Editing Case role (section)

'''Case roles''', according to the work by [[Charles J. Fillmore]] (1967),<ref name=Fillmore>{{cite journal|last=Fillmore|first=Charles J.|title=The case for case|journal=Proceedings of the Texas Symposium, on Language Universals|date=April 1967}}</ref> are the [[semantics|semantic]] roles of [[noun]] phrases (NP) in relation to the syntactic structures that contain these noun phrases. The term ''case role'' is most widely used for purely semantic relations, including [[theta role]]s and [[thematic relations|thematic roles]], that can be independent of the [[morpho-syntax]]. The concept of case roles is related to the larger notion of ''Case'' (with a capitalised C), which is defined as a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of semantic or syntactic relationship they bear to their heads. Case traditionally refers to [[inflection]]al marking.<ref>{{cite book|last=Blake|first=Barry J.|title=Case|year=2001|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Port Chester, NY, USA|isbn=9780511154249|url=http://www.cambridge.org}}</ref>

The relationships between nouns and their containing structures are of both [[syntax|syntactic]] and semantic value. The syntactic positional relationships between forms in sentences vary cross-linguistically and allows [[Linguist|grammarians]] to observe semantic values in these nouns by examining their syntactic values. Using these semantic values gives the base for considering case roles in a specific language.<ref name="Fillmore"/>

In addition to its inventory of structural cases, case theory includes a series of lexical cases that are assigned at deep structure in conjunction with [[theta role]] assignment.<ref name=Woolford>{{cite journal|last=Woolford|first=Ellen|title=Four-way case systems: Ergative, nominative, objective and accusative|journal=Natural Language and Linguistic Theory|year=1997|volume=15|issue=1|pages=181–227|doi=10.1023/A:1005796113097|s2cid=169330717 }}</ref> In addition to its relation to Case (case based on syntactic structures), these semantic notions of case role are also closely related to morphological case.<ref name="Fillmore"/>