D. V. Demidov

4. The problem of the category of case and various 
approaches to its study. 
The case is the morphological category of the noun 
manifested in the forms of noun declension and showing the 
relations of the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena.
The category of case in English constitutes a linguistic 
problem. Linguists argue, first, whether the category of case really 
exists in modern English, and, second, if it does exist, how many 
case forms of the noun can be distinguished in English. The main 
disagreements concern the grammatical status of ―noun + an 
apostrophe + –s‖ form (Ted‟s book, the chairman‟s decision).
The following four approaches of different scholars, can be 
distinguished in the analysis of this problem.
The approach which can be defined as “the theory of 
positional 
cases” 
was 
developed 
by 
J. C. Nesfield, 
M. Deutchbein, M. Bryant and other linguists, mainly in 
English- speaking countries [19]. They follow the patterns of 
classical Latin grammar, distinguishing nominative, genitive, 
dative, accusative and vocative cases in English. The cases are 
differentiated by the functional position of the noun in the 
sentence, e.g.: the nominative case corresponds with the subject, 
the accusative case with the direct object, the dative case with 
indirect object, and the vocative case with the address. Thus, 
―the theory of positional cases‖ presents an obvious confusion of 
the formal, morphological characteristics of the noun and its 
functional, syntactic features.

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The approach which can be defined as “the theory of 
prepositional cases” supplements the previous one and follows the 
same route of Latin-oriented, old school grammar traditions. The 
linguists who formulated it, G. Curme among them [26], treat the 
combinations of nouns with prepositions as specific analytical case 
forms, e.g.: the dative case is expressed by nouns with the 
prepositions ‗to‘ and ‗for‘, the genitive case by nouns with the 
preposition ‗of‘, the instrumental case by nouns with the 
preposition ‗with‘, e.g.: for the girl, of the girl, with a key. They see 
the system of cases in English as comprising the regular inflectional 
case (the genitive), ―positional cases‖, and ―prepositional cases‖. 
The approach which can be defined as “the theory of 
limited case” is the most widely accepted theory of case in 
English today. It was formulated by linguists H. Sweet [23], 
O. Jespersen [18] and further developed by Russian linguists 
A. Smirnitsky [12], L. Barchudarov [1] and others. It is based on 
the oppositional presentation of the category; the category of case 
is expressed by the opposition of two forms: the first form, ―the 
genitive case‖, is the strong, featured member of the opposition, 
marked by the postpositional element ‗–s‘ after an apostrophe in 
the singular and just an apostrophe in the plural, e.g.: the girl‟s 
books, the girls‟ books; the second, unfeatured form is the weak 
member of the opposition and is usually referred to as ―the 
common case‖ (―non-genitive‖). The category of case is realized 
in full in animate nouns and restrictedly in inanimate nouns in 
English, hence the name – ―the theory of limited case‖.
The approach which can be defined as ―the theory of the