 Charles J. Fillmore, "Lexical Entries for Verbs", Foundations of Language, IV (1968) 382. 12 Robert P. Stockwell, Paul Schachter, and Barbara Hall Partee, Integration of Transformational Theories on English Syntax (Bedford, Massachusetts: United States Air Force, 1968) 30, 32.

13

INTRODUCTION

Case grammarians have probably worked as much with Instrumentals as with any other case. Because the study of the Instrumental case seems to be the most advanced, I have chosen to examine it and to examine the methods being used to define it. I am optimistic that insights into the definition and identification of the Instrumental case can be applied to the study of other cases as well. Case grammarians have relied on a number of tests to define Instrumental. They have also made a number of observations including such things as co-occurrence restrictions and surface positioning of Instrumental. These statements, which appear again and again in the literature, will be discussed later. They might be summarized as follows: TESTS

USED

IN

ENGLISH

FOR

IDENTIFYING

INSTRUMENTAL

CASE

RELATIVE PRONOUN TEST:

The Instrumental case is relativized with the relative-interrogative pronoun how.

BASIC ASSUMPTION:

INSTR. EXAMPLE: HOW

INSTRUMENT

did Seymour slice With a knife,

the salami? USE-WITH TEST:

: A sentence containing an Instrumental noun phrase which is marked by the preposition with can be paraphrased by a sentence in which the Instrumental noun phrase is the Direct Object of the verb use.

BASIC ASSUMPTION

INSTRUMENT EXAMPLE :

Seymour sliced the salami with a knife. INSTRUMENT

Seymour used a knife to slice the salami. ONE CASE PER SIMPLE PREDICATION:

Two noun phrases are members of different cases if they can both occur in the same simple sentence.

BASIC ASSUMPTION:

AGENT EXAMPLE:

OBJECTIVE

INSTRUMENT

John heated the food with a blow-torch.

14

INTRODUCTION INSTRUMENT

OBJECTIVE

The blow-torch heated the food. INSTRUMENT

OBJECTIVE

INSTRUMENT

*The blow-torch heated the food with a low flame. CONJUNCTION TEST:

: Two noun phrases are members of the same case if and only if they can be conjoined. BASIC ASSUMPTION

COMITATIVE EXAMPLE:

*He robbed the bank with John and a INSTRUMENT

sawed-ojf shotgun. He robbed the bank with a INSTRUMENT

INSTRUMENT

sawed-off shotgun and a hand grenade. PREPOSITION TEST:

Each case is related to a particular distinguishing preposition. BASIC ASSUMPTION:

EXPERIENCER EXAMPLE:

INSTRUMENT

LOCATION

(0 Mary was struck with a club at the concert TIME

AGENT

on Sunday by John. Other observations Instrumental occur only in sentences with Agents (expressed or implied). They cannot occur with one-place predicates. Instrumental are first in line to become surface subjects when there is no Agent present. When there is an Agent present, Instrumental cannot become surface subjects. Instrumental must become surface direct objects for the verb use. Instrumental cannot become surface direct objects for any other verb. Instrumentals are frequently incorporated into the verb.

I SYNTACTIC TESTS

A. THE RELATIVE PRONOUN TEST

Grammarians of the traditional, the structural, the transformational, and the case models have all relied on the how relativization test as a means of identifying the Manner and the related Instrumental cases. However, the test does not distinguish between these two cases as shown by the riddle How do porcupines kiss ? The expected answer with their lips, is Instrumental case, while the alternate answer very carefully, is Manner case. In addition, there are other cases which can answer the question how. The underlined expressions in the following sentences can all be relativized with how: INSTRUMENT: He broke the window with a hammer. COMITATIVE: He flew to Miami with a commercial pilot. EXTENT: He is extremely sad. MANNER: He reached Miami by hitchhiking. Most grammarians who use this test (including case grammarians) are forced either to consider all of these cases as belonging to a single super case (Manner), or else they are forced to devise subtests to distinguish four separate cases. Thus, only Manner would be considered to answer the question how, whereas Instrument, Comitative, and Extent would be considered to answer the questions with what, along with whom/along with what, and to what extent respectively. Such a solution is somewhat ad hoc in that it has little logical justification and there is no guarantee that tests of this type are possible for all cases. It seems to me that the tests have been carefully chosen to agree with our already-present intuitions that

16

SYNTACTIC TESTS

Instrument, Comitative, Extent, and Manner are four different cases, probably having different sets of semantic features. In principle this test could be used to determine otherwise unwarranted cases, since the possibilities of such tests are virtually unlimited. For example if we were to use the following relativizations as tests for cases: in what manner in what way by what method how by what means on what type of carrier through the use of what from what disease our number of cases would far exceed that which would be economical in grammar, since our intuition tells us that these phrases certainly do not represent eight different deep cases. Some grammarians rely on a refinement of the relativization test. It relates closely to a later section which treats prepositions as identifying features of case, but let us look briefly at the following expressions:

He died

in a strange manner/way. in a happy condition, with a smile on his face, by jumping off a cliff on a pilgrimage. in a high-jacking attempt, like his brother, elegantly, with his boots on.

These expressions all answer the question how, but they have different prepositional markers. Nevertheless, a linguist would probably want to place all of them into the same case (Manner), while excluding such expressions as the following which also

SYNTACTIC TESTS

17

answer the question how, and have identical prepositional markers: ( with reluctance, (PREDICATE - He was reluctant) \ He died ] with his mistress, (COMITATIVE) > ( with a bullet in his back, (INSTRUMENTAL) ) Even using more specific relative tests in conjunction with preposition tests will not distinguish between such adverbs as elegantly, and reluctantly. In view of the variation of the surface structures in Manner case, devising specific tests would appear to be a very difficult (and probably unrewarding) exercise. Some principled rules would have to be discovered which would relate either particular prepositions, relative pronouns, or nouns, (or combinations of these) to particular cases, but this would seem to be an impossible task. Also on semantic grounds, we would want to distinguish between John avoided the draft by being eight feet tall, ('enabling'), John broke his leg by falling down, ('cause'), John annoyed Mary by being tall ('subject') and John assassinated the Premier by shooting him, ('method'). 1 Although these four expressions are all marked with the same preposition (by), and although they all can be pronominalized with how, there are compelling semantic reasons to suggest that these four types of ¿j-phrases have different deep structures. Even if relative pronoun tests could be devised (on an ad hoc basis) that would keep these four types of expression separate (which seems unlikely), these tests would still lack explanatory adequacy.

B. THE USE-WITH

TEST

In 1968, George Lakoff published an article entitled "Instrumental Adverbs and the Concept of Deep Structure", in which he compared the objects of the verb use, as in Seymour used a knife to slice the salami, to the objects of the preposition with, as in Seymour sliced 1 Gregory P. Lee, "Subjects and Agents", in OSU Working Papers in Linguistics, 1 (Columbus, Ohio: OSU Linguistics Department, 1970) 58-59.

18

SYNTACTIC TESTS

the salami with a knife. Lakoff concluded that in these two sentences with and use share so many co-occurrence constraints that they are actually derived from the same underlying base.2 As Lakoff indicates, this analysis can lead to some important semantic generalizations. For example, on the basis of his work and other related analyses, Becker and Arms, 3 and Miller4 go so far as to suggest that all prepositions are actually verbs in the deep structure. And in languages other than English there is evidence that prepositions and verbs have the same underlying structure. Thus verbs meaning "use", and prepositions (or postpositions) meaning "with" can be found in Russian,5 Thai,6 and Japanese.7 Anderson8 has pointed out that the relationships which Lakoff noted for Instrumentals are also possible for other cases such as Source, Path, and Goal. Parallel to the Instrumental sentences: John stabbed Seymour with a knife. John used a knife to stab Seymour. John stabbed Seymour by using a knife. Anderson cites: John travelled (from Edinburgh) (to Glasgow) (by way of I via Stirling). 2 George Lakoff, "Instrumental Adverbs and the Concept of Deep Structure", Foundations of Language, IV (1968) 23. 3 A. L. Becker, and D. G. Arms, "Prepositions as Predicates", in Papers from the Fifth Regional Meeting Chicago Linguistic Society, April 18-19, 1969 (Chicago: Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1969) 10. 4 D . Gary Miller, "Cases as Underlying Verbs" (Chicago: University of Illinois, 1970, mimeographed). 5 Richard DeArmond, "The Derivation of the Instrumental Case in Russian", 1969, (mimeographed) 6. 6 Philip Clare Stine, "The Instrumental Case in Thai: A Study of Syntax and Semantics in a Generative Model" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1968) 51. 7 Donna Ash, "Instrumentals in Japanese" (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1970, mimeographed). 8 John Anderson, "Towards a Localistic Theory of Case, Part I : Nominative" (1969, mimeographed) 3. Professor Anderson's materials have recently been published in the form of a book entitled, The Grammar of Case: Towards a Localistic Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1971).

SYNTACTIC TESTS

19

John went through Stirling (in order) to travel from Edinburgh to Glasgow. John travelled from Edinburgh to Glasgow by going through Stirling. Because of the important insights gained from Lakoff's article, it was considered to be a definitive statement on Instrumental. This is ironic since one of Lakoff's purposes was to prove that there was no such thing as Instrumental in English. Nevertheless, as a result of his paper, many case grammarians decided that a noun phrase was to be considered Instrumental if and only if it could be the object of bo th with and use and still carry the same meaning. Stine makes use of this test to determine Instrumental, 9 as does Lambert, 10 Morin, 11 Langendoen, 12 Pam, 13 and Binkert.14 Even Chomsky15 says that he agrees that use is relatively empty of semantic content (like be, and have), and that it would be possible for the verb slice in an embedded underlying sentence to become the main verb, while the main (but semantically empty) verb use is deleted. Therefore, he agrees that use and with sentences could theoretically have the same underlying base, but he nevertheless criticizes Lakoff's position on other (semantic) grounds. One of the difficulties with Lakoff's proposal is his suggestion that underlying both Seymour used a knife to slice the salami, and 9

Stine, "Instrumental Case in Thai", 41, 74. Dorothy Mack Lambert, "The Semantic Syntax of Metaphor: A Case Grammar Analysis" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1969) 100. 11 Yves C. Morin, "A Second Order Case Grammar" (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1969, mimeographed) 12, 17. 12 D. Terence Langendoen, Essentials of English Grammar (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) 105-107. 13 Martin D. Pam, "Goodbuy Columbus, or the Case for Cash" (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1970, mimeographed) 1. 14 P. J. Binkert, "Case and Prepositional Constructions in a Transformational Grammar of Classical Latin", (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1970) 138. 15 Noam Chomsky, "Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic Interpretation", (Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1969, mimeographed) 43. Also in Roman Jakobson (ed.) Studies in Oriental and General Linguistics (Tokyo, 1970). 10

20

SYNTACTIC TESTS

Seymour sliced the salami with a knife, are the two sentences: Seymour used a knife. Seymour sliced the salami. This does not take into account the fact that both the verb use and the preposition with are perfectly natural in the same sentence, as in Seymour used a kr.ife to slice the salami with,16 Thus Chomsky suggests that the underlying structure is as follows with the second sentence being subordinate to the first: Seymour used a knife. Seymour sliced the salami with a knife. Although the two proposals appear quite similar, there are important differences. Chomsky's analysis fails to capture the fact that use and with have basically the same selection restrictions on their objects. This is perhaps too weak a claim. Lakoff's analysis, on the other hand, says that there is a perfect correspondence between the objects of with and the objects of use (since with is derived from use). As we shall see later, this is too strong a claim, with the semantic correspondence between use and with being much looser than Lakoff suspected. Chomsky 17 in contrasting the meaning of Seymour sliced the salami with a knife, and Seymour used a knife to slice the salami, suggested that their exact synonomy is questionable by presenting the un-synonomous following sentences: John John John John

carelessly broke the window with a broke the window carelessly with a carelessly used a hammer to break used a hammer carelessly to break

hammer. hammer. the window. the window.

