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Tagmemic

Definition:A system of linguistic analysis that attempts to integrate

grammatical,phonological,semanticandpragmaticinformation. Tagmemics is sometimes

calledslot-and-filler grammar.

Tagmemics was largely developed by AmericanlinguistKenneth L. Pike (Language in Relation

to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, 1954). Pike's intent was to describe

linguistic patterns in connection with sociocultural behavior. (See Examples and Observations,below.)

Tagmemics came to the attention ofrhetoriciansandcompositioninstructors through Kenneth

Pike's articles in College Composition and Communicationin the 1960s and through the

influential textbookRhetoric: Discovery and Change(1970) by Pike, Richard Young, and AltonBecker.

As noted in theRoutledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics(1996), contemporaryresearch in tagmemics "focuses primarily on semantic and ethnolinguistic problems, e.g. kinship

terms in different languages . . ., especially the inclusion of non-verbal, paralinguistic

perspectives in linguistic description."

Case Grammar

Definition:Alinguistictheory that stresses the importance of semantic roles in an effort to make explicit the

basicmeaningrelationships in asentence.Case grammar was developed in the 1960s by AmericanlinguistCharles J. Fillmore,who viewed

it as a "substantive modification to the theory oftransformational grammar" ("The Case for

Case," 1968). See Examples and Observations, below.

Examples and Observations

"In the late sixties I began to believe that certain kinds of groupings ofverbsandclassifications ofclausetypes could be stated more meaningfully if the structures with which

the verbs were initially associated were described in terms of the semantic roles of theirassociatedarguments.I had become aware of certain American and European work on

dependency grammar and valence theory, and it seemed clear to me that what was really

important about a verb was its 'semantic valence' (as one might call it), a description of thesemantic role of its arguments. . . . I proposed that verbs could be seen as basically having two

kinds of features relevant to their distribution in sentences: the first, adeep-structurevalence

description expressed in terms of what I called 'case frames,' the second a description in termsof rule features."

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(Charles J. Fillmore, "A Private History of the Concept 'Frame.'" Concepts of Case, ed. by

Ren Dirven and Gnter Radden. Gunter Narr Verlag, 1987)

Semantic Roles and Relationships"Case grammar. . . is primarily a reaction against the standard-theory analysis of sentences,where notions such assubject,object,etc. are neglected in favour of analyses in terms

ofNP,VP,etc. By focusing on syntactic functions, however, it was felt that several important

kinds of semantic relationship could be represented, which it would otherwise be difficult orimpossible to capture. A set of sentences such as The key opened the door, The door was

opened by/with the key, The door opened, The man opened the door with a key , etc., illustrate

several 'stable' semantic roles, despite the varying surface grammatical structures. In each case

the key is 'instrumental,' the door is the entity affected by the action, and so on. Case grammarformalizes this insight using a model which shows the influence of the predicate calculus of

formal logic: thedeep structureof a sentence has two constituents,modality(features

oftense,mood,aspectandnegation)andproposition(within which theverbis consideredcentral, and the various semantic roles that elements of structure can have are listed with

reference to it, and categorized as cases)."

(David Crystal,A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th ed. Blackwell, 2008)

The Underlying Syntactic-Semantic Relationship"[I]n a grammar which takes syntax as central, a case relationshipwill be defined with respect

to the framework of the organization of the whole sentence from the start. Thus, the notion of

case is intended to account for functional, semantic, deep-structure relations between the verb

and the noun phrases associated with it, and not to account forsurface-formchanges in nouns.Indeed, as is often the case in English, there may not be any surface markers to indicate case,

which is therefore a covert categoryoften only observable 'on the basis of selectional

constraints and transformational possibilities' (Fillmore, 1968, p. 3); they form 'a specificfinite set'; and 'observations made about them will turn out to have considerable cross-

linguistic validity' (p. 5).

"The term caseis used to identify 'the underlying syntactic-semantic relationship' which is

universal:

the case notions comprise a set of universal, presumably innate concepts which

identify certain types of judgments human beings are capable of making about theevents that are going on around them, judgments about such matters as who did it, who

it happened to, and what got changed.

(Fillmore, 1968, p. 24)

The term case formidentifies 'the expression of a case relationship in a particular language' (p.

21). The notions ofsubjectandpredicateand of the division between them should be seen assurface phenomena only; 'in its basic structure [the sentence] consists of a verb and one or

more noun phrases, each associated with the verb in a particular case relationship' (p. 21). The

various ways in which cases occur insimple sentencesdefine sentence types and verb types of

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a language (p. 21)."

(Kirsten Malmkjaer, "Case Grammar." The Linguistics Encyclopedia, ed. by Kirsten

Malmkjaer. Routledge, 1995)

Contemporary Perspectives on Case Grammar"[C]ase-grammaris no longer seen by the majority of linguists working within the general

framework of transformational-generative grammar as a viable alternative to the standard

theory. The reason is that when it comes to classifying the totality of the verbs in a languagein terms of the deep-structure cases that they govern, the semantic criteria which define these

cases are all too often unclear or in conflict."

(John Lyons, Chomsky, 3rd ed. Fontana, 1997)

"Case grammarwas developed in the 1960s and is still favoured in some quarters today,

though most practical grammars of English pay little attention to it."(R.L. Trask, The Penguin Dictionary of English Grammar. Penguin, 2000)

"[C]ase-grammarcame to attract somewhat less interest in the mid-1970s; but it has provedto be influential on the terminology and classification of several later theories, especially the

theory of thematic roles."

(David Crystal,A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th ed. Blackwell, 2008)