Case relations vs. semantic roles

Abstract

The author understands the “case” as a semantically motivated syntactic relation between the predicate and its implied argument. The semantic motivation of the relation means that the semantic role of the respective argument is coded in the semantic structure of the controlling predicate. Traditional adverbal cases such as Nominative, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative imply primarily arguments functioning as agent (N), addressee/beneficient (D), object (A), accompanying factor (I), location (L) - the above labels should be understood as generalized semantic roles. The set of concrete roles is open and it is impossible and unnecessary to compile a universal inventory of semantic roles.

Keywords

• case
• proposition
• grammatical category
• semantic category