Concerning these sentences, Chomsky states 18 "The differences of meaning suggest a difference in the meaning of the sentences from which the adverb is omitted", i.e., Lakoff's sentences. Chomsky also presents some sentences which contain use and to in the same 16 17 18

Chomsky, "Deep Structure", 13. Chomsky, "Deep Structure", 43. Chomsky, "Deep Structure", 43.

SYNTACTIC TESTS

21

sense as in Lakoff's sentences, but which do not have corresponding sentences with Instrumental adverbs: John used his connections to further his career. John used the classroom to propagandize for his favorite doctrines. John used the mallet over and over again to reduce the statue to rubble. *John furthered his career with his connections. *John propagandized for his favorite doctrines with the classroom. *John reduced the statue to rubble with the mallet over and over again. Chomsky also points out that if the sentence John used this hammer and that chisel to sculpt the figure, is true, the sentence John used that chisel to sculpt the figure, is also true, while John sculpted the figure with that chisel is not true because the middle sentence implies that he may have used other implements as well, whereas the last sentence implies that he used only a chisel and no other implements.19 As a final point, Chomsky states that such a sentence as Seymour sliced the salami without (using) a knife, does not mean exactly the same as Seymour didn't use a knife to slice the salami.20 To Chomsky's examples can be added at least one additional example of a situation where with and use do not correlate perfectly. Corresponding to the vw7/z-sentence John killed him with a gun, is the wse-sentence John used a gun to kill him. However, although it is possible to say John killed him with a bullet, it is not possible to say * John used a bullet to kill him. There exists a hierarchy of Instrumentality, such that the prepositional phrase with a bullet in the sentence John killed him with a bullet entails with a gun. In this hierarchy of Instrumentality, use does not occur with an Instrument (e.g., bullet) that is controlled by another Instrument (e.g., gun). For the present time we will disregard the fact that all 19 20

Chomsky, "Deep Structure", 43. Chomsky, "Deep Structure", 43.

22

SYNTACTIC TESTS

instruments are secondary instruments in that they are controlled by body parts. Thus, although John killed him with a gun, entails that John used his finger to pull the trigger, we cannot say * John killed him with his index finger, nor John used his index finger to kill him. The semantic reason that these sentences are unacceptable is that only the Instrument which is the most direct cause of the action usually reaches the surface structure of a sentence. This phenomenon will be discussed further in a section discussing causality in Instrumental adverbs. Another sentence illustrating the complexity of the problem is Some Congressmen have used the 84?A Congress to further their own political ambitions. This sentence will pass the use-with test, but many grammarians would argue that identifying the 84iA Congress as Instrumental would be only a partial or very superficial analysis since it could be considered as belonging to the Instrumental, Temporal, Locative, Agent, Objective, and/or the Benefactive case, dependent upon how the concept of case is to be interpreted. The use-with test gives no indication of these other possibilities. Fillmore21 did not employ the use-with correspondence as a test for Instrumental. Although use and with expressions both entail the feature 'cause', use entails an additional feature - intent - that with does not entail. If a person says John squashed the eggs with his boots, the listener doesn't know whether John did it deliberately or unintentionally; however, if a person says John used his boots to squash the eggs, the listener knows that the squashing was intentional. Fillmore 22 also gave some additional examples where use expressions do not correspond to with expressions. By using an Instrumental hierarchy similar to the one discussed earlier, Fillmore said that it is possible to have the sentence The man used a bat to break a window with the ball; but corresponding to this there is no *The man broke the window with a bat (with a ball). 21

Charles J. Fillmore, "Subjects, Speakers and Roles", Working Papers in Linguistics, 4 (Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Research Center, 1970) 31-63. 82 Fillmore, "Subjects, Speakers and Roles", 31-63.

SYNTACTIC TESTS

23

Fillmore also pointed out that John used a stepladder to change the lightbulb, does not mean the same as the humorous * John changed the lightbulb with a stepladder. As a final problem, if it is believed that (as some case grammarians feel) Natural Forces should be considered Instruments, then the with-use test again fails, e.g., The frost ruined Florida's orange crop. * John ruined Florida's orange crop with the frost. *John used the frost to ruin Florida's orange crop. This is a minor point. Nevertheless, I believe that enough has been said about the lack of syntactic and semantic correspondence between use and with to support the contention that this can not be the final deciding test for the Instrumental case in English.

C. THE ONE-CASEi-PER-SIMPLE-PREDICATION TEST

Most grammarians who have recently been concerned with matters of case believe that even though more than one instance of a particular case can occur in a sentence, this can happen only through such processes as sentence conjunction or nominalization. For example, in the following sentence each of the Agents in the nominalization which is functioning as Direct Object of the verb enjoyed is the Subject of a different underlying verb: We enjoyed the Philadelphia Philharmonic orchestra's performances of Verdi for RCA Victor with Arturo Toscaninni and Leontyne Price. This sentence is actually derived from: The Philadelphia Philharmonic performed the opera. Verdi composed the opera. RCA Victor recorded the opera. Arturo Toscaninni conducted the opera. Leontyne Price sang the opera. In a simple sentence (i.e., a sentence not containing any other sentences embedded within it), case grammarians believe that each

24

SYNTACTIC TESTS

deep case can be represented only once. (See, for example, Binkert, 23 Fillmore,24 Morin, 25 Shroyer,26 Lambert, 27 Partee, 28 Stockwell et al.,29 Greenbaum,30 Lee,31 Gruber. 32 Morin, for example, analyzes the unacceptability of such a sentence as *The fire ruined the country by the flood, 33 as being caused by the existence of two instances of a single case (Force) in the same simple predication. Application of this test is frequently used to determine whether or not certain deep cases should be distinguished from each other. This has led Shroyer and Lambert to conclude that Force and Instrument (Tool) are actually two subtypes of a single case, based on such examples as *The earthquake shattered the window with a rock,34 and * Heat/pressure I the sun cracked the glass with a knife.35 Lambert goes on to conclude that Force and Material are members of the same case by suggesting that they cannot occur in the same simple sentence36 as illustrated by the ungrammatical * Heat¡pressure!the sun created difficulties with mortar and bricks. Furthermore, because of the ungrammatically of */ made a castle from!out of brick(s) with a plastering knife, she also suggests that Material and Tool are members of the same case.37 In my opinion, this is a very difficult test to apply objectively. 23

Binkert, "Case in Latin", 91. Fillmore, "Case for Case", 21. 25 Morin, "Second Order Case Grammar", 3, 6. 28 Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 29, 59. 27 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 234-235, 375, 400. 28 Barbara Hall Partee, "On the Requirement that Transformations Preserve Meaning" (Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1970, mimeographed) 20. 29 Stockwell, "Air Force Grammar", 32. 30 Sidney Greenbaum, Studies in English Adverbial Usage, Miami Linguistics Series 5 (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1969) 14, 172. 31 Lee, "Subjects and Agents", 109. 32 Jeffrey S. Gruber, "Studies in Lexical Relations" (Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1970, mimeographed) 63. 33 Morin, "Second Order Case Grammar", 3. 34 Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 29. 35 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 235. 36 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 235. 37 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 234. 24

SYNTACTIC TESTS

25

It is not obvious that Lambert's sentence about the castle should be rejected. Partee accepts sentences in which Material and Tool are used in a simple predication. For example, she considers the following to be perfectly good sentences : 38 We loaded the truck with hay with pitchforks. David planted his garden with corn with a hoe. But even though she accepts such sentences as grammatical, Partee suggests that with hay and with corn are very similar in meaning. She states, "If one's object is to get the truck loaded, [or] get the garden planted... one can use hay, [or] corn to accomplish the task. Such paraphrases with USE are typical behavior for instrumental adverbs".39 Thus Partee rejects the evidence of the test we are considering here (i.e., that a particular case cannot occur twice in a simple predication) and uses instead the use-with test discussed earlier to place Material and Tool into the same Case. It seems to me that this is another example of a linguist using the test which most closely coincides with already present intuitions probably gained from semantic information. There is little logical support for the position that there can be only one instance of a particular case per simple predication. One example of a violation of this principle is the equational or linking sentence. The sentences John is a lackey, and A hammer is an important tool, contain two Objects (John, lackey), and two Instruments (hammer, tool) respectively. Such sentences as these have motivated Stockwell et al. to postulate that the second occurrence of a particular case in an equational sentence is actually "Essive". Stockwell defines Essive as follows, "ESS(IVE) is the case employed for predicate nominals. It is the case dominating A GOOD 40 TEACHER in 'That man is a good teacher'." The concept of Predicate Nominative is a concept of surface structure. It is therefore difficult to see how a deep case label (Essive) can be assigned to a surface phenomenon. On the other 38 39 40

Partee, "Do Transformations Preserve Meaning", 20. Partee, "Do Transformations Preserve Meaning", 20. Stockwell, "Air Force Grammar", 32.

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hand, if it is argued that Essive is not a deep case, then we must assign the correct deep case label, and we are back to having more than one instance of a particular deep case in a simple sentence. Not only equational sentences, but symmetric sentences as well must necessarily have two instances of a single case per simple predication. In such sentences the noun phrases are interchangeable. As Huddleston points out, 41 since there is no difference in meaning between John is similar to Peter, and Peter is similar to John, both John and Peter must be members of the same deep case (perhaps Objective), and once again we find that the rule of having only one occurrence of a particular case per simple predicate is violated. Now let us consider such sentences as He ¡¡at on a bench under a tree in the park, or He came at 12 o'clock noon yesterday. It is an accepted fact of grammar that multiple Locatives and Temporals can occur in a single sentence. It has been argued that such examples do not violate the principle under discussion because such sentences are not simple; the multiple Locatives and Temporals are the result of self embedding with each Locative (or Temporal) node being dominated by a higher node as the following sentences with relative clauses show: He sat on a bench which was under a tree which was in a park, or He came at 12 o'clock which was noon which was yesterday. But the ordering of such constructions is not always so rigorous that the self-embedding is a possible interpretation, and if this were an operating principle in English grammar it would seem that it would also apply to Manner and Instrumental constructions. But neither of the following sentences is grammatical, though both would be possible on semantic grounds: *He ran slowly (which was) hesitatingly, and *He used a gun (which was) a Winchester to kill the outlaw. I think it is possible to interpret such a sentence as He sat under a tree on a bench, as violating the principle of one casei per simple predicate, and to conclude that attempts to explain such a sentence as containing selfembedding might be somewhat unjustified. 41

Rodney D . Huddleston, "Some Remarks on Case Grammar", Inquiry, I (1970) 510.

Linguistic

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27

One reason that I question the validity of this assumption is that it is sometimes difficult to know whether it is surface or deep constraints that are blocking the co-appearance of two cases. For example it is possible to say The child pounded in the nail with a hammer, and The child pounded in the nail with his father, but it is not possible to say *The child pounded in the nail with a hammer with his father. A grammarian believing in the principle that a particular case cannot occur twice in a simple predication might conclude that the reason for the non-grammaticality of the above structure is that with a hammer and with his father are the same case, even though it is intuitively realized that with a hammer is Instrumental, while with his father is Comitative. It is in fact a surface constraint (two vWi/z-phrases cannot be juxtaposed in such a sentence) that is blocking the sentence in question. The same information can be conveyed in a superficially dissimilar sentence, The child, in the company of his father (or accompanied by his father or along with his father), pounded in the nail with hammer. Now let us consider examples of verbal incorporation. In the sentence Kruschev hammered the table top with his shoe, it appears that a single simple sentence contains two Instrumental - hammer and shoe. Langendoen has suggested that the verb hammer in the above sentence is not the result of Instrumental incorporation, but rather the result of Manner incorporation, and he gave as evidence of this position his analysis of the sentence John is sawing his meat. He said that the deleted instrument is a knife rather than a saw, and he derived the sentence from something like John is cutting his meat with a knife in a sawlike fashion.42 If Langendoen's interpretation is accepted as correct, this would at first seem to alleviate the problem of having more than a single case in a simple sentence, since in our example, the verb hammer would be in the Manner (not Instrument) case, while the noun shoe would be in the Instrumental case. However, we find that Manner expressions as well as Instrument expressions are compatible with this type of verbal incorporation, as the following example shows: 42

Langendoen, Essentials of English Grammar, 82.

