Grammatical case

Grammatical case is a linguistics term regarding a manner of categorizing nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles, and numerals according to their traditionally corresponding grammatical functions within a given phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms, depending on their case. As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in Ancient Greek, the locative case merged with the dative case), a phenomenon formally called syncretism.[1]

Grammatical features
Related to nouns
Related to verbs
General features
Syntax relationships
Semantics
Phenomena

English has largely lost its inflected case system although personal pronouns still have three cases, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative and genitive cases. They are used with personal pronouns: subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, whoever), objective case (me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, whomever) and possessive case (my, mine; your, yours; his; her, hers; its; our, ours; their, theirs; whose; whosever).[2] Forms such as I, he and we are used for the subject ("I kicked the ball"), and forms such as me, him and us are used for the object ("John kicked me").

Languages such as Ancient Greek, Armenian, Assamese, most Balto-Slavic languages, Basque, most Caucasian languages, most Dravidian languages,[3] German, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Sanskrit, Tibetan, the Turkic languages and the Uralic languages have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different suffixes) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: Persian has two; modern English has three but for pronouns only; Modern Standard and Classical forms of Arabic have three; German, Icelandic, Modern Greek, and Irish have four; Romanian and Ancient Greek have five; Latin, Slovenian, Russian and Turkish each have at least six; Armenian, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak and Ukrainian have seven; Sanskrit and Tamil have eight; Assamese has 10; Estonian has 14; Finnish has 15; Hungarian has 18 and Tsez has 64 cases.

Commonly encountered cases include nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. A role that one of those languages marks by case is often marked in English with a preposition. For example, the English prepositional phrase with (his) foot (as in "John kicked the ball with his foot") might be rendered in Russian using a single noun in the instrumental case, or in Ancient Greek as τῷ ποδί (tôi podí, meaning "the foot") with both words (the definite article, and the noun πούς (poús) "foot") changing to dative form.

More formally, case has been defined as "a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads".[4]:p.1 Cases should be distinguished from thematic roles such as agent and patient. They are often closely related, and in languages such as Latin, several thematic roles have an associated case, but cases are a morphological notion, and thematic roles a semantic one. Languages having cases often exhibit free word order, as thematic roles are not required to be marked by position in the sentence.

History

It is widely accepted that the Ancient Greeks had a certain idea of the forms of a name in their own language. A fragment of Anacreon seems to prove this. Nevertheless, it cannot be inferred that the Ancient Greeks really knew what grammatical cases were. Grammatical cases were first recognized by the Stoics and from some philosophers of the Peripatetic school.[5][6] The advancements of those philosophers were later employed by the philologists of the Alexandrian school.[7][5]

Etymology

The English word case used in this sense comes from the Latin casus, which is derived from the verb cadere, "to fall", from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱad-.[8] The Latin word is a calque of the Greek πτῶσις, ptôsis, lit. "falling, fall".[9] The sense is that all other cases are considered to have "fallen" away from the nominative. This imagery is also reflected in the word declension, from Latin declinere, "to lean", from the PIE root *ḱley-.

The equivalent to "case" in several other European languages also derives from casus, including cas in French, caso in Italian, caso in Spanish, caso in Portuguese and Kasus in German. The Russian word паде́ж (padyézh) is a calque from Greek and similarly contains a root meaning "fall", and the German Fall and Czech pád simply mean "fall", and are used for both the concept of grammatical case and to refer to physical falls. The Finnish equivalent is sija, whose main meaning is "position" or "place".

Indo-European languages
On this sign in Russian memorializing an anniversary of the city of Balakhna, the word Balakhna (Russian: Балахна) on the right is in the nominative case, whereas the word Balakhne (Russian: Балахне) is in the dative case in Balakhne 500 Let ('Balakhna is 500 years old', literally '[There is] 500 years to Balakhna') on the front of the sign. Furthermore, let is in the genitive (plural) case.

Although not very prominent in modern English, cases featured much more saliently in Old English and other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Old Persian, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Historically, the Indo-European languages had eight morphological cases, though modern languages typically have fewer, using prepositions and word order to convey information that had previously been conveyed using distinct noun forms. Among modern languages, cases still feature prominently in most of the Balto-Slavic languages (except Macedonian and Bulgarian[10]), with most having six to eight cases, as well as Icelandic, German and Modern Greek, which have four. In German, cases are mostly marked on articles and adjectives, and less so on nouns. In Icelandic, articles, adjectives, personal names and nouns are all marked for case, making it, among other things, the living Germanic language that could be said to most closely resemble Proto-Germanic.

The eight historical Indo-European cases are as follows, with examples either of the English case or of the English syntactic alternative to case:

Case Indicates Sample case words Sample sentence Interrogative Notes
Nominative Subject of a finite verb we We went to the store. Who or what? Corresponds to English's subject pronouns.
Accusative Direct object of a transitive verb us,
for us,
the (object)		 The clerk remembered us.

