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Aspects Of Migili Verb Phrase
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1.9 Case Theory
According to Horrocks (1987: 102), “case theory deals with the principle of case assignment to constituentsâ€.
Yusuf (1998: 26) defines case theory as a theory that deals with the forms that NPs take in different syntactic environments.
Basically, the assignment of case is done under government theory in which the choice of case is determined by the governor.
Yusuf
went further to say that adjacency is required for case assignment.
This means, case assignees and the assignors must be contiguous with no
barrier blocking the discharge of the (Abstract) case.
He also makes
it clear that, case assignor are always head of their phrases and are
adjacent to the complements that receive the case (pg. 28).
The
implication is that, a verb cannot assign any case to prepositional
phrase as there is an NP barrier. That blocks such a transfer.
The three common case under Government and Binding theory are:
Nominative case assigned by tensed INFL
Accusative case assigned by verb
Oblique case assigned by prepositions
1.10 Theta Ó¨ Theory
Another
module under GB theory is theta theory. The submission of this theory
is that a lexical category will have Ó¨ attributes either as assigner or
assignee.
Horrocks (1987: 101-107) says Ó¨-theory is concerned with
the assignment of what Chomsky called ‘thematic’ roles to sentential
constituents. By thematic roles, Chomsky means thematic assignment
called semantic roles such as agent, patient, etc. It is assumed that
these are assigned to the complements of lexical items as a lexical
property.
For example:
Play the ball on the pitch
The NP complement “the ball†is assigned the role of patient or theme while the PP complement is assigned the role of location.
In
all, the fundamental task of Ó¨-theory is to determine the circumstances
(i.e. the syntactic position) occupied by an NP as well as the governor
of such position in the sentence.
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