28

SYNTACTIC TESTS MANNER

INSTRUMENT

John hammered the window relentlessly with his shoe. Therefore, whether hammered is considered to incorporate an Instrument, or Manner, it can co-occur with the same case in a simple predication, and the rule we are discussing is thereby violated. Now let us consider some examples of possible violations of the one-casei-per-simple-predication test where the surface form ends up with a suffix (-ly) rather than a preposition. Greenbaum has suggested that the underlined -ly expressions in the following sentence belong to different cases: Miserably, he signed the deathwarrant clumsily.43 And in like manner, Gregory Lee has suggested the same thing for John deliberately frightened the baby rapidly.41 Although it must be acknowledged that there are a number of different -ly cases in English, if these -ly words do indeed belong to different cases, the evidence must be obtained from semantic rather than syntactic information since in the surface structure there is little grammatical difference. And there are some sentences which contain more than a single Manner Adverb, such as Mr. Macleod triumphs softly, softly,45 which certainly do not seem to be the result of sentence conjunction. It would seem that two instances of virtually any case could appear in a simple predication, as illustrated by the following sentences: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) 43 44 45

John threw the ball from the left side (two Sources) to the right side of the street. The thunder caused the fox to die of fright. (two Forces) He built the igloo out of ice and snow, (two Materials) John and his student wrote the book, (two Agents) He fought the windmill with a sword (two Instruments) and a lance. Greenbaum, English Adverbial Usage, 172. Lee, "Subjects and Agents", 109. Greenbaum, English Adverbial Usage, 14.

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(6) (7) (8)

29

The area was filled with police and (two Objects) national guardsmen. John and Mary accompanied each (two Comitatives) other to Chicago. Both the girls and the boys under- (two Experiences) went sensitivity training,

Not only is it possible to have two instances of any case per simple predication, but sometimes these two members of the same case are functioning so interdependently that the sentence is greatly distorted if one of them is deleted. For example, the following are not paraphrases of sentences 3, 4, 6, and 7 above: He built the igloo out of ice, John wrote the book, The area was filled with police, and * John accompanied each other to Chicago. Such violations of this test are indeed numerous, and should not be in the least surprising; since there is no semantic constraint which states that every action must have one and only one Agent, Instrument, Object, etc.

D. THE CONJUNCTION TEST

Recently, linguists (for example, see Binkert, 46 and Greenbaum, 47 ) have assumed that sentence conjunction is possible only with the same deep case. Going on from this, they assume that when conjunction is not possible, it is often because two different cases have been conjoined. The non-grammaticality of the sentence, *Seymour sliced the salami with Sheila and a knife, suggested to Lakoff 48 that Comitative and Instrumental are different cases. Using a similar sentence * Seymour sliced the salami with enthusiasm and a knife, Lakoff 49 and Ross 50 concluded that Manner 46

Binkert, "Case in Latin", 63. Greenbaum, English Adverbial Usage, 173. 48 Lakoff, "Instrumental Adverbs", 7. 49 Lakoff, "Instrumental Adverbs", 7. 50 John Robert Ross, "Constraints on Variables in Syntax" (Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club 1968, mimeographed) 205. 47

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and Instrumental are distinct cases. Shroyer51 used the nonsentence *John and the earthquake shattered the window, to show that Agent and Force are different cases. And using non-sentences similar to *John and the knife killed the tiger, Morin 52 and Becker and Arms 53 suggested that Agent and Instrument (Tool) are different deep cases. When Lambert applied the test, she ended up with a grammatical sentence, The computer and the US master played chess. However, since this result of the conjunction test violated her intuitions, she merely considered this to be an exception, and in spite of her empirical evidence, she analyzed Agent and Instrument as different cases54. Within the literature we can find additional conflicting statements. Stine showed that Manner and Instrumental cases can be conjoined in both English and Thai as in the following example: Khaw thamhaj maeae dilicaj duaj dobgmaaj lael kaanphmid chaachaa, 'He makes mother happy with flowers and (by) speaking slowly'.55 Ash showed that Manner and Instrumental cases can be conjoined in both English and Japanese as in the following example: anata wa tsuchi to kugi to ki soshite konki de teeburu o tsukuremasu, 'With a hammer, nails, wood, and patience, you can build a table'. 56 My own intuition about these last two examples is that they are sentences designed to achieve a special effect, at least in the English versions. It is entirely possible, as in the following sentences, for two or more items of this type to be conjoined: I wonder what determination beyond the rewards of cocoa and coffee and the prospect of proselyting kept the French riveted to this land for so many centuries. 51 52 53 54 55 56

Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 29. Morin, "Second Order Case Grammar", 4. Becker and Arms, "Prepositions as Predicates", 4. Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 307. Stine, "Instrumental Case in Thai", 76. Ash, "Instrumental in Japanese", 9.

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31

He went into such diverse fields as construction and department stores. We will achieve peace at home only when we have adequate schools, adequate homes, and more than adequate love. In these sentences it seems to me that the unusual or unexpected item is reserved for the last position in the series and that it achieves its special effect simply because it is a violation of some kind. It could be argued that the underlined items are all in the Objective case, nevertheless there is a difference in features ([+Concrete] vs. [—Concrete]) which causes there to be a metaphorical effect. I will later show that there is a very high correlation between features and case, and that in fact, cases can be determined by features, though this does not mean there is a perfect correlation. But the important point as far as this section of the paper is concerned is that in the literature, conflicting evidence is given. Some grammarians (e.g., Stine and Ash) choose examples showing that Manner and Instrumental expressions can be conjoined. They therefore suggest that these two types of expression might be in the same case. Other grammarians (e.g., Lakoff and Ross) choose examples showing that Manner and Instrumental expressions cannot be conjoined. They therefore suggest that these two represent different cases. The fact that different results are obtained is not surprising since the analyses are being made on the basis of syntactic facts which exhibit both semantic and surface structure constraints. Also I think that it is significant that case grammarians who use syntactic tests for case assignments sometimes reject these tests (as Lambert did) when the results differ from what they would intuitively expect. It seems to me that case grammarians quite often rely on their intuition rather than on the syntactic tests. Since their intuitions are affected by semantic considerations, it would seem more efficient to define semantic cases directly in terms of semantic features.

32

SYNTACTIC TESTS E. THE PREPOSITION TEST

1. Introduction A common assumption of case grammarians is that cases in English are signalled by particular prepositions (see, for example, Shroyer,57 Lyons,58 Langendoen,59 Langendoen,60 Lambert, 61 Fillmore62). Referring specifically to the Instrumental case, Fillmore indicated that when the preposition contains an Agent case, the preposition with marks Instrumental. When there is no Agent case, the preposition by marks Instrumental. This generalization that with and by are the Instrumental markers may have value, but there are a number of problems associated with it, as well as with the entire concept of using the preposition test for case assignment. The most obvious problem is that the same preposition can signal different cases (e.g., with can signal Possessive, Comitative, Proximity, Objective, Instrumental, and Manner), while different prepositions can signal the same case (e.g., either with or by can signal the Instrumental case). In this section these difficulties will be considered in detail. First the preposition with will be examined as it is used with ten different cases. Then the preposition by will be examined in relation to the various structures with which it appears. 2. The Preposition with a. The Possessive with The Possessive with is complicated by a number of factors. Chief among these is the fact that with is interchangeable with have, as 57

Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 15. John Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) 294. 59 D. Terence Langendoen, The Study of Syntax (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969) 113. 60 Langendoen, Essentials of English Grammar, 84, 86. 61 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 35, 252. 62 Fillmore, "Subjects, Speakers and Roles", 31-63. 58

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33

well as with a number of other expressions, such as 's, of, and possibly be, and -ly. Another factor is the extreme heterogeneity of the 'possessor' and the things which are 'possessed'. A third complication is that Possessive is unique in that it marks a relation between two nouns rather than a relation between a verb and its noun phrases. Starting with the first-mentioned point, most grammarians believe that Possessive with expressions do not appear in the base, but that rather they are derived from have expressions. In Aspects, Chomsky stated, "... underlying the sentence 'John gave the lecture with great enthusiasm', with the Adverbial 'with great enthusiasm', is the base string 'John has great enthusiasm'," and he noted that with is quite generally a transform of have.63 Fillmore 64 indicated that "The verb have is the result of the juxtaposition of be and the ergative preposition with after a noun phrase". Fillmore would therefore consider the following three expressions to have the same underlying structure: There are some books on the shelf. The shelf has some books on it. The shelf with some books on it ...

(no marker) (have) (with)

The only difference between the have expression and the with example is that the former is a sentence while the latter is a noun phrase. Fillmore indicates that such a structure as *The boy who is with the red hat, must either have the relative plus be deleted, to yield the boy with the red hat, or else it must have the is with become have, to yield The boy who has the red hat.65 In reference to the first possibility (relative-plus-6e deletion), Fillmore indicates that this transformation is motivated elsewhere in the grammar, 63 Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1965) 219. 64 Charles J. Fillmore, "A Proposal Concerning English Prepositions", Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, 17th Annual Round Table 19 (Washington D. C.: Georgetown University Institute of Languages and Linguistics, 1966) 25. 65 Fillmore, "English Prepositions", 27.

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and he considers the following two noun phrases to have the same structure: The boy in the next room. The boy with the red hat. Fillmore failed to note an important difference between the two sentences above however: The deletion is optional in the first sentence, since the boy who is in the next room is grammatical; whereas deletion is obligatory in the second sentence, since *The boy who is with the red hat, is not grammatical. Again, assuming the relationship between with and have expressions, Milka Ivic66 indicated that statements of inalienable possession must be modified, whether the possessive marker is have or with. Thus, both the sentence *The girl has eyes, and the noun phrase *the girl with eyes, are ungrammatical, while both the sentence The girl has blue eyes, and the noun phrase the girl with blue eyes, are grammatical. In his class on English Derivational Morphology, (LSA Summer Institute, 1970), Langendoen compared the following four sentences: A A A A

monster (is) with six heads. monster has six heads. monster is six-headed. six-headed monster.

These examples follow Professor Ivic's intuitions, since there is no *A *A *A *A

monster (is) with a head. monster has a head. monster is headed, (though beheaded is alright) headed monster.

However, if the inalienable possession is of something unexpected, or at least variable, the modifier is not necessary, as in A winged monster. 66

Milka Ivic, "Syntax in European Linguistics Nowadays" (paper presented at the 1970 LSA Institute, Columbus, Ohio, July 9, 1970).

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35

Negated have and with expressions have also reached the attention of linguists. Bach67 for example, mentioned the relationship between not have and without. Binkert68 added the insight that in French and English and some other languages, a positive expression like "Paul is with ambition, or *Paul est avec de Vambition) is blocked; whereas the negative counterpart is allowed, Paul is without ambition, (or Paul est sans ambition). Again it might be possible to say that the sentence is blocked if it is what we already expect, but not blocked if unexpected. The borderline sentence? Paul has ambition, would not be a counterexample to this claim, because such sentences as Paul doesn't have any ambition, and Paul has a driving ambition, are definitely better, and because whenever the sentence Paul has ambition would be uttered, the speaker would mean Paul has a great deal of ambition, or at least Paul has more ambition than average (or more than would be expected of him). All of the examples that have been discussed in this section seem to support the fact that have and with contain the same meanings and same distributions. But with also has the same distribution as a large number of other expressions. The relationship between John and emotion is approximately the same in all of the following sentences, even though this relationship is syntactically marked with have, 's, of, with, -ly, and be respectively: John has emotion. John's emotion overwhelmed us. The emotion of John was overwhelming. John sang with emotion. John sang emotionally. John was emotional. Bach discusses these relationships in some detail,69 concluding that they are all indeed transformationally related. To discuss his 67

Emmon Bach, "Have and be in English syntax", Language, XLIII (1967)

464. 68

69

Binkert, "Case in Latin", 197. Bach, "Have and be", 464, 466.