John waited for us at the bus stop.

Obey the law.

 Whom or what? Corresponds to English's object pronouns and preposition for construction before the object, often marked by a definite article the. Together with dative, it forms modern English's oblique case.
Dative Indirect object of a verb us,
to us,
to the (object)		 The clerk gave us a discount.

The clerk gave a discount to us.

According to the law...

 Whom or to what? Corresponds to English's object pronouns and preposition to construction before the object, often marked by a definite article the. Together with accusative, it forms modern English's oblique case.
Ablative Movement away from from us The pigeon flew from us to a steeple. Whence? From where/whom?
Genitive Possessor of another noun 's,

of (the),

his

 John's book was on the table.

The pages of the book turned yellow.

Table made out of wood.

To each his own.

 Whose? From what or what of? Roughly corresponds to English's possessive (possessive determiners and pronouns) and preposition of construction.
Vocative Addressee John John, are you all right?

Hello, John!
Locative Location, either physical or temporal in Japan,

at the bus stop,

in the future

 We live in Japan.

John is waiting for us at the bus stop.

We will see what will happen in the future.

 Where or wherein? When? Roughly corresponds to English prepositions in, on, at, and by and other less common prepositions.
Instrumental A means or tool used or companion present in/while performing an action with a mop,

by hand

 We wiped the floor with a mop.

This letter was written by hand.

 How? With what or using what? By what means? With whom? Corresponds to English prepositions by, with and via as well as synonymous constructions such as using, by use of and through.

All of the above are just rough descriptions; the precise distinctions vary significantly from language to language, and as such they are often more complex. Case is based fundamentally on changes to the noun to indicate the noun's role in the sentence – one of the defining features of so-called fusional languages. Old English was a fusional language, but Modern English does not work this way.

Modern English

Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system of Proto-Indo-European in favor of analytic constructions. The personal pronouns of Modern English retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class (a remnant of the more extensive case system of Old English). For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the "Saxon genitive" (-'s).[lower-alpha 1]

Taken as a whole, English personal pronouns are typically said to have three morphological cases:

Most English personal pronouns have five forms: the nominative and oblique case forms, the possessive case, which has both a determiner form (such as my, our) and a distinct independent form (such as mine, ours) (with two exceptions: the third person singular masculine he and the third person singular neuter it, which use the same form for both determiner and independent [his car, it is his]), and a distinct reflexive or intensive form (such as myself, ourselves). The interrogative personal pronoun who exhibits the greatest diversity of forms within the modern English pronoun system, having definite nominative, oblique, and genitive forms (who, whom, whose) and equivalently coordinating indefinite forms (whoever, whomever, and whosoever).

Though English pronouns can have subject and object forms (he/him, she/her), nouns show only a singular/plural and a possessive/non-possessive distinction (e.g. chair, chairs, chair's, chairs'). Note that chair does not change form between "the chair is here" (subject) and "I saw the chair" (direct object), a distinction made by word order and context.

Hierarchy of cases
Main article: Case hierarchy

Cases can be ranked in the following hierarchy, where a language that does not have a given case will tend not to have any cases to the right of the missing case:[4]:p.89

nominative → accusative or ergative → genitive → dative → locative or prepositional → ablative and/or instrumental → others.

This is, however, only a general tendency. Many forms of Central German, such as Colognian and Luxembourgish, have a dative case but lack a genitive. In Irish nouns, the nominative and accusative have fallen together, whereas the dative–locative has remained separate in some paradigms; Irish also has genitive and vocative cases. In many modern Indo-Aryan languages, the accusative, genitive, and dative have merged to an oblique case, but much of these languages still retain vocative, locative, and ablative cases. Old English had an instrumental case, but not a locative or prepositional.

Case order

The traditional case order (nom-gen-dat-acc) was expressed for the first time in The Art of Grammar in the 2nd century BC:

Πτώσεις ὀνομάτων εἰσὶ πέντε· ὀρθή, γενική, δοτική, αἰτιατική, κλητική.

There are five Cases, the right [nominative], the generic [genitive], the dative, the accusative, and the vocative.[17]

Latin grammars, such as Ars grammatica, followed the Greek tradition, but added the ablative case of Latin. Later other European languages also followed that Graeco-Roman tradition.

