Literature Review

My course paper is devoted to the change of the category of noun case in the history of the English history, so I have chosen two sources to begin with which provide a brief introductory material to the theme of my research. The first source (https://studopedia.su/10_45797_Old-English-Noun.html) contains a brief description of four noun cases in Old English (nominative, genetive, dative, accusative) and their formation according to the three types of noun declension. From the second source (https://www.ranez.ru/article/id/687/), I could find out that these types of noun declension were mostly reduced in Late Middle English.

If the author of the first source recognizes four noun case forms in Old English, Karl Brunner,instead, recognizes the following five case forms of nouns in Old English: nominative, genitive,dative,accusative,instrumental. In the  textbook “Die englische Sprache II” devoted to historical changes of the English language” he gives a detailed description of the use and formation of each case of English nouns in three main steps of the language history.
        Thus, the Old English genitive case had both inflectional and analytical forms. Each of them could had strictly limited number of meanings (Die englische Sprache II,p.26-27), but at the end of the Old English period the semantics ​​of the two forms came so close that one could be used instead of the other. In the Middle English period, the use of an inflectional genitive was completely replaced by using a combination of preposition and noun form without ending.( Die englische Sprache II,p.27-28)

Mentioning the instrumental and the accusative cases, Brunner points out the peculiarity of their interaction with the dative case, which consists in mixing their functions. Thus, the instrumental case of nouns, which was regularly expressed by prepositional constructions, completely coincided with the dative case already in the Old English period. (Die englische Sprache II,p.40) There Brunner asks himself if there existed non-prepositional instrumental case forms of nouns in Old English. At the same period, there appeared a strong tendency to identify the meanings ​​of the dative and accusative cases, which ended with their complete assimilation in the Middle English period. (Die englische Sprache II,p.42)

The interaction of the genitive case with the dative, which took place in late Old English, led to the emergence of the “dative possessive” case, which then merged with the genitive case in Middle English. Brunner hypothesizes its possible influence on the occurrence of a group genitive case.( Die englische Sprache II,p.30) 

In the textbook, K.Brunner does not pretend to answer the question of the role of “dative possessive” case in forming “group genitive” and that of the existence of non-prepositional forms of the instrumental case of Old English nouns (Die englische Sprache II,p.40) leaving this field free to new investigations.

In modern English, the number of case forms of nouns has become a vexed question due to the peculiar character of relations between common and genitive case forms. (M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p.M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p 61) The peculiarity is that the semantically indefinite common form is so wide in its meaning that it is capable of expressing meaning of the genitive form,thus making the whole genitive case non oblique for the grammatical system of Englih noun. In his textbook in Theoretical English Grammar, M.Y. Blokh illustrates the problem of the number of noun case forms by the example of defining case forms of nouns in the same statement written in three languages. Then, he mentions the five existing approaches which are "theory of positional cases" , “theory of prepositional cases”, “possessive postposition theory”, and “theory of limited case”, highlighting their essence, strengths and weaknesses.( M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p.M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p 62-65) 

Describing the latter two approaches, Blokh partially agrees with both of them and then he proposes a solution to the problem of the number of case forms in Modern English, which is based on the fusion of these two theories. According to Blokh, Modern English noun has two case forms which are common and genitive form. Genitive-case form is oblique and it is expressed by the postpositional particle -'s which can be added to noun phrases as well as to single nouns.Both of them are not inflexional, but particle case-forms.( M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p.M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p 66)

In the solution suggested by Blokh there is point which contradicts to the previous part of the chapter. At the very beginning it was said that due to its wide semantics,the common case makes genitive case subsidiary (M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p.M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p 61). Then, working out his solution, Blokh affirms that genitive case is oblique.( M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p.M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar” p 66) He proves both statements with equally strong arguments thus contradicting himself and making his solution possible,but not final.

To sum up, it should be admitted that during its historical development the English language has undergone profound systematic changes including changes in the noun categorie of case.The actual number of cases in modern English is a controversial issue.Though some possible solutions to this problem have already been proposed, each of them has unsaid or contradictory points, which leaves open the way for further research.


The sources I used:

1. (https://studopedia.su/10_45797_Old-English-Noun.html)
2. (https://www.ranez.ru/article/id/687/)
3. K.Brunner "Die englische Sprache II"
4. M.Y.Blokh “A course in theoretical English grammar”