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arguments is beyond the scope of the present paper; however, the obvious fact is that 'possession' can be expressed by a wide variety of surface structures and it is by no means obvious that they are all derived from the preposition with. As we have seen, most linguists say that have is the form which underlies all of these expressions, but Kernan 7 0 disagrees, saying that in children's acquisition of language, the children often control t h e ' s form long before they control the have form. The problem is further multiplied by the fact that there are a great many additional verbs that incorporate possession, such as give, steal, rob, sell, buy, own, possess, belong to; as well as a great many verbs that incorporate temporary possession, such as take, throw, hand, receive, borrow, lend, send, etc. Like have, all of these verbs have alternate surface representations with's, of, with, and possibly -ly, and be. The surface variation is only part of the problem. The semantic notion of possession (or the related grammatical concept of Genitive, and/or Dative) is a little-understood concept. Gruber makes the distinction between possessional with (You may choose a rug with either pattern, and positional with (John remained with all his money,) and indicates that the negative without also has both of these senses. 71 Gruber used the very broad definition of possessive which follows: "... ANY CLOSE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN TWO ENTITIES", adding that this association must be closer than that of "position". 72 Such markers as have, 's, of, and with make no distinction between things that are legally possessed, and things that are possessed only temporarily. Thus the expressions John has a car, John's car, the car of John('s), and with a car, could mean either a car that John owns, or one that he is using at the present time. In general, such words as own, or possess can be used with legal possession, but not with temporary (non-legal) possession. Belong to, on the other hand, cannot be used as a test of legal possession, 70

Keith T. Kernan, "Semantic Relationships and the Child's Acquisition of Language", Anthropological Linguistics, XII (1970) 187. 71 Gruber, "Studies in Lexical Relations", 42. 72 Gruber, "Studies in Lexical Relations", 42.

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37

because of such sentences as This cap belongs to that thermos bottle,73 or The motor on the hoist over there belongs to my car.11 Another problem of the semantics of possession is that both function markers and form words such as possess, belong to, etc. can be used with abstract nouns, as in The Minnesota Senator possesses qualities many should emulate, and The credit for the success of the rally belongs to many people.15 The fact that the thing possessed can be either Concrete or Abstract raises a number of questions. First, is it possible to possess something like faithl Although it is possible to say John has faith, John went into battle with unprecedented faith, I was inspired by the faith of Brother John, I was inspired by Brother John'_s faith, and even John possessed an unusual faith: it is not possible that *John owned faith, or that *The faith belonged to John. It seems to me that abstract objects can be considered to be 'possessed' only in the broadest sense, which as we shall see later is too broad to have any value at all for the semantic component. I prefer to say that these abstract expressions are adjectives modifying nouns, and therefore have the same case as the nouns they modify although in some instances, they might be considered to belong to the Manner case, as can be seen by comparing John went into battle with great enthusiasm, with John went into battle very enthusiastically. Consider also expressions with abstract objects which cannot relate to a verb, such as She's a girl with promise (a future, class, child), or He was accused of assault with intent to do bodily harm. The important point is that the preposition test does not serve to identify the various Genitive cases. Other kinds of information must be brought into discussion before these various cases can be handled. The concrete noun phrases offer additional difficulties to the preposition test. Consider the following expressions, the last of 73

Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 100. P. Gregory Lee, "The English Preposition With", in Working Papers in Linguistics, RF Project 2218-C Report 1, (Columbus: Ohio State University Research Foundation, 1967) 58. 75 Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 97. 74

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which is ambiguous, since it can mean either legal ownership or just immediate possession : the desk's surface John's eye John's uncle John's cold John's telescope

(Part-whole Relationship) : Surface (Body Part) (Kinship Relationship) (Attribute) (Possession [Legal or Nonlegal])

All of these expressions have with, have, and of counterparts; and again, the preposition test fails to provide any basis for a sensible cataloguing either on syntactic or semantic grounds. This problem is a very difficult one. Shroyer's solution was to have four separate cases for Possession: (1) Inalienable Possessor, (2) Inalienable Possessed, (3) Alienable Possessor, and (4) Alienable Possessed,76 but even this doesn't resolve the dilemma, for he goes on to say, "... we could divide Alienable Possession into categories Locative Possession to account for inanimate Alienable Possession and Personal Possession to account for animate Alienable Possession" J1 This process could go on almost indefiniately. Shroyer's words, "... the concept of possession is a broad one which can incorporate many other relationships ,..", 78 is a gross understatement. Blake has listed twenty-three types of possession,79 and even his list could be extended further. But even extending the number of Possessive cases will not account for all Possessive with constructions. For example, it is difficult to see how the following 'Conditional' expressions would fit into any of the categories mentioned above: Get extra savings with TV stamps, She'll go far with luck, and With diabetes, it's important to count calories. In each of these sentences, the prepositional phrase can be replaced by If one has NP. This discussion has shown that the preposition test results in categories that are extremely heterogeneous both syntactically and 76 77 78 79

Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 104. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 105. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 107. Blake, "A Semantic Analysis of Case", 37.

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39

semantically. In addition there is still another problem that the preposition test fails to solve. Yves Morin has shown that Possessive is very different from the other deep cases in English because although it is a deep case it is marked as a relation between two noun phrases. Morin felt that it would be necessary to alter our view of the base in order to handle Possessive, by indicating that "Fillmore's case grammar only took into account the relationship between the verb and its noun phrases". Thus, Fillmore's grammar was considered to be a first-order case grammar. Morin proposed a second-order case grammar, which would have a better descriptive power, and which would take into account the relationship between the noun phrases.80 In 1967, Bach had realized the same thing as Morin, and he had said "The form of then acts much like no in Japanese or the e of the so-called izafet construction in Persian". 81 Thus for Bach, the of, as well as its variants have, with, 's, and be are all surface case markers. In conclusion, if Possession is to be considered a deep case, it cannot be distinguished from other deep cases merely by its accompanying preposition. The preposition with, and its variants of, have, 's, and be do NOT mark a homogeneous semantic category. If Possession is to be considered a deep case, it should be defined semantically, and should represent a single, narrow, concept possibly LEGAL POSSESSION. b. The Objective with The concept of genitive or possessive in its broad sense covers all of the cases that are marked by with. This includes the with, have, be, of, and 'J variants for not only Possessive, but also for Objective, Comitative, Proximity, Instrumental, and Manner cases. In this section I will consider the Objective or Neutral case. Fillmore uses the preposition test in his definition of the Objective case as follows, "The ergative preposition in sentences with dative, locative or comitative but without instrumental or agentive 80

81

Morin, "Second Order Case Grammar", 12, 17, 19.

Bach, "Have and be", 466.

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actants, is with".82 Fillmore's generalization gives us a starting point, but it is quite easy to find exceptions. For example we can find wri/z-marked objectives in sentences which do not have dative, locative, or comitative case, e.g., She is popular with sailors. And we can find with-marked expressions which have the prescribed dative, locative, or comitative, but in addition have an instrumental or agentive actant, e.g., The Chairman presented us with a check. It would be possible to argue that the with-marking of the Objective case is marginal (which is suggested by Lee), 83 but in order to suggest that it is not marginal I will present examples gleaned from the literature about the various classes of sentences in which Objectives are marked by with. I will show that withmarked Objectives can cooccur not only with Locatives, and Comitatives but in addition can cooccur with other deep cases which are not included in Fillmore's definition. (1) Cooccurrence of With-Objectives and Datives. John presented Mary with a gift. John assigned Bill with a task. John supplies them with money. John furnishes libraries with books. John presented Bill with a ring. John provided Bill with cash. John left his nephew with a fortune. John left Bill with nothing to do. John embarrassed Mary with his obesity. These examples are taken from Fillmore, 84 Lee, 85 and Langendoen (1970 Summer LSA Institute), and they could be extended indefinitely. It would appear that all of these sentences have the same structure. However, closer observation will allow us to discover that in all but the last sentence it is possible to delete the preposi82 83 84 86

Fillmore, "English Prepositions", 27. Lee, "Subjects and Agents", 99-100. Fillmore, "Case for Case", 48. Lee, "With", 73.

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41

tion with, so that the result is John presented Mary (with) a gift, John assigned Bill (with) a task, and so forth. It is also possible in all but the last sentence to reverse the two objects. If this is done, then the with expression, which falls next to the verb will lose its preposition (this is a general rule of grammar), whereas the to expression, which falls further away from the verb will have to retain its preposition, resulting in such structures as John presented a gift to Mary, John assigned a task to Bill, and so forth. The last sentence in the group does not behave like this and rather than the expected *John embarrassed Mary with his obesity, or *John embarrassed his obesity to Mary, we have a form that is not possible for the other sentences: John's obesity embarrassed Mary (but not * John's gift presented Mary, and so forth). The reason that the last sentence does not behave like the others is that embarrass is not a verb of transference as are the verbs present, assign, supply, furnish, provide, and leave. But it should also be noted that there are other verbs of transferrence which lack one of these three possible structures - the structure containing with. Thus Lee86 indicates that although it is possible to say: John gave a typewriter to Bill. John gave Bill a typewriter. John sent a letter to Bill. John sent Bill a letter. John handed a gun to Bill. John handed Bill a gun. there are no equivalent sentences using with and containing the verbs give, send, or hand since the following three sentences are ungrammatical: * John gave Bill with a typewriter. * John sent Bill with a letter. *John handed Bill with a gun. 86

Lee, "With", 74.

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At least as far as present analyses are able to show there is no semantic difference to account for the syntactic difference between such verbs as give, send, and hand; and present, assign, furnish, etc. Evidently the syntactic constraints are merely associated with the particular lexical items. It seems to me that this is another bit of evidence showing that with is a surface, rather than a deep structure, marker. (2) Cooccurrence of with-Objectives with Locatives. (Intransitive) The garden is swarming with bees. The kitchen hung with cobwebs. The sea teems with fish. (Transitive) John smeared the wall with paint. John planted his garden with peas and corn. Harry sprayed the wall with paint. He smeared the fender with mud. John stocked the stream with fish. John hung the kitchen with curtains. John heaped Bill with ridicule. John spread the bread with butter. John inspired me with confidence. He filled the bottle with milk. They conferred John with honors. These examples were provided by Fillmore, 87 and Lee. 88 It was in reference to these sentences that Lee suggested that this kind of alternation appears to be marginal. 89 It should be noted that the transitive expressions above behave exactly like the Datives. Thus the alternation between John 87

Fillmore, "Case for Case", 48; Fillmore, "Lexical Entries for Verbs", 391; and Fillmore, "Types of Lexical Information, Preliminary Version", Working Papers in Linguistics, 2 (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1968) 38. 88 Lee, "With", 72; Lee, "Subjects and Agents", 99-100. 89 Lee, "Subjects and Agents", 100.