However, for some languages, such as Latin, due to case syncretism the order may be changed for convenience, where the accusative or the vocative cases are placed after the nominative and before the genitive. For example:

Latin
aqua, aquae
water f.		 bellum, bellī
war n.
Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative aquaaquae bellumbella
Vocative
Accusative aquamaquās
Genitive aquaeaquārum bellībellōrum
Dative aquīs bellōbellīs
Ablative aquā

For similar reasons, the customary order of the four cases in Icelandic is nominative–accusative–dative–genitive, as illustrated below:

numbercasemasculinefeminineneuterneuter
singularnom. hatturborgglasgler
acc. hatt
dat. hattiglasigleri
gen. hattsborgarglassglers
pluralnom. hattarborgirglösgler
acc. hatta
dat. höttumborgumglösumgler(j)um
gen. hattaborgaglasagler(j)a

Case concord systems

In the most common[4] case concord system, only the head-word (the noun) in a phrase is marked for case. This system appears in many Papuan languages as well as in Turkic, Mongolian, Quechua, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and other languages. In Basque and various Amazonian and Australian languages, only the phrase-final word (not necessarily the noun) is marked for case. In many Indo-European, Finnic, and Semitic languages, case is marked on the noun, the determiner, and usually the adjective. Other systems are less common. In some languages, there is double-marking of a word as both genitive (to indicate semantic role) and another case such as accusative (to establish concord with the head noun).[18]

Declension paradigms
Main article: Declension

Declension is the process or result of altering nouns to the correct grammatical cases. Languages with rich nominal inflection (use grammatical cases for many purposes) typically have a number of identifiable declension classes, or groups of nouns with a similar pattern of case inflection or declension. Sanskrit has six declension classes, whereas Latin is traditionally considered to have five, and Ancient Greek three.[19] For example, Slovak has fifteen noun declension classes, five for each gender (the number may vary depending on which paradigms are counted or omitted, this mainly concerns those that modify declension of foreign words; refer to article).

In Indo-European languages, declension patterns may depend on a variety of factors, such as gender, number, phonological environment, and irregular historical factors. Pronouns sometimes have separate paradigms. In some languages, particularly Slavic languages, a case may contain different groups of endings depending on whether the word is a noun or an adjective. A single case may contain many different endings, some of which may even be derived from different roots. For example, in Polish, the genitive case has -a, -u, -ów, -i/-y, -e- for nouns, and -ego, -ej, -ich/-ych for adjectives. To a lesser extent, a noun's animacy or humanness may add another layer of complexity. For example, in Russian:

  • Kot (NOM, animate, zero ending) lóvit myshéy. ((The) cat catches mice)
  • Stolb (NOM, inanimate, zero ending) dérzhit krýshu. ((The) pillar holds a/the roof)

vs.

  • Pyotr gládit kotá (ACC, animate, -a ending). (Peter strokes a/the cat)

and

  • Pyotr lomáyet stolb (ACC, inanimate, zero ending). (Peter breaks a/the pillar)

Examples

Australian Aboriginal Languages

Australian languages represent a diversity of case paradigms in terms of their alignment (i.e. nominative-accusative vs. ergative-absolutive) and the morpho-syntactic properties of case inflection including where/how many times across a noun phrase the case morphology will appear. For typical r-expression noun phrases, most Australian languages follow a basic ERG-ABS template with additional cases for peripheral arguments; however, many Australian languages, the function of case marking extends beyond the prototypical function of specifying the syntactic and semantic relation of an NP to a predicate.[20] Dench and Evans (1988)[21] use a five-part system for categorizing the functional roles of case marking in Australian languages. They are enumerated below as they appear in Senge (2015):[20]

  1. Relational: a suffix which represents syntactic or semantic roles of a noun phrase in clauses.
  2. Adnominal: a suffix which relates a noun phrase to another within the one noun phrase.
  3. Referential: a suffix which attaches to a noun phrase in agreement with another noun phrase which represents one of the core arguments in the clause.
  4. Subordinating: a suffix which attaches to elements of a subordinate clause. Its functions are: (i) specifying temporal or logical (typically, causal and purposive) relationships between two clauses (Temporal-subordinator); (ii) indicating coreferential relationships between arguments in the two clauses (Concord-subordinator).
  5. Derivational: a suffix which attaches to a bare stem before other case suffixes and create a new lexical item.

To illustrate this paradigm in action, take the case-system of Wanyjirra for whose description Senge invokes this system. Each of the case markers functions in the prototypical relational sense, but many extend into these additional functions:

Derivational Adnominal Relational Referential Subordinator
C-SUB* T-SUB*
Ergative + + +
Dative + + + +
Locative + + +
Allative + +
Purposive + +
Ablative +
Elative + + + + +
Comitative +
Originative + +
Proprietive + + +
Privative + + +

Wanyjirra is an example of a language in which case marking occurs on all sub-constituents of the NP; see the following example in which the demonstrative, head, and quantifier of the noun phrase all receive ergative marking:

yalu-nggu

DIST-ERG

mawun-du

man-ERG

gujarra-lu

two-ERG

ngu=wula

REAL=3.AUG.SBJ

yunbarn-ana

sing-PRES

junba

corroboree.ABS

yalu-nggu mawun-du gujarra-lu ngu=wula yunbarn-ana junba

DIST-ERG man-ERG two-ERG REAL=3.AUG.SBJ sing-PRES corroboree.ABS

Those two men are singing corroboree.

