Some Remarks on Case Relations

SOME RE~h~RXS ON CASE RELATIONS JGrgen Kunze Zentrallnstltut fGr Sprachwissenschaft Akademle der Wissensch~ften der DDR Prenzlauer Promenade 149-152 Berlin DDR-1100 ABSTRACT The topic of the paper is the problem how to define case relations by semantic predicates. A general principle is out- lined, which renders it possible to "calculate" case relations for a given representation of a (verb-)sememe by means of expressions. This principle is based on an assignment of case relations to primitive predicates and modification rules for nested expressions. Contrary to the traditional case grammar it turns out ~ha~ one needs mixed case relations, especially for two reasons: Arguments occur at "too different" places in an expression or arguments ~iave combined case relations. The consequence is that case relations don't form a set of iso- lated elements but a structured system. I. Introduction The paper is not intended for defending case relations in general. I want to s~e~ch only some problems connected with the definition of case relations ~ud will demonstrate consequences, which seem partly a oit "unconventional". I will not enter into the terminolo- gical discussion on deep cases, case relations etc. and subsume all these variants under the label "case relation". This is justified by the obvious fact that there are more proposals and systems than authors. So one will not overcome this chaos by neat terminological distinc- tions. It is rather typical for publica- tions on deep cases that proposals are presented without sufficient motivation or justification (e. g. Nilsen 1973). It has turned out tha~ in the matter of case relations as a field of linguis- tic and fundamental research intuition and language competence cannot show the right way how to solve the problems of defining them. This is my first conclu- sion from the general scene. Without doubt it is inevitable to work out some principles on the basis of which case relations may be defined. This would enable us - to discuss a rather "clear" object (some principles instead of tens (or hundreds) of proposals), - to evaluate and compare existing pro- posals, - to connect case relations with other essential notions. Quite another question is "What are case relations good for?". One cannot ignore the fact that a lot of serious objections against case relations have been advanced, covering a whole range from "they are redundant" till "the swamp of lacking plausible (or even formal) definitions" resulting in the conclusion that case relations are useless especially for computational linguistics (Mellema 1974, Luckhardt 1985). On the other hand many authors are advocates pro case relations, even in MT (e. g. Nagao 1986, Somers 1986). Here the character of case rela- tions as a link (or pivot) is stressed - between surface and deep level or between nguages. For sucA situations one can cept the use of case relations without exact definitions having an experimental system as a touchstone. Case rela~ion~ are considered here as names or labels of arguments in semantic ~ redicates used for the description of verb-)sememes. This is only …

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