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presented Mary with a gift, and John presented a gift to Mary, is exactly the same as the alternation between John smeared the wall with paint, and John smeared paint on the wall, in that in English any case expressions that is immediately next to the verb and forms a constituent with the verb loses its preposition. These conditions are met for Subjects and Direct Objects in English. There is a general rule which states that anything that is not a Subject or a Direct Object in English must retain its preposition. The one exception to this rule is the so-called double-object sentence: 10

DO

John gavelsent¡handed Bill a typewriter. The Objective case marked by with also cooccurs with the Locative case in another type of expression. Joseph Edmonds has shown that in English a very common type of exclamation is a Locative followed by with and an Objective, as in the following expressions: Into the dungeon with him! Off with his head! Down with the Pope! To hell with this book! Upstairs with those toys, young man!90 It appears that the cooccurrence of wfi/i-marked Objectives with Locatives is an important cooccurrence, even though Lee considers it marginal. (3) Cooccurrence of with -Objectives with Comitatives. Fillmore also indicated that wii/z-marked Objectives can cooccur with stative Comitatives, as in Mary has the children with her, The children are with Mary,91 and John is happy with his wife.92 But since this seems to be an extremely limited kind of relationship, I will not pursue the discussion on this point. 90

Joseph Emonds, "Constraints on Transformations" (Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1969, mimeographed) 17. 91 Fillmore, "Case for Case", 48. 92 Jane J. Robinson, "Case, Category, and Configuration", Journal of Linguistics, VI (1970) "76.

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(4) Other with- Objectives. In addition to those noted by Fillmore in his statement relating to Datives, Locatives, and Comitatives, there are a great many additional Objectives marked by with. Lee mentions that with often marks an equational sentence used as an absolute construction, as in the following: With the door (being) wide open, the bugs can get in. With you shielding your eyes, you can still see. With John being too stupid to turn the knob, he couldn't open the door. With Harry (being) about to mow the lawn, he broke his ankle. With the trees (being) cut down by the lumbermen, they were being trimmed and hauled away. Lee mentions an important constraint on such constructions, "It seems that absolute sentences introduced by with can only be derived from be sentences. Sentences like (217) are marginal. (217)?? With trains go by every hour, how will you be able to sleep ?"93 It is also possible for Objectives to be marked by with when they follow directly after the predicate (verb or adjective), as in the following examples: He is acquainted with the music. She is popular with sailors. He is a favorite with teenagers. He is pleased with the book. He is familiar with the music. He's friendly with us. These examples were taken from Stockwell,94 Lambert, 95 and Leech. 96 93

Lee, "With", 61, 63-64. Stockwell, "Air Force Grammar", 79. 98 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 245. 96 Geoffrey N . Leech, Towards A Semantic Description of English (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 75. 94

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This last set of examples shows with following verbs : John credited Harry with writing the letter. He agreed with her to leave early. He experimented with the mirrors. He talked with the pilots. He fought (a battle) with the Danes. She shook hands with him. He's in love with her. She caught up with him. He did away with her. He fell in with the thieves. He got away with murder. He went through with his plan. He put up with his nagging wife. He started with a hundred dollars. He kept up with his neighbors. He agreed with the speaker. He is lenient with his children. He came out with a new policy. He helped with the dishes. He argues with everyone. He flirted with his old girl friend. He met with all of his old buddies. He tried to reason with the drunk. These sentences were taken from Blass, 97 Fillmore, 9 8 and Stockwell. 99 These last two sources indicate that the marking of Objectives can vary, depending on the verb. Thus whereas one would say John credited Harry with writing the letter, and He agreed with her to leave early, one would use other prepositions to mark the Objectives of other verbs, as in the following: 97

Birgit A. Blass, "Adverbs and Prepositions in English and Danish" (unpublished Master's thesis, Columbia University, 1965) IV-V, VII, X. 98 Charles J. Fillmore, "The Grammar of Hitting and Breaking", Project on Linguistic Analysis, WPIL Report # 1 (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1967) 11. 99 Stockwell, "Air Force Grammar", 63.

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John accused Harry of writing the letter. John criticized Harry for writing the letter. He asked Mary for money. He laughed at her discomfort. We will have to conclude that even though with is a common marker of the Objective case in English, we cannot assume that it is possible to define the Objective case as the particular case marked by with even if we add the two conditions that Fillmore added: (1) that there must be a cooccurring Dative, Locative, or Comitative, and (2) that there must not be a cooccurring Instrumental. Instead, I will take a position similar to that of DeArmond that with is a residual preposition, which does not mark a semantic prime (such as Objective).100 (It is interesting to compare this to Lee's statement that "with seems to have no lexical semantic content")- 101 I will disagree somewhat with DeArmond, however, who feels that with is the only residual preposition in English. Evidence has already been given, and more will be given later, that of for, by and perhaps other prepositions are in no sense markers of semantic primes (deep cases), but rather have residual (or surface structure) roles in English. c. The Comitative with A test which is often used to identify the Comitative case is whether or not there is a paraphrase using along with, or together with.102 Thus, in the sentence A hammer broke the glass (along) with a chisel, chisel is Comitative rather than Instrumental. Comitatives like Possessives are relational. Just as it is impossible to have a thing possessed without having a possessor, it is also impossible to have a thing accompanied without an accompanier. Comitatives, unlike Possessives, however, are symmetric. Whereas 100

DeArmond, "Instrumental Case in Russian", 5; DeArmond, "On the Semantic Analysis of Verbs of Exchange" (Simon Fraser University, 1969, mimeographed) 5. 101 Lee, " With", 62. 102 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 151.

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the two sentences A possesses B, and B possesses A cannot be paraphrases of each other, A went somewhere with B has to be a paraphrase of B went somewhere with A. Furthermore, as Jespersen long ago noted 103 there are parallels between the Comitative with, and the conjunction and in such sentences as He is coming with his wife, and He and his wife are coming. And of course here too the Comitatives are symmetrical, since the sentence A and B went somewhere is true if and only if B and A went somewhere is also true. Since 1968, this relationship between the conjunction and and the Comitative with has been referred to by a large number of linguists, including Fillmore, 104 Sanders, 105 Ross, 106 McCawley, 107 Stine, 108 Emonds, 109 Langendoen, 110 Morin, 1 1 1 and Lambert. 112 But very little new has been added to what Jespersen said in 1924. Most of the discussion centers around whether the conjunction and should be derived from the preposition with (Fillmore 113 ), or whether the reverse is true (Lakoff and Peters, 114 Teng Shouhsin 115 ) or whether both and and with are in the deep structure (Anderson 116 ). In reference to the and constructions there is also much discussion as to whether the action is 'joint', or 'nonjoint' (Mc Cawley's terms). 103

Otto Jespersen, Essentials of English Grammar (New York: Henry Holtand Co., 1924, 1965) 90. 104 Fillmore, "Case for Case", 81, 83. 105 Gerald A. Sanders, "Some General Grammatical Processes in English" (Bloomington, 1968, mimeographed) 98-99. 106 Ross, "Constraints", 95-96. 107 James D. McCawley, "The Role of Semantics in a Grammar", in Universale in Linguistic Theory, ed. by Emmon Bach and Robert T. Harms (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968) 152-153. 108 Stine, "Instrumental Case in Thai", 2. 109 Joseph Emonds, "Constraints on Transformations", 74. 110 Langendoen, The Study of Syntax, 95, 113. 111 Morin, "Second Order Case Grammar", 4, 7-8. 112 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 104. 113 Fillmore, "Case for Case". 114 George Lakoif and Stanley Peters, "Phrasal Conjunction and Symmetric Predicates", NSF-17, 1967. 115 Teng Shou-hsin, "Comitative versus Phrasal Conjunction", Papers in Linguistics, II (1970) 315-316. 116 Anderson, "Towards a Localistic Theory of Case", 5.

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Even when the action is 'joint', there is not a perfect match between and and with expressions, however. Yves Morin 117 has shown that in the sentences John is sad with Mary, and This table is beautiful with this chair, it is John that is sad, and it is the table that is beautiful, while nothing at all is being said about the sadness of Mary or the beauty of the chair. Fillmore 118 has shown that adverbs can also affect the symetricity of the expressions. John and Fred willingly agree, does not mean the same as John willingly agrees with Fred, nor does John and Fred fought with heated mud, mean the same as John fought Fred with heated mud; and as a last example, although it is possible to say The baby sitter sat with the children, it is not possible to say (without changing the meaning) *The children sat with the baby sitter, nor *The baby sitter and the children sat (together). In spite of these last examples, I feel that it is possible to claim that the only differences between and and Comitative with constructions, are the result of topicalization; though in order to allow this view it is also necessary to assume that topicalization transformations do change meaning. Case grammarians are uncertain as to the status of Comitative. Shroyer has run into numerous difficulties in allowing it the status of a case. 119 First, since Comitative, like Possessive, expresses a relationship between two noun phrases, he is forced to postulate a COMITATIVE-OBJECT case and COMITATIVE-AGENT case. 120 Second, since the semantic features of his COMITATIVE-OBJECT vary, he divides this case into four subcases. His regular Comitative has the feature [+Animate], 1 2 1 as in He went downtown with his brother. His COMITATIVE-TEMPORAL has the feature [+Event], as in The fire started with the explosion,122 His COMITATIVE-SPATIAL has the feature [+Location] and does not require a non-stative verb; the following is an example: Hortense is with her husband in the stored 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

Morin, "Second Order Case Grammar", 8. Charles J. Fillmore, "Subjects, Speakers and Roles", 46. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 84-85, 88-89, 92, 94. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 89. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 85. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 88. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 92.

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Assuming that a deep case is a concept that should be used for a noun phrase, rather than for a pair of noun phrases, it is probably not wise to consider such concepts as Comitative, and Possessive as deep cases, but rather as surface cases. If we do this, then it is necessary to classify Comitatives and Possessives as belonging to other deep cases. This is not hard to do. In such a sentence as Mother cooked the potatoes with the carrots, both the potatoes and the carrots are Objective. In such a sentence as Mother cooked the potatoes with Janine, both mother and Janine are Agents. (These examples are taken from Morin). 124 In the first example, the carrots has the feature [—Animate], and it therefore is comitative with the inanimate Objective the potatoes. In the second example, Janine has the feature [+Animate], and it is therefore comitative with the animate Agent. The difference between the carrots, and Janine can probably not be shown with syntactic tests; therefore, it is the feature specification that is used to identify the 'Comitative' as belonging to the Objective or the Agent case. The so-called Comitative can also represent other cases. Consider the following conversation: Question: Should you eat the fried chicken with your fingers? Answer: No, you should eat your fingers separately. Assuming that we do not want to consider with your fingers as comitative in either reading of the question, it is still possible to assign this expression to its proper case. In one sense with your fingers would be considered Instrumental (with what), or possibly Manner (how). In the other sense it would be considered Objective (what). Stevens gives a rather long list of Comitatives that can better be interpreted as Instruments. 125 Even in imbedded sentences 'Comitatives' can be assigned to the appropriate case; however, this is somewhat tricky. For example, both in the sentence I took my nephew with me, and in the sentence I sent my nephew with him, the comitative is func124

Morin, "Second Order Case Grammar", 7. Alan M. Stevens, "Case Grammar in Philippine Languages" (New York: Queens College, 1970, mimeographed) 12.

125

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tioning as Agent ('goer'). However, since the verb take includes the Subject, while send excludes the Subject from the act of going, the Comitative relationship is different in these two sentences. Up to this point only examples of Comitatives where both members of the pair are assigned to the same case have been considered. Usually, Comitatives with the feature [+Animate] function in this way. But it is also possible for Animate Comitatives to belong to different cases. Gruber 1 2 6 mentioned a number of verbs that incorporate comitativeness: push, carry, precede, lead, follow, chase, accompany, bring, take, roll, fly, pull, tug, haul, deliver, etc. But very often with this class of verb, it is possible for one member of the comitative relation to be one case, while the other member is another. Thus, in the sentence John pushed the cart along with him, John is the Agent, and the cart is Objective. It should also be noted that for sentences of this type, it is not possible to have a counterpart and sentence such as * John and the cart pushed. In concluding this discussion on comitatives, I think we can say that it is again obvious that the preposition test has failed to slice the pie in an intuitively satisfactory fashion. I would agree with Lambert and Morin that Comitative is not a deep case at all, but is rather, like passive, a purely surface phenomenon. d. The Proximity with The sentence The hammer with the screwdriver broke the window contains a with phrase which on first glance might be considered Comitative. If this with expression is Comitative, this sentence must be capable of answering the question What (two things) broke the window ?; whereas in fact, this sentence is more likely to answer such a question as Which hammer broke the window? With the screwdriver would therefore be best considered as containing the Proximity with. Both COMITATIVE and PROXIMITY with indicate a geographical closeness of the two noun phrases involved, but there are never126

Gruber, "Studies in Lexical Relations", 50, 83, 107, 113.