However, this is by no means always the case or even the norm for Australian languages. For many, case-affixes are considered special-clitics (i.e. phrasal-affixes, see Anderson 2005[22]) because they have a singular fixed position within the phrase. For Bardi, the case marker usually appears on the first phrasal constituent[23] while the opposite is the case for Wangkatja (i.e. the case marker is attracted to the rightmost edge of the phrase).[24] See the following examples respectively:

Bardi[23]

Boordiji-nim

fat-ERG

niiwandi

tall

aamba

man

i-na-m-boo-na

3-TR-PST-poke-REM.PST

aril

fish

Boordiji-nim niiwandi aamba i-na-m-boo-na aril

fat-ERG tall man 3-TR-PST-poke-REM.PST fish

The tall fat man speared a fish.

Wangkatja[24][25]

tjitji

child

warta

tree

purlkana-ngka

big-LOC

nyinarra-nyi

sitting-?

tjitji warta purlkana-ngka nyinarra-nyi

child tree big-LOC sitting-?

‘The child is sitting in the big tree.’

German

In German, grammatical case is largely preserved in the articles and adjectives, but nouns have lost many of their original endings. Below is an example of case inflection in German using the masculine definite article and one of the German words for "sailor".

  • der Seemann (nominative) "the sailor" [as a subject] (e.g. Der Seemann steht da – the sailor is standing there)
  • des Seemann(e)s (genitive) "the sailor's / [of] the sailor" (e.g. Der Name des Seemannes ist Otto – the name of the sailor is Otto)
  • dem Seemann(e) (dative) "[to/for] the sailor" [as an indirect object] (e.g. Ich gab dem Seemann ein Geschenk – I gave a present to the sailor)
  • den Seemann (accusative) "the sailor" [as a direct object] (e.g. Ich sah den Seemann – I saw the sailor)

An example with the feminine definite article with the German word for "woman".

  • die Frau (nominative) "the woman" [as a subject] (e.g. Die Frau isst - the woman eats)
  • der Frau (genitive) "the woman's / [of] the woman" (e.g. Die Katze der Frau ist weiß - the cat of the woman is white)
  • der Frau (dative) "[to/for] the woman" [as an indirect object] (e.g. Ich gab der Frau ein Geschenk - I gave a present to the woman)
  • die Frau (accusative) "the woman" [as a direct object] (e.g. Ich sah die Frau - I saw the woman)

An example with the neuter definite article with the German word for "book".

  • das Buch (nominative) "the book" [as a subject] (e.g. Das Buch ist gut - the book is good)
  • des Buch(e)s (genitive) "the book's/ [of] the book" (e.g. Die Seiten des Buchs sind grün - the pages of the book are green)
  • dem Buch (dative) "[to/for] the book" [as an indirect object] (e.g. Ich gab dem Buch einen Titel - I gave the book a title)
  • das Buch (accusative) "the book" [as a direct object] (e.g. Ich sah das Buch - I saw the book)

Hindi-Urdu

Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani) has three noun cases, the nominative, oblique case, and the vocative case. The vocative case is now obsolete and the oblique case doubles as the vocative case. The pronoun cases that Hindi-Urdu has are the nominative, ergative, accusative, dative, and two oblique cases.[26][27] The case forms which do not exist for certain pronouns are constructed using primary postpositions (or other grammatical particles) and the oblique case (shown in parentheis in the table below).

The other cases are constructed adpositionally using the case-marking postpositions using the nouns and pronouns in their oblique cases. The oblique case is used exclusively with these 8 case-marking postpositions of Hindi-Urdu forming 10 grammatical cases, which are: ergative ने (ne), dative and accusative को (ko), instrumental and ablative से (se), genitive का (kā), inessive में (mẽ), adessive पे (pe), terminative तक (tak), semblative सा (sā).[28]

Noun

Cases

 Masculine Feminine
boy tree girl mother
Singular Nominative लड़का

lar̥kā

 पेड़

per̥

 लड़की

lar̥kī

 माता

mātā

Oblique लड़के

lar̥ke

Vocative
Plural Nominative लड़कियाँ

lar̥kiyã

 माताएँ

mātaẽ

Oblique लड़कों

lar̥kõ

 पेड़ों

per̥õ

 लड़कियों

lar̥kiyõ

 माताओं

mātāõ

Vocative लड़को

lar̥ko

 पेड़ो

per̥o

 लड़कियो

lar̥kiyo

 माताओ

mātāo
Pronoun

Cases

 1st Person 2nd Person
Singular Plural Singular Singular & Plural
Intimate Familiar Formal
Nominative मैं

ma͠i

 हम

ham

 तू

tū

 तुम

tum

 आप

āp

Ergative मैंने

ma͠ine

 हमने

hamne

 तूने

tūne

 तुमने

tumne

 आपने

āpne

Accusative मुझे

mujhe

 हमें

hamẽ

 तुझे

tujhe

 तुम्हें

tumhẽ

 (आपको)

