Editing Case role (section)

==Relating case roles to morphological case and structural Case==

[[File:Relating case roles to morphological case and structural Case.png|thumb|A Venn diagram demonstrating how case role (semantic roles) relates to the morphological case, and how morphological case in turn relates to Case (structural case).]]

===Semantic vs. morphological===

The [[semantics|semantic]] category of case (specifically case role) is related to [[Grammatical case|morphological case]]. Morphological case (such as accusative, ergative, dative, genitive, and sometimes also partitive) reflects the ranking of arguments, while semantic case (such as instrumental, comitative, locative, and directional) encodes a semantic relation between the DP{{Clarify|reason=Unknown abbreviation|date=July 2024}} and the governing head.<ref name=Wunderlich>{{cite journal|last=Wunderlich|first=D|author2=R. Lakämper|title=On the interaction of structural and semantic case|year=2001|journal=Lingua|volume=111|issue=4–7|pages=377–418|doi=10.1016/s0024-3841(00)00040-1 |url=http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~wdl/Synsem.pdf}}</ref> Morphological case is typical of [[Complement (linguistics)|complements]] and is licensed by structural Case. By contrast, semantic case is typical of [[Adjunct (grammar)|adjuncts]]; it is only licensed by the meaning of the [[Head (linguistics)|head]].<ref name="Wunderlich"/> From the case roles proposed by Fillmore (1968),<ref name="Fillmore 1968"/> it was demonstrated that case roles appeared where the morphological cases of dative, genitive or instrumental appeared:

*The experiencer case role (dative in many languages)
*The recipient case role (dative in many languages)
*The possessor case role (genitive in many languages)
*The partitive case role (genitive or partitive in many languages)
*The instrument case role (instrumental or dative in many languages)

The following are observations from Sigurðsson<ref name="Sigurðsson">{{cite journal|last=Sigurðsson|first=H.A.|title=Case: abstract vs. morphological|journal=New Perspectives on Case Theory|year=2003|series=In E. Brandern & Zinsmeister (Ed.)|pages=223–268}}</ref> on the "case-semantics" in case-languages demonstrating how morphological case is ''not'' blind to semantics:

*Agentive subjects are nominative
*Indirect objects are either dative or accusative
*Most benefactive (indirect or direct) objects are dative
*Most malefactive (indirect or direct) objects are accusative
*Instrumental DP-objects are dative
*If a lexical item has a choice between an accusative or a dative complement, then that choice is normally semantically controlled

===Morphological vs. structural===
[[Grammatical case|Morphological case]] is related to structural Case (based on syntax) in the following ways:

Structural Case is a condition for arguments that originates from a relational head (e.g. verb), while morphological case is a property that depends on the NP or DP complement.<ref name="Wunderlich"/> The relationship between morphological case and structural case is evident in how morphological case is subject to case agreement whereby the morphological case appearing on a DP must be licensed by the syntactic context of the DP.<ref name="Wunderlich"/>

In much of the [[transformational grammar]] literature, morphological cases are viewed as determined by the syntactic configuration.<ref name=Kracht>{{cite journal|last=Kracht|first=M|title=Case at the syntax/semantics interface|journal=The Relationship Between Syntax and Semantics in the Analysis of Linguistic Structure|year=1999|series=Proceedings from the Helsinki Symposium}}</ref> The accusative case is assigned through a structural relation between the verbal head and its complement.<ref name="Kracht"/> For example, the direct [[Complement (linguistics)|complement]] of a verb is assigned accusative, irrespective of any other properties that it might have.<ref name="Kracht"/> It must be acknowledged that it is not the accusative alone that is structural, rather the [[Specifier (linguistics)|specifier]] of a NP is in the genitive in many languages, and so is the [[Object (grammar)|direct object]] of a [[Nominalization|nominalized]] verb.<ref name="Kracht"/>