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theless some differences. The Proximity with answers the question where (as in the example above); the Proximity with cooccurs with stative verbs like be, remain, link, join, whereas the Comitative with cooccurs with non-stative verbs; the Proximity with is not related to and in the same way that the Comitative with is; and finally, the Proximity with is less symmetrical than is the Comitative with. The following examples illustrate these differences: Where are my key si They are with your wallet. (PROX) Who did Sean light the candles with ? He lit them with Kelvin. (COM) The Holland Tunnel links New York with New Jersey. (PROX) Jack moved the piano with his wife. (COM) Jack is with Jill ^ *Jack and Jill are. (PROX) Jack went with Jill = Jack and Jill went. (COM) Jack is with Jill ^ Jill is with Jack. (PROX) (Because in the first sentence it is Jill's location that is known and Jack's that is being determined, while in the second the reverse is true.) Jack went with Jill. — Jill went with Jack. (COM) The partial symmetry which is possible for Proximity expressions but which is not possible for Locative expressions is the result of the fact that "... the former connect a pair of objects according to their relative position; the latter connect an object to a location".121 Therefore, in reviewing the relationship between Proximity and Comitative, we find that the preposition test does not distinguish between them since they both have the same preposition, with, and in both cases the noun phrases can be reversed, syntactically. On the other hand, different syntactic tests indicate that there is a difference between Proximity and Comitative expressions. Here again, the syntactic tests leave us in a dilemma. As we shall see later, many of the problems can be solved by considering semantic features to be primes. 127

Leech, Towards A Semantic Description of English, 164-165.

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e. The Extent with In at least part of the case literature, the following two sentences are considered equivalent: He bought it with $ 5.00. He bought it with silver money. Both with $ 5.00 (e.g., Shroyer) 128 and with silver money (e.g., Fillmore) 129 are treated as Instrumental. However, these structures are not the same, as shown by the following sentences all relating to a person's experience at an auction: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

John bought Mary a bracelet with $ 5.00. John bought Mary a bracelet with silver money. John bought Mary a bracelet for $ 5.00. *John bought Mary a bracelet for silver money. John bid $ 5.00. * John bid silver money. *The auctioneer sold John a bracelet with $ 5.00. The auctioneer sold John a bracelet for $ 5.00. *The auctioneer sold John a bracelet with silver money.

Case grammarians commonly point out that it is possible to say (a), while it is not possible to say (g). But as far as I have been able to find, no one has adequately explained why this is so, nor have they explained why (d), (f), (g), and (i) are ungrammatical while the other sentences are perfectly grammatical. I think the following analysis sheds some light on this problem. Usually with is the preposition marking the Instrument case, and for is the preposition marking the Extent case. When a single noun is functioning simultaneously in more than one case, it can nevertheless have only one preposition, and therefore when this occurs in the sample sentences either for or with will have to be deleted. In sentences (a) and (g), with $ 5.00, is marked with the Instrumental preposition (with), but the phrase is actually func128 129

Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 81. Fillmore, "Types of Lexical Information", 20.

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tioning simultaneously as Instrument and Extent, and although Instruments are possible with a verb like buy, they are not appropriate for a verb like sell. In sentences (c) and (h), for $ 5.00, which is marked with the Extent preposition (for) is functioning only as Extent and therefore it can be used with buy in (c) or with sell in (h). In sentences (b) and (i), the Instrumental preposition with marks with silver money. In these sentences, the phrase is functioning only as Instrument, and therefore it is appropriate for buy in (b), but not for sell in (i). And finally in ( d ) , f o r silver money is a self-contradicting prepositional phrase. Silver money cannot signal Extent, and for cannot signal Instrument, therefore (d) is unacceptable. It should be noted that the nouns have as much of a role in case assignment as do the prepositions, for we know that in the grammatical sentence John bid $ 5.00, the Direct Object is Extent, while in the ungrammatical *John bid silver money, the Direct Object is Instrument, even though there is no preposition to indicate the deep case of the noun phrase. Here again, the syntactic evidence, especially the prepositional evidence is of little help. In order to explain the differences noted between the Instrumental with silver money, and the ExtentInstrumental with $ 5.00, we must look at the semantic features to give us the insights necessary for case assignment. f. The Instrumental with What is typically considered by case grammarians (e.g., Lambert) 130 to be the Instrumental Case can actually be broken down into four different Instrumental cases: Tool, Material, Natural Force, and Body Part. (1) The Tool with When a person refers to the Instrumental case he is usually referring to the Tool-Instrumental, as in He used a saw to cut the board (with). This particular type of Instrument has received extensive treatment in the literature. One interesting point is that this type 130 Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 126.

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of Instrument freely incorporates into verbs, as in the following sentences: The carpenter hammered the nail into the board with his shoe.131 The ship ploughed through the waves.132 He walked as far at, Norwich, (incorporates feet)133 He telephoned John to stay in Lisbon.134 Bill buttered his bread...135 Sam kicked the door open, (incorporates foot).136 Jack didn't knife Betty...13"1 She kissed me with chocolate-smeared lips.13S 139 He cemented over the hole. I bit him with my false teeth.li0 This list of sentences merely scratches the surface of Instrumental incorporation. Each of the above linguists gave numerous examples from which I chose only one. Probably, such sentences as The carpenter hammered the nail into the board, and She slapped me, are not examples of Instrumental incorporation, but are rather Manner incorporation, as Langendoen, 1 4 1 and McCawley 1 4 2 131

Langendoen, Essentials of English Grammar, 82. Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 403. John Anderson, "On the Status of 'Lexical Formatives'", Foundations of Language, IV (1968) 308. 134 James Monroe Pence, "Implications of Fillmore's Case Grammar for Language Instruction" (Kabul, Afghanistan, 1969). 135 Lee, "With", 11. 136 George Lakoff, "Natural Logic and Lexical Decomposition", Papers From the Sixth Regional Meeting Chicago Linguistic Society April 16-18, 19 (Chicago: University of Chicago Linguistics Department, 1970) 349. 137 Paul Postal, "The Case of the Missing Antecedent" (paper presented at the 1970 LSA Institute, Columbus, Ohio, June 23, 1970). 138 Fillmore, "Types of Lexical Information", 23. 139 James Bruce Fraser, "Some Remarks on the Verb-Particle Construction in English", Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics 19 (Washington D. C,: Georgetown University, 1966) 45-61. 140 Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, 422. 141 Langendoen, Essentials of English Grammar, 82. 142 James D. McCawley, "Where do Noun Phrases Come From?" (Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1969, mimeographed) 2, 19. 132

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suggest, since these verbs more correctly describe the type of movement than the instrument used. Nevertheless, there are enough examples of instrumental incorporation to suggest that it is a very important process. And of course Instrumental incorporation (like subject and object marking) is a process whereby the preposition is lost; therefore, we would have difficulty determining which verbs have incorporated Instrumental if we could use only the evidence of what preposition was appropriate. Again, we shall see that it will be the semantic features of the particular item that give us the appropriate information for case assignment. (2) The Material with Like Tool-Instrumentals, Material-Instrumentals incorporate freely (notice buttered, and cemented in the sentences above, which are considered by many case grammarians to be Instrumentals). Dorothy Lambert has a rather extensive and clear treatment of Material Instrumentals in her dissertation. 143 Lambert lists to butter, to wax, to scotch tape, to paint, to brick, to water, to poison, to bloody, to cream, to carpet, and to glass as examples of verbal incorporation of Material-Instruments. She suggests use up rather than just use as the test for Material-Instruments, as in I used up the glass to make the window, and she further suggests that MaterialInstrumentals have the feature [+Source] or [+Direction-from], as noted in the following sentences: O I I made a castle from/out of brick(s). I O I made brick(s) into a castle. I O I used (up) brick(s) to make a castle. Lambert indicates that brick(s) has the feature [+Source] in all three of these sentences, even though the directional notion associated with [+Source] is made explicit by an ablative pre143

Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 52-53, 200, 202, 205, 233, 382.

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position only in the first.144 Thus these examples from Lambert again show that prepositions tell only part of the story, and that some other test (i.e., features) must be used for case assignment. It should be noted that the Material-Instrumental Case is associated only with creative verbs such as build, make, create, paint, etc. Contrast the following two sentences: He built the house with bricks. (Material) They destroyed the building with bricks. (Tool or Possession) It should also be mentioned that the Tool-Instrument and the Material-Instrument can sometimes be conjoined, even though these two types of Instruments have different semantic features and are intuitively felt to be different deep cases. They used a spray gun and paint to cover up the defects in their walls. (3) The Natural Force with Lambert, 145 and Shroyer, 146 as well as other case grammarians, have mentioned that there is yet another type of Instrumental, called Force or Agency. Shroyer indicates that in order for these Forces to qualify as Instrumental, it must be understood that someone is carrying out the action. Thus, in the sentence, The earthquake destroyed the village, Shroyer would assume that the earthquake is Instrumental only if it is controlled by someone who can control earthquakes (i.e., God). There are three classes of Natural-Force-Instrumentals that seem not to be controllable by human beings: rain(storm), snow(storm), hail(storm), sleet, wind, sun( shine), fog, moon (light), thunder (storm), etc. DISEASE: TB, pneumonia, polio, epidemic, plague, outbreak, famine, etc. WEATHER:

144 145 146

Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 233. Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 126, 234, 308. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 28-29, 82.

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gravity, landslide, avalanche, volcano, earthquake, fire, flood, light, darkness, pressure, waterfall, heat, cold, drought, etc. PHYSICAL EVENT:

If it is possible for these types of Instruments to occur in sentences containing with or use it would only be in a special religious or mythological context, as in God used an earthquake to destroy the village. It would probably be desirable to show that there is a relationship between the Natural-Force Instruments and the other Instruments (even though at some level close to the surface it may be necessary to separate them). Yet these expressions do not occur with the preposition with (nor the verb use), and so therefore they will have to be considered Instrumentals by some other test. The best (and possibly the only accurate) way do to this is by considering such features as [+Cause], [—Animate], etc. (4) The Body-Part with Later, in discussion related to Cause and Controllability, a suggestion will be made that there is a hierarchy of Instrumentality. In this hierarchy, body parts will be considered primary Instruments; Tools will be considered secondary Instruments; and Materials will be considered tertiary Instruments. Thus, in the sentence He painted the house with his spray gun, the tertiary Material-Instrument is paint (incorporated into the verb); the secondary Tool-Instrument is spray gun; and the primary BodyPart-Instrument is hand or finger (which is deleted from the surface structure of our sample sentence). As a matter of fact, the primary Instrument (Body-Part) is often deleted from the surface structure either because it is unimportant, or because it is known without being stated: In the sentence He pulled the trigger of the gun, it is assumed that the trigger was pulled by his finger. Body-Part Instruments readily incorporate into verbs to yield kick, slap, kiss, elbow, punt, bite, etc. In general Body-Part Instruments behave like Tool Instruments, but sometimes they behave very differently. Contrast the third and fourth sentences below:

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He saw it with his telescope. He saw it with his eyes. *His telescope saw it. His eyes saw it. It seems that there is also another category or two of primary Instrumentals, as illustrated by the following two sets: SEMI-HUMAN : ATTRIBUTE:

computer, robot, wire services, answering service, etc. faith, love, naivete, hope, charity, etc.