āpko

Dative
Oblique मुझ

mujh

 हम

ham

 तुझ

tujh

 तुम

tum

 आप

āp

Oblique

(emphasised)

 मुझी

mujhī

 हमीं

hamī̃

 तुझी

tujhī

 तुम्हीं

tumhī̃

 (आप ही)

āp hī
Pronoun

Cases

 Demonstrative Relative Interrogative
Proximal Distal Singular Plural Singular Plural
Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative

(colloquial)

 ये

ye

 वो

vo

 जो

jo

 कौन, क्या1

kaun, kyā

Nominative

(literary)

 यह

yah

 ये

ye

 वह

vah

 वे

ve

Ergative इसने

isne

 इन्होंने

inhõne

 उसने

usne

 उन्होंने

unhõne

 जिसने

jisne

 जिन्होंने

jinhõne

 किसने

kisne

 किन्होंने

kinhõne

Accusative इसे

ise

 इन्हें

inhẽ

 उसे

use

 उन्हें

unhẽ

 जिसे

jise

 जिन्हें

jinhẽ

 किसे

kise

 किन्हें

kinhẽ

Dative
Oblique इस

is

 इन

in

 उस

us

 उन

un

 जिस

jis

 जिन

jin

 किस

kis

 किन

kin

Oblique

(emphasised)

 इसी

isī

 इन्हीं

inhī̃

 उसी

usī

 उन्हीं

unhī̃

 (जिस भी)

jis bhī

 (जिन भी)

jin bhī

 किसी

kisī

 किन्हीं

kinhī̃

1 कौन (kaun) is the animate interrogative pronoun and क्या (kyā) is the inanimate interrogative pronoun.
Note: Hindi lacks 3rd person personal pronouns and to compensate the demonstrative pronouns are used as 3rd person personal pronouns.

Latin

An example of a Latin case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Latin term for "cook", which belongs to Latin's second declension class.

  • coquus (nominative) "[the] cook" [as a subject] (e.g. coquus ibī stat – the cook is standing there)
  • coquī (genitive) "[the] cook's / [of the] cook" (e.g. nōmen coquī Claudius est – the cook's name is Claudius)
  • coquō (dative) "[to/for the] cook" [as an indirect object] (e.g. coquō dōnum dedī – I gave a present to the cook)
  • coquum (accusative) "[the] cook" [as a direct object] (e.g. coquum vīdī – I saw the cook)
  • coquō (ablative) "[by/with/from/in the] cook" [in various uses not covered by the above] (e.g. sum altior coquō – I am taller than the cook: ablative of comparison)
  • coque (vocative) "[you] the cook" [addressing the object] (e.g. grātiās tibi agō, coque – I thank you, cook)

Lithuanian

Typically in Lithuanian, only the inflection changes for the seven different grammatical cases:

  • Nominative (vardininkas): šuo – Tai yra šuo – "This is a dog."
  • Genitive (kilmininkas): šuns – Tomas paėmė šuns kaulą – "Tom took the dog's bone."
  • Dative (naudininkas): šuniui – Jis davė kaulą kitam šuniui – "He gave the bone to another dog."
  • Accusative (galininkas): šunį – Jis nuprausė šunį – "He washed the dog."
  • Instrumental (įnagininkas): šunimi – Jis šunimi išgąsdino kates – He scared the cats with (using) the dog.
  • Locative (vietininkas): šunyje – Susitiksime „Baltame šunyje“ – "We'll meet at the White Dog (Cafe)."
  • Vocative (šauksmininkas): šunie – Jis sušuko: Ei, šunie! – "He shouted: Hey, dog!"

Hungarian

Hungarian declension is relatively simple with regular suffixes attached to the vast majority of nouns. The following table lists all of the cases used in Hungarian.

ház – house, kettő – two
Case Meaning Suffix Example Meaning of the example
Nominative case subject ∅ ház house (as a subject)
Accusative case direct object -ot/(-at)/-et/-öt/-t házat house (as an object)
Dative case indirect object -nak/-nek háznak to the house
Genitive case possession -é házé of the house (belonging to)
Instrumental-comitative case with -val/-vel (Assim.) házzal with the house
Causal-final case for, for the purpose of -ért házért for the house
Translative case into (used to show transformation) -vá/-vé (Assim.) házzá [turn] into a house
Terminative case as far as, up to -ig házig as far as the house
Illative case into (location) -ba/-be házba into the house
Adessive case at -nál/-nél háznál at the house
Ablative case from -tól/-től háztól from the house
Sublative case onto (movement towards a thing) -ra/-re házra onto the house
Superessive case on/upon (static position) -n/-on/-en/-ön házon on top of the house
Delative case from (movement away from a thing) -ról/-röl házról away from the house
Temporal case at (used to indicate time or moment) -kor kettőkor at two (o'clock)
Sociative case with (archaic, nowadays slightly pejorative) -stul/-stül házastul with the house
Types of types or variants of a thing -féle kettőféle ház two types of houses

Russian
Main article: Russian declension

An example of a Russian case inflection is given below (with explicit stress marks), using the singular forms of the Russian term for "sailor", which belongs to Russian's first declension class.

