Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). The meaning of a case: A study of the Polish dative. In Richard D. Brecht, & James S. Levine (Eds.), Case in Slavic (pp. 386-426). Columbus: Slavica.
Abstract:
The basic assumption of this study is that cases have meaning and that this meaning can be stated in a precise and illuminating way. This is of course also the position advocated and brilliantly implemented by Roman Jakobson. Further assumptions are: (1) that a case has one core meaning, on the basis of which it can be identified cross-linguistically (as, say, ‘dative’ or ‘instrumental’), and a language-specific set of other, related meanings, which have to be specified in the grammatical description of a given language; and (2) that all the meanings of a case — like all other meanings — can be stated in intuitively understandable and intuitively verifiable paraphrases in a semantic metalanguage based on natural language.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 7 (pp. 391-433) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