The further study that these two sets of Instrumentals deserve will not be attempted in this paper. g. The Manner with The preposition usually associated with the Manner Case is by rather than with, and such examples will be discussed later. There are, however, various types of Manner adverbials that accept the preposition with. Although such expressions seem to be very heterogeneous, they have all been classed as Manner adverbials by various grammarians. In He covered the victim with a blanket, the italicized expression indicates the means by which he covered the victim. In They provided us with salt and sugar, the italicized expression indicates the material. In Constant forgetting is not at all uncommon with Professors, the italicized expression indicates a class of objects. In The artist started with a bunch of junk, and ended with a true masterpiece, the italicized expressions indicate sequence. In They bought the painting with old Afghan coins, the italicized expression indicates a kind of exchange. And in He handed in his assignments with regularity, the italicized expression indicates manner proper (paraphrasable by 'regularly'). As far as case assignments are concerned, there are two important questions. The first is whether or not Manner should be subdivided into several different semantic sub-cases; and the second is whether or not some of the separate cases we have been considering are semantically the same case. Since the answer to the first question seems to require a large amount of additional empirical evidence, I shall leave the question open, but suggest that these

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sentences are sufficiently heterogeneous to further weaken our trust in the use of prepositions for case determination. The second question is whether some of the cases we have been considering to be different, are actually the same. The two cases that are most suspect of being the same case are Instrumental and Manner. Lambert is probably correct when she considers Manner to be an overlapping case, which subsumes a number of other cases.148 Her opinion is supported by Lees,149 who generated Manner in the following way:

Man

Adj + ly (along) with + Nom ( by + means + o f ) with

Nom

Thus, his Manner Adverb includes Instrumental, as in John drove it in with his hands: Concomitive (i.e., Comitative), as in John drove in with his cousin: and other Manner Adverbs, as in John drove carefully.150 Perhaps it should also be mentioned that Lees considered Possessive with to belong to the same Manner Case, as in the compounds apple cake, butter cookie, dill pickle, egg-roll, gingerbread, plum cake, shortening bread; and as in the sentences from which these compounds are derived. 151 The UCLA Airforce Grammar considers Instrumental to be Adverbs rather than Noun Phrases, 152 and this is again a linking of the Manner and Instrumental cases; and Shroyer considers the underlined prepositional phrase in the following sentence to be "Reactive Contactive Instrument", 153 though many linguists would consider it to be a Manner Adverb: John caused the window to shatter by hitting it with a rock. Sanders notes that a precedence 148

Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 124. Robert B. Lees, "The Grammar of English Nominalizations", International Journal of American Linguistics, XXVI (1960) 14. 150 Lees, "Grammar of English Nominalizations", 13-15. 151 Lees, "Grammar of English Nominalizations", 172. 152 Stockwell, "Air Force Grammar", 29. 153 Shroyer, "Semantic Basis for Curriculum Materials", 35. 149

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relation holds between Manner and Reason nominals, which is exactly the same as the precedence relation that holds between Instrument and Reason nominals.154 Compare the following sets of sentences: MANNER:

(a) Cleopatra ate the bananas greedily because she was hungry. (b) Because she was hungry, Cleopatra ate the bananas greedily. (c) * Greedily, Cleopatra ate the bananas because she was hungry. INSTRUMENTAL:

(a)

Cleopatra peeled the bananas with her fingers because she was hungry. (b) Because she was hungry, Cleopatra peeled the bananas with her fingers. (c) * With her fingers, Cleopatra peeled the bananas because she was hungry. There are many other syntactic reasons for wanting to place Manner and Instrumental cases into the same category. They take the same prepositions (with and by); they are both amenable to the with-use test, as in the following example: Mary used (her seductiveness) , . ,. ,. , r , {, ... . \ to bring John to his senses, which is ( her smelling salts ) the same as Mary brought John to his senses with/by using ( her seductiveness) , , , , , „. , ; and they both answer the same question ( her smelling salts ) (how, or with what). But on this last point, as Dorothy Lambert has pointed out, 155 when Instruments become Subjects, they can no longer be questioned by (how, or with what). Thus, the underlined Instrumental in the sentence The gas flame warmed the food, cannot be questioned with how or with what, but must rather be questioned by what, as in What warmed the food? This example is perhaps further evidence in support of the validity of semantic tests rather than syntactic tests for case assignment. 154 155

Sanders, "Some General Grammatical Processes in English", 69. Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 102.

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61

But returning to a comparison of the Instrumental and Manner cases, we see that when these two cases are conjoined, the result is ungrammatical, as in the following example: *John broke the window with a hammer, and (with) a great deal of care. And it is not possible to have both Instrumental and Manner case with the same simple verb if the Instrumental and Manner have basically the same surface form, as in ^ John broke the window with a hammer with care, but if the surface forms are different, then it is possible for both Instrumental and Manner to appear in the same simple sentence, as in John carefully broke the window with a hammer. This is an indication that at least some of the constraints on conjunction are surface constraints rather than deep constraints, and that conjunction is therefore not a very good test for deep (semantic) cases. It should also be mentioned that both the Instrumental and the Manner cases can become Subjects in the surface structure of English sentences, although the syntax of an Instrumental Subject is different from the syntax of a Manner Subject as shown in the following sentences: INSTRUMENTAL:

Mortars destroyed the village. They destroyed the village with mortars. MANNER :

(His) shooting the President startled everyone. He startled everyone by shooting the President. But possibly this syntactic difference is unimportant since it is possible to find sentences in which the syntactic difference between Instrumental and Manner becomes less obvious. Their use of mortars destroyed the village. They destroyed the village by using mortars. Both of these cases can be derived from sentences. Perhaps the difference is that Manner Adverbials can contain Instrumental Adverbials, whereas the converse is not true, which means that the difference is one of generality. If so, we could say that all

62

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Instruments are dominated by the Manner node, but there are some Manner Adverbs which do not contain Instruments. With this in mind, consider the following two sentences: He startled everyone by using a gun on the President. He startled everyone by shooting the President. We will assume that in both of these sentences the by phrase is in the Manner Case. In the first sentence, just the noun phrase a gun is Instrumental; whereas in the second sentence the Instrument is incorporated into the verb, which, if it appeared in the surface structure would be something like a gun, or a bow and arrow, or a hypodermic needle, etc. What I'm suggesting at this point is that the use of syntactic tests to distinguish between Manner and Instrumental results in vague and contradicting evidence. I feel that we could gain more reliable information through the use of semantic tests such as whether or not the expression has the feature [+Concrete] or [—Concrete], etc. h. The Associative with I have been considering a number of cases which all can be marked in English surface structure by the preposition with. I have tried to substantiate the fact not only that there are a large number of cases marked by with, but also that these cases can all be broken down into sub-cases, that are syntactically very heterogeneous. The major cases that we have been considering include Comitative (He went with John), Locative (He remained with John), Instrumental (He hit the ball with a bat), Possessive (He saw a monster with six heads), Objective (He stocked the stream with fish), and Manner (She sang with unexpected enthusiasm). Very often the Object of with can change not only the semantics of the with prepositional phrase, but can even change the semantics (and the syntax) of the words preceding this Object. Consider the following two sets of sentences.

SYNTACTIC TESTS

She She She She She She

came came came came came came

down down down down down down

She She She She

entered entered entered entered

with with with with with with

with with with with

63

a chill/cold. Mildred. enthusiasm. regrets. her hands in her pockets. all kinds of negative responses.

a ticket. the wind. a flourish. a bike.

Or consider the four syntactically different with expressions that Lee considered in his article entitled, "The English Preposition With", 1 5 6 The house with the white shutters was torn down. With the radio playing, you can't hear the canary. John planted the field with oats. Harry put his car in the garage, and Mary did the same thing with hers. Or consider the six different types of with expressions that Lambert 157 treats. INSTRUMENTAL: ATTRIBUTIVE : MANNER: MATERIAL : LOCATIVE: COMITATIVE:

He broke the window with Henry's body. The boy with red hair broke the window. He broke the window with great precision. He stocked the refrigerator with food. He kept his car, with John. He walked with the child.

Or consider all of the different kinds of have expressions which Bach assumes to be directly translatable into with expressions. 158 Indeed it appears that there are a great many different types of 156 157 158

Lee, "With", 31.

Lambert, "Case and Metaphor", 192. Bach, "Have and be", 476.

64

SYNTACTIC TESTS

with expressions. A number of linguists have attempted to suggest that in spite of this emperical evidence, there is a single unifying principle associated with the preposition with. After working with a number of Philippine languages, Stevens 159 suggests that Benefactive, Instrumental, Partative, Comitative, and Objective can all be subsumed under the category 'Associative', in that these cases all merely associate a particular goal with a particular action. He further indicated that on the basis of Estonian evidence Ilse Lehiste has suggested that Comitative and Instrumental do not need to be differentiated. 160 Mainly on the basis of Latin evidence, Binkert relates cum in Latin to with in English, by saying that both of these prepositions are associated with "... the relational semantic element Assoc".161 Binkert 162 is therefore in fairly close agreement with Stevens that the idea related to the preposition with is Associative. But both Stevens and Binkert have considered 'Associative' to be some sort of a semantic feature; whereas, in fact, to say that a certain noun phrase is associated with another noun phrase is to make a syntactic rather than a semantic statement. Therefore, in my view, 'Associative' is too broad to be considered a semantic feature. I would rather agree with Lee that " With is then a function word, and it is appropriate to introduce it by a non-lexical sort of transformation, a 'spelling rule'". 1 6 3 Therefore, in this paper, with is considered to be exactly like by, of, 's, have, be, etc., as an expression not affected by, nor affecting the deep case of the noun it marks. It is introduced very late in the grammar to indicate the grammatical (not semantic) relationship of the association between two noun phrases.

159 160 161 162 163

Stevens, "Case Grammar Stevens, "Case Grammar Binkert, "Case in Latin", Binkert, "Case in Latin", Lee, "With", 62.

in Philippine Languages", 11. in Philippine Languages", 11. 192. 192, 203.

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65

3. The Preposition by a. A Comparison of the Agent and Instrumental Cases Agents and Instruments are similar in four respects: (1) (2) (3) (4)

They They They They

allow passivization. cooccur with Manner Adverbials. are marked by the prepositions with and by. both have the feature [+Cause],

However, it is also easy to point out a number of respects in which they are different. The Agent case can usually be distinguished from the Instrumental case by considering the following five facts: (1) (2) (3)

(4) (5)

Agent has the feature [+Animate] while Instrument has the feature [—Animate]. Instrument can be marked either with by or with. While Agent is not marked by with. Agent Cause is stronger than Instrument Cause in that an Agent can cause an Instrument to cause something to happen while the converse is not usually possible. Agents and Instruments cannot normally conjoin. Agents and Instrumental can usually appear in the same simple predication.

It is the fact that Agents and Instruments are very similar, yet somewhat different, which makes the following sentence interesting: Matches don't start forest fires: people do! Obviously there are many semantic and syntactic relationships between the Agent and the Instrumental cases. On the basis that Instruments are possible only when there are (either expressed or implied) Agents, Gruber 164 suggested that both Agents and Instruments should be dominated by the same node. He therefore, has the following rewrite rule in his grammar: ( Permissive Agent) , T Agent — „ . . + Instrumental ( Causative Agent J 164

Gruber, "Studies in Lexical Relations", 180, 184.