  • моря́к (nominative) "[the] sailor" [as a subject] (e.g. Там стоит моряк: The sailor is standing there)
  • морякá (genitive) "[the] sailor's / [of the] sailor" (e.g. Сын моряка — художник: The sailor's son is an artist)
  • моряку́ (dative) "[to/for the] sailor" [as an indirect object] (e.g. Моряку подарили подарок: (They/Someone) gave a present to the sailor)
  • морякá (accusative) "[the] sailor" [as a direct object] (e.g. Вижу моряка: (I) see the sailor)
  • моряко́м (instrumental) "[with/by the] sailor" [as a direct object] (e.g. Дружу с моряком: (I) have a friendship with the sailor)
  • о/на/в моряке́ (prepositional) "[about/on/in the] sailor" [as a direct object] (e.g. Думаю о моряке: (I) think about the sailor)

Up to ten additional cases are identified by linguists, although today all of them are either incomplete (do not apply to all nouns or do not form full word paradigm with all combinations of gender and number) or degenerate (appear identical to one of the main six cases). The most recognized additional cases are locative (в лесу́, на мосту́, в слеза́х), partitive (ча́ю, са́хару, песку́), and two forms of vocative — old (Го́споди, Бо́же, о́тче) and neo-vocative (Маш, пап, ребя́т). Sometimes, so called count-form (for some countable nouns after numerals) is considered to be a sub-case. See details.

Sanskrit

Grammatical case was analyzed extensively in Sanskrit. The grammarian Pāṇini identified six semantic roles or kāraka,[29] which are related to the following eight Sanskrit cases in order:[30]

Case Root word: वृक्ष (vṛ́kṣa) [Tree]
Singular Dual Plural
Kartṛ

कर्तृ

Nominative वृक्षः

vṛkṣáḥ

 वृक्षौ

vṛkṣaú

 वृक्षाः / वृक्षासः¹

vṛkṣā́ḥ / vṛkṣā́saḥ¹

Sambodhana

सम्बोधन

 Vocative वृक्ष

vṛ́kṣa

Karma

कर्म

Accusative वृक्षम्

vṛkṣám

 वृक्षान्

vṛkṣā́n

Karaṇa

करण

Instrumental वृक्षेण

vṛkṣéṇa

 वृक्षाभ्याम्

vṛkṣā́bhyām

 वृक्षैः / वृक्षेभिः¹

vṛkṣaíḥ / vṛkṣébhiḥ¹

Sampradāna

सम्प्रदान

Dative वृक्षाय

vṛkṣā́ya

 वृक्षेभ्यः

vṛkṣébhyaḥ

Apādāna

अपादान

Ablative वृक्षात्

vṛkṣā́t

Sambandha

सम्बन्ध

Genitive वृक्षस्य

vṛkṣásya

 वृक्षयोः

vṛkṣáyoḥ

 वृक्षाणाम्

vṛkṣā́ṇām

Adhikaraṇa

अधिकरण

Locative वृक्षे

vṛkṣé

 वृक्षेषु

vṛkṣéṣu

¹ Vedic

For example, in the following sentence leaf is the agent (kartā, nominative case), tree is the source (apādāna, ablative case), and ground is the locus (adhikaraṇa, locative case). The declensions are reflected in the morphemes -āt, -am, and -au respectively.

vṛkṣ-ātparṇ-ambhūm-aupatati
from the treea leafto the groundfalls

However, the cases may be deployed for other than the default thematic roles. A notable example is the passive construction. In the following sentence, Devadatta is the kartā, but appears in the instrumental case, and rice, the karman, object, is in the nominative case (as subject of the verb). The declensions are reflected in the morphemes -ena and -am.

devadatt-enaodan-ampacyati
by Devadattathe riceis cooked

Tamil

The Tamil case system is analyzed in native and missionary grammars as consisting of a finite number of cases.[31][32] The usual treatment of Tamil case (Arden 1942)[33] is one in which there are seven cases: nominative (first case), accusative (second case), instrumental (third), dative (fourth), ablative (fifth), genitive (sixth), and locative (seventh). In traditional analyses, there is always a clear distinction made between post-positional morphemes and case endings. The vocative is sometimes given a place in the case system as an eighth case, but vocative forms do not participate in usual morphophonemic alternations and do not govern the use of any postpositions. Modern grammarians, however, argue that this eight-case classification is coarse and artificial[32] and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.[34]

CaseSuffixesExample: மன்னன் (mannan) [king]
First caseNominative—
  • மன்னன் (mannan)
Second caseAccusative
  • ai
  • ஐ
  • மன்னனை (mannanai)
Third caseInstrumental
  • al
  • udan,
  • kondu
  • ஆல், உடன்
  • கொண்டு
  • மன்னனால் (mannanaal)
  • மன்னனுடன் (mannanudan)
  • மன்னனோடு (mannanOdu)
Fourth caseDative
  • (u)kku
  • poruttu
  • aaga
  • கு
  • பொருட்டு
  • ஆக
  • மன்னனுக்கு (mannanukku)
  • மன்னனின் பொருட்டு (mannanin poruttu)
  • மன்னனுக்காக (mannanukkaaga)
Fifth caseAblative
  • in
  • il
  • ilrundu
  • இன்
  • இல்
  • இருந்து
  • மன்னனின் (mannanin)
  • மன்னனில் (mannanil)
  • மன்னனிலிருந்து (mannanilirundu)
Sixth caseGenitive
  • athu
  • udaiya
  • அது
  • உடைய
  • மன்னனது (mannanadu)
  • மன்னனுடைய (mannanudaiya)
Seventh caseLocative
  • il
  • idam
  • kaṇ (Old Tamil)
  • இல்
  • இடம்
  • கண் (Old Tamil)
  • வீட்டில் (vīṭṭil)
  • மன்னனிடம் (mannanidam)
Eighth caseVocative
  • e
  • a
  • ஏ
  • ஆ
  • மன்னனே (mannanE)
  • மன்னவா(mannavaa)

Turkish

Modern Turkish has six cases (In Turkish İsmin hâlleri).

Nominative


What? Who?

 Accusative[lower-alpha 2]


What? Who?

 Dative[lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4][lower-alpha 5]


To whom?

 Locative[lower-alpha 6][lower-alpha 7]


Where? Whom?

 Ablative[lower-alpha 8][lower-alpha 9]


Where from? From whom? Why?

 Genitive


Whose? What's wrong?

Singular çiçek / (a/the) flower (nom) çiçeği / (a/the) flower (acc) çiçeğe / to (a/the) flower çiçekte / in (a/the) flower çiçekten / from (a/the) flower çiçeğin / of (a/the) flower
Plural çiçekler / (the) flowers (nom) çiçekleri / (the) flowers (acc) çiçeklere / to (the) flowers çiçeklerde / in (the) flowers çiçeklerden / from (the) flowers çiçeklerin / of (the) flowers

The accusative can exist only in the noun(whether it is derived from a verb or not). For example, "Arkadaşlar bize gelmeyi düşünüyorlar." (Friends are thinking of coming to us).

The dative can exist only in the noun(whether it is derived from a verb or not). For example, "Bol bol kitap okumaya çalışıyorum." (I try to read a lot of books).[35]

Evolution

As languages evolve, case systems change. In early Ancient Greek, for example, the genitive and ablative cases became combined, giving five cases, rather than the six retained in Latin. In modern Hindi, the Sanskrit cases have been reduced to three: a direct case (for subjects and direct objects) and oblique case, and a vocative case.[36][37] In English, apart from the pronouns discussed above, case has vanished altogether except for the possessive/non-possessive dichotomy in nouns.

The evolution of the treatment of case relationships can be circular.[4]:pp.167–174 Adpositions can become unstressed and sound like they are an unstressed syllable of a neighboring word. A postposition can thus merge into the stem of a head noun, developing various forms depending on the phonological shape of the stem. Affixes can then be subject to various phonological processes such as assimilation, vowel centering to the schwa, phoneme loss, and fusion, and these processes can reduce or even eliminate the distinctions between cases. Languages can then compensate for the resulting loss of function by creating adpositions, thus coming full circle.

Recent experiments in agent-based modeling have shown how case systems can emerge and evolve in a population of language users.[38] The experiments demonstrate that language users may introduce new case markers to reduce the cognitive effort required for semantic interpretation, hence facilitating communication through language. Case markers then become generalized through analogical reasoning and reuse.

Linguistic typology

Morphosyntactic alignment
Main article: Morphosyntactic alignment

Languages are categorized into several case systems, based on their morphosyntactic alignment—how they group verb agents and patients into cases:

  • Nominative–accusative (or simply accusative): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in the same case as the agent (subject) of a transitive verb; this case is then called the nominative case, with the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb being in the accusative case.
  • Ergative–absolutive (or simply ergative): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in the same case as the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb; this case is then called the absolutive case, with the agent (subject) of a transitive verb being in the ergative case.
  • Ergative–accusative (or tripartite): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in its own case (the intransitive case), separate from that of the agent (subject) or patient (direct object) of a transitive verb (which is in the ergative case or accusative case, respectively).
  • Active–stative (or simply active): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb can be in one of two cases; if the argument is an agent, as in "He ate", then it is in the same case as the agent (subject) of a transitive verb (sometimes called the agentive case), and if it is a patient, as in "He tripped", then it is in the same case as the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb (sometimes called the patientive case).
  • Trigger: One noun in a sentence is the topic or focus. This noun is in the trigger case, and information elsewhere in the sentence (for example a verb affix in Tagalog) specifies the role of the trigger. The trigger may be identified as the agent, patient, etc. Other nouns may be inflected for case, but the inflections are overloaded; for example, in Tagalog, the subject and object of a verb are both expressed in the genitive case when they are not in the trigger case.