66

SYNTACTIC TESTS

It has been pointed out frequently by case grammarians that the Instrumental case is possible if and only if there is an Agent (explicit or implicit) in the same predication, since it is the Agent that must use the Instrument to perform the action of the verb (NOTE: For the moment I am disregarding Natural Forces such as hurricane). It may also be just as true that the Agent case is possible if and only if there is an Instrumental (explicit or implicit) in the same predication, since an Agent must use an Instrument (a tool, a body-part, or influence) in order that the action of the verb might be performed. Although Gruber does not mention these facts, his rule reflects this situation, since both Agent (either Permissive or Causative), and Instrumental are generated obligatorily in his rewrite rule. It should also be pointed out that the selection restrictions of Agents and Instrumental are virtually identical. Even such verbs as warn, order, and tell which are usually associated with Agent Subjects but not with Instrumental Subjects can have Instrumental Subjects, as in The sign warned me that no fishing was permitted, The telegram ordered the troops to attack at dawn, and The glow on the horizon told me that the fire had reached the refinery,165 Lyons goes so far as to say that the preposition by cannot mark the Instrumental Case. He indicates that although the knife is an Instrument in the sentence This is the knife that Bill was killed with, it is an Agent in the sentence This is the knife that Bill was 166 killed Thus we see that Lyons considers the choice of the preposition as a primary test of case membership. b. A Comparison of the Locative, Time, and Instrumental Cases There are two kinds of locative expressions that are marked with the preposition by. One of them is with stative verbs such as lie, stand, remain, situated, located, found, etc. as in His house is located 1,5

Robert Wall, "Selectional Restrictions on Subjects and Objects of Transitive Verbs" (Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1968, mimeographed) 11. 168 Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, 298.

SYNTACTIC TESTS

67

by a pea viner. The second type of Locative occurs with NonStative verbs of motion, as in They passed by the drugstore. Leech has noted that Locatives which follow the expression be are symmetrical. Thus, to say that Jack is by Jill, is to say that Jill is by Jack.167 There are also two kinds of Temporal expressions utilizing the preposition by. One of these indicates the period of time during which the activity took place, as in They accomplished all of their work by night. The other Temporal-Z?j> expression relates to the terminal point of the time-period of the activity of the verb, as in All of the toys will be completed by Christmas Eve. These Locative and Time expressions have very little in common with the Instrumental or Manner cases, except that it is possible under certain conditions to use the same preposition. c. A Comparison of the Manner and Instrumental Cases The preposition that is commonly associated with the Manner case is by. But by can also mark an Instrument, as in We travelled to New York by car. But now let us consider such an expression as John taught Bill by being persistent. Gruber would consider the by being persistent in such a sentence to be an Abstract Instrument. 168 Shroyer also considers such expressions to be Instruments,169 and explains this position by saying, that in such a sentence as Justin opened the window by beating it with a crowbar,110 "... we understand that the beating of the window with the crowbar is INSTRUMENTAL in producing the opening of the window", [small capitals mine].171 It is Gregory Lee who has worked most with these Instrumental (or Manners if you prefer). And he has shown a great deal of syntactic and semantic justification for dividing such adverbs into four classes: 167

168 169 170 171

Leech, Towards A Semantic Description of English, 166. Gruber, "Studies in Lexical Relations", 139. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 58, 60,141, 186, 189. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 186. Shroyer, "Semantic Base for Curriculum Materials", 189.

68

SYNTACTIC TESTS

SUBJECT: CAUSE : ENABLING: METHOD:

John annoyed Mary by being tall. John broke his leg by falling down. John assassinated the President by being first in line. John assassinated the President by stabbing him with a knife.

Professor Lee's syntactic arguments for keeping these four cases separate appear on the following pages: 48, 50-57, 60-61, 63-63, 69, 72-72, 76-77, 79, 83-84, 92, and 109-112. Professor Lee172 concludes that ¿^-clauses are related in the following way (NOTE: Some deletions have been made from his display in order that the basic relationship can be seen more clearly): by-clauses

method

subject cause enabling

Earlier, when I was considering the relationship between with phrases functioning as Manner, and with phrases functioning as Instrumental I decided that the affinity was so close that Instrumentais should best be considered to be dominated by the Manner node. The evidence we have just been considering would support the same conclusion for Instrumental phrases marked with the preposition by. It should be noticed that Lee considers Passive and Manner to be sister nodes, both being dominated by 'byclauses'. d. The Passive by Passivization is a very late transformation that focuses a Direct Object (Objective, Goal, Experiencer, etc.) as the surface Subject, 172

Lee, "With", 112.

SYNTACTIC TESTS

69

and defocuses a Subject (Agent, Instrument, Experiencer, etc.) by making it the object of the preposition by. There are many different deep cases that can be made the object of by through this process: Agent (He was hit by John), Instrument (He was hit by a truck), Experiencer (The gift was received by the butler), Natural Force (The city was destroyed by the flood), Body-Part (They thinned all the sugar beets by hand), etc.

e. Summary

of by

Expressions

In summary, I have suggested that although some by expressions can be related to others syntactically and semantically, this is not true of all such expressions. The diversity of by expressions can be observed in the following set of sentences:

GENERAL

SPECIFIC

CATEGORY

CATEGORY

EXAMPLE

Passive Passive Passive

Agent Potential Agent Experiencer

Passive Passive Instrument K-ing K-ing F-ing

Natural Force Instrument Vehicle Subject Cause Enabling

V-ing

Method

Manner Location Location Time Time Extent Extent Measure

Path Stationary Moving Duration Extent Specific General Exchange

He was killed by a raving maniac. The child was unharmed by the kidnapper. The movie was enjoyed by everyone in the audience. The forest was destroyed by a hurricane. He was struck on the head by a sledgehammer. They travelled by car. John annoyed Mary by being tall. John broke his leg by falling down. John assassinated the President by being first in line. John assassinated the President by stabbing him with a knife. They usually travel by land. He was standing by his old schoolmate. A train suddenly roared by our house. He works by night and sleeps by day. We'll be finished by the middle of January. Muslims flock to Mecca by the thousands. He missed the target by quite a bit. In Kabul, silk is sold by the square meter.

70

SYNTACTIC TESTS

This set of sentences represents only major types: many of them could be broken down into a number of sub-types. But there are enough examples in the above chart to indicate that the diversity of ¿^-phrases is too great to allow all by's to be derived from a single source. f. The Causal by A number of linguists have suggested that noun phrases marked with the preposition by often have a certain semantic similarity. In his Summer-1970 LSA Institute Seminar in Case Grammar, Charles Fillmore suggested that by phrases are associated with the semantic feature of [+Cause]. In support of this viewpoint, the first ten sentences above could be paraphrased with the object of the by phrase being made to function as the subject of the primitive verb cause, as follows: A raving maniac caused him to be dead (killed). The kidnapper didn't cause the child to be harmed. lEveryone in the audience caused the movie to be enjoyed. A hurricane caused the forest to be destroyed. A sledgehammer caused him to be struck on the head. IThe car caused them to travel. John's being tall caused Mary to be annoyed. John's falling down caused his leg to be broken. ? John's being first in line caused him to assassinate the President. John's stabbing the President with a knife caused him to be dead (assassinated). But in addition to the cause-related by, there are also other major categories. For example, another basic meaning of by phrases is Extent or Amount, and it seems to be irrelevant whether this Extent is Temporal, Locative, Numerical, or Metrical, as in the following examples: Temporal: We'll be finished by the middle of January. Temporal: He works by night and sleeps by day.

SYNTACTIC TESTS

Locative: Locative: Locative: Numerical: Metrical: Metrical:

71

He missed the target by quite a bit. A train suddenly roared by our house. He was standing by his old schoolmate. Muslims flock to Mecca by the thousands. They usually travel by land. In Kabul, silk is sold by the square meter.

I hope that this section has shown that although Cause does account for an important group of Z>_y-phrases, it is still not possible to say that all ¿y-phrases have this feature. 4. Associative and Causal Markers in Other Languages If it is true that deep semantic cases often have unique markers in the surface structures of various languages, then to some extent these markers should be directly translatable from language to language. We find that this is the case. However, it is also true that a single surface case marker can mark more than one case (i.e., a 'super' case like Associative or Cause), and furthermore, that this fact is also to some extent directly translatable from language to language. It has been pointed out by Stevens that Comitative and Instrument are signalled with a single marker in a wide variety of languages.173 Huang 174 indicated that Instrument and Comitative are the same in German; Lyons 175 , indicated that they are the same in English; and Starosta 176 indicated that these two markers are the same in almost all languages, but especially ergative languages, and he cited as examples Tibetan, Eskimo, Bena Bena, and Pashto. Lyons177 pointed out that Instrumental is the same as a preposition plus ablative inflection in Greek, Russian, German, Sanskrit, and Latin. Agent and Instrumental were found 173

Stevens, "Case Grammar in Philippine Languages", 10. Shuan F. Huang, "Adverbs and Methods of Analysis" (paper presented at LSA convention, Bloomington, Indiana, 1970). 175 Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, 292. 176 Near the end of Fillmore's seminar in case grammar given during the summer of 1970, Stanley Starosta read a paper in which he suggested that a number of Fillmore's cases could be combined. 177 Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, 290, 297. 174

72

SYNTACTIC TESTS

to have the same surface markers in Russian (Huang, 178 Lyons179) and Sanskrit (Lyons).180 And Starosta 181 indicated that Agent and Instrumental are marked the same in English, German, Estonian, and some languages in India as well as some other languages in the Philippine Islands. Lyons182 indicated that Source and Ablative, as well as Goal and Dative, are similarly signalled in Latin and Greek. Starosta indicated that Experiencer, Dative, Locative, and the Infinitive [sic!] are all similarly signalled in Japanese, Hebrew, English, and some Australian languages. And he further indicated that the Instrumental and Objective cases have the same marker in languages other than English. These comments made by linguists studying unrelated languages deserve additional consideration. It would be desirable to see which deep cases end up with the same surface markers in a variety of languages. But such an exercise though it would be important and revealing would only be a step toward descriptive adequacy (though possibly universal descriptive adequacy if there is such a thing). A more important consideration (assuming that there is a significant correlation between various deep cases) is the semantic constant that would explain why these different cases appear with the same surface structures in divergent languages. I have looked briefly at both of these considerations. In order to do this, I had to determine how the Agent, Manner, Instrument, Comitative, Objective, Proximity, Experiencer, Dative, and Accusative (Direction toward) cases were signalled. The chart on page 74 is a summary of this information. In the twenty-one languages treated in the chart, the following correlations between cases emerge. The cases at the left were indicated by the same marker in the number of languages stated at the right. Agent and Proximity Agent and Comitative 178 179 180 181 182

Huang, "Adverbs and Lyons, Introduction to Lyons, Introduction to Starosta, no title. Lyons, Introduction to

Methods of Analysis". Theoretical Linguistics, 292. Theoretical Linguistics, 292. Theoretical Linguistics, 288.

three three

73

SYNTACTIC TESTS

Agent and Objective Objective and Proximity Manner and Proximity Comitative and Objective Agent and Instrumental Instrumental and Proximity Agent and Manner Manner and Object Manner and Comitative Instrumental and Objective Comitative and Proximity Instrumental and Comitative Manner and Instrumental

five five six seven seven eight eight nine ten eleven thirteen fourteen seventeen

I do not think that these many correlations between cases are merely the result of the fact that each language has only a limited number of syntactic markers which it must use over and over again. There must be some truth to the suggestion that in English, despite their great variation, with and by more often than not, signal Association and Causation, respectively. However, the extent to which this is the case, and the extent to which with and by have basically no semantic meaning at all, but are instead surface prepositions introduced by very late 'spelling' rules in the grammar, is still open to conjecture. Both of these facts help to explain the correlation between with and by cases in this wide variety of languages. 5. The Prepositional Phrase Node Now let us turn to another claim that is often made by case grammarians: That there is no difference between a prepositional phrase and a noun phrase, since in the deep structure all noun phrases are actually prepositional phrases, and those which appear in the surface structure without their prepositions have merely had their prepositions deleted by such transformations as Subject or Object Formation (not to be confused with Subject Raising, which takes the Subject to a higher clause). Even some non-case gram-

SYNTACTIC TESTS

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SEMANTIC TESTS

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