The following are systems that some languages use to mark case instead of, or in addition to, declension:

  • Positional: Nouns are not inflected for case; the position of a noun in the sentence expresses its case.
  • Adpositional: Nouns are accompanied by words that mark case.

Language families

The lemma form of words, which is the form chosen by convention as the canonical form of a word, is usually the most unmarked or basic case, which is typically the nominative, trigger, or absolutive case, whichever a language may have.

See also

Notes
  1. The status of the possessive as an affix or a clitic is the subject of debate.[11][12] It differs from the noun inflection of languages such as German, in that the genitive ending may attach to the last word of the phrase. To account for this, the possessive can be analysed, for instance as a clitic construction (an "enclitic postposition"[13]) or as an inflection[14][15] of the last word of a phrase ("edge inflection").[16]
  2. Hayatı sevmek, gazeteyi okumak, camları silmek, ödevini yapmak, sesini duymak, kapıyı açmak, üzümü toplamak. Not: Saat yediyi beş geçiyor. Üçü çeyrek geçiyor.
  3. Saat dokuza on var. On ikiye çeyrek var. Kaç liraya? Kaça?
  4. Edatlardan –e ile bağlananlar: bize göre, bize karşı, her şeye rağmen, kışa doğru, o konuya dair, size ait, yağmura rağmen, iyiliklerine karşılık
  5. ben, senperson pronouns: Ben-e> bana, sen-e>sana
  6. Kesir sayları kurar: Yüzde yirmi faiz, dörtte bir elma, yüzde yetmiş devam, binde bir ihtimal, yüzde on beş indirim.
  7. -de+ek-fill örneği: –Yarın evde misiniz? – Hayır, okuldayım. – Şimdi neredesiniz? - Şu anda dersteyiz. Otur-mak-ta-dır (oturuyor), otur-mak-ta-y-dı (oturuyordu), otur-mak-ta-y-mış (oturuyormuş), otur-mak-ta-y-sa (oturuyorsa).
  8. Some prepositions of name connects with –den: –den önce, - den sonra, -den dolayı, - den beri, -den itibaren, -den başka vb. kahvaltıdan önce, yemekten sonra, yağmurdan dolayı, sabahtan beri, bügünden itibaren, Ayşe’den başka.
  9. -den+ek-fill (ait olma bildirir): Kimlerdensiniz? Ahmet te bizdendir. (Bizim takımdandır.) Bulgaristan göçmenlerindenmiş. Sizin öğrencilerinizdenim.

References
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  3. Including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, etc.
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  9. "L. cāsus used to translate Gr. πτῶσις lit. 'falling, fall'. By Aristotle πτῶσις was applied to any derived, inflected, or extended form of the simple ὄνομα or ῥῆμα (i.e. the nominative of nouns, the present indicative of verbs), such as the oblique cases of nouns, the variations of adjectives due to gender and comparison, also the derived adverb (e.g. δικαίως was a πτῶσις of δίκαιος), the other tenses and moods of the verb, including its interrogative form. The grammarians, following the Stoics, restricted πτῶσις to nouns, and included the nominative under the designation". "case". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  10. Slavic Languages on quickia.com Archived 2009-11-21 at the Wayback Machine
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  13. Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; Svartvik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman. p. 328. ISBN 978-0-582-51734-9. [the -s ending is] more appropriately described as an enclitic postposition'
  14. Greenbaum, Sidney (1996). The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press. pp. 109–110. ISBN 978-0-19-861250-6. In speech the genitive is signalled in singular nouns by an inflection that has the same pronunciation variants as for plural nouns in the common case
  15. Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; Svartik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman. p. 319. In writing, the inflection of regular nouns is realized in the singular by apostrophe + s (boy's), and in the regular plural by the apostrophe following the plural s (boys')
  16. Payne, John; Huddleston, Rodney (2002). "Nouns and noun phrases". In Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey (eds.). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 479–481. ISBN 978-0-521-43146-0. We conclude that both head and phrasal genitives involve case inflection. With head genitives it is always a noun that inflects, while the phrasal genitive can apply to words of most classes.
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  28. Butt, M.; King, Tracy Holloway (2004). "The Status of Case". doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-2719-2_6. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  29. Pieter Cornelis Verhagen, Handbook of oriental studies: India. A history of Sanskrit grammatical literature in Tibet, Volume 2, BRILL, 2001, ISBN 90-04-11882-9, p. 281.
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  35. 2. accusative affix -mayı 3. dative affix -maya;
  36. R. S. McGregor, Outline of Hindi Grammar, Oxford University Press, 1972.
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General references
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