Grammatical case

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Grammatical cases
General
Declension - Grammatical case - List of grammatical cases - Morphosyntactic alignment - Oblique / objective case
Grammatical cases
Abessive - Ablative - Absolutive - Accusative - Addirective - Adelative - Adessive - Adverbial - Allative - Antessive - Apudessive - Aversive - Benefactive - Caritive - Causal - Causal-final - Comitative - Dative - Delative - Direct - Distributive - Distributive-temporal - Elative - Ergative - Essive - Essive-formal - Essive-modal - Equative - Evitative - Exessive - Final - Formal - Genitive - Illative - Inelative - Inessive - Instructive - Instrumental - Instrumental-comitative - Intransitive - Lative - Locative - Modal - Multiplicative - Nominative - Partitive - Pegative - Perlative - Possessive - Postelative - Postdirective - Postessive - Postpositional - Prepositional - Privative - Prolative - Prosecutive - Proximative - Separative - Sociative - Subdirective - Subessive - Subelative - Sublative - Superdirective - Superessive - Superlative - Suppressive - Temporal - Terminative - Translative - Vialis - Vocative
Declensions
Czech declension - English declension - German declension - Irish declension - Latin declension - Latvian declension - Lithuanian declension - Slovak declension
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In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. While all languages distinguish cases in some fashion, it is only customary to say that a language has cases when these are codified in the morphology of its nouns — that is, when nouns change their form to reflect their case. (Such a change in form is a kind of declension, hence a kind of inflection.) Cases are related to, but distinct from, thematic roles such as agent and patient; while certain cases in each language tend to correspond to certain thematic roles, cases are a syntactic notion whereas thematic roles are a semantic one.

Cases in English

Cases are not very prominent in modern English, except in its personal pronouns (a remnant of the more extensive case system which existed in Old English). For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, case is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the clitic -'s.

Taken as a whole, English personal pronouns are typically said to have three morphological cases: a subjective case (such as I, he, she, we), used for the subject of a finite verb and sometimes for the complement of a copula; an objective case (such as me, him, her, us), used for the direct or indirect object of a verb, for the object of a preposition, for an absolute disjunct, and sometimes for the complement of a copula; and a possessive case (such as my/mine, his, her(s), our(s)), used for a grammatical possessor. That said, these pronouns often have more than three forms; the possessive case typically has both a determiner form (such as my, our) and a distinct independent form (such as mine, ours). Additionally, except for the interrogative personal pronoun who, they all have a distinct reflexive or intensive form (such as myself, ourselves).

Cases in Indo-European languages

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Even monument builders have to account for grammatical case. On this memorial sign, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Russia city of Balakhna, the word Balakhna on the right is in the nominative case, while in 500 Let Balakhne ('500 Years of Balakhna') on the front on the sign the dative is used.
While not very prominent in English, cases feature much more saliently in many other Indo-European languages, such as Latin, German, Russian. 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. The eight historic cases are as follows, with examples:
  • The nominative case, which corresponds to English's subjective case, indicates the subject of a finite verb:
  • :The man went to the store.
  • The accusative case, which together with the dative and ablative cases (below) corresponds to English's objective case, indicates the direct object of a verb:
  • :The man bought a car.
  • The dative case indicates the indirect object of a verb:
  • :The man gave his daughter a book.
  • The ablative case indicates the object of most common prepositions:
  • :The boy went with his father to see the doctor.
  • The genitive case, which corresponds to English's possessive case, indicates the possessor of another noun:
  • : A country's citizens must defend its honour.
  • The vocative case indicates an addressee:
  • :John, are you O.K.?
  • The locative case indicates a location:
  • :I live in China.
  • The instrumental case indicates an object used in performing an action:
  • :He shot it with the gun.
All of the above are just rough descriptions; the precise distinctions vary from language to language, and are often quite complex. Case is arguably based fundamentally on changes to the ending of the noun to indicate the noun's role in the sentence. This is not how English works, where word order and prepositions are used to achieve this; as such it is debatable whether the above examples of English sentences can be said to be examples of 'case' in English.

Case and linguistic typology

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's 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.
Some languages have very many cases; for example, Finnish has fifteen (see Finnish language noun cases) and Tsez can even be analyzed as having 126 cases.

The lemma forms 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

declension (or declination) is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. plural), case (subject, object, and so on), or gender.
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This is a list of grammatical cases as they are used by various inflectional languages that have declension.

Place and Time

Note: Most cases used for location and motion can be used for time as well.

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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
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An oblique case (Latin: casus generalis) in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a sentence or a preposition.
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In linguistics, abessive (abbreviated ABESS , from Latin abesse "to be distant"), caritive and privative (abbreviated PRIV ) are names for a grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun.
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ablative case (abbreviated ABL ) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common thread is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ.
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In ergative-absolutive languages, the absolutive (abbreviated ABS ) is the grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb. It contrasts with the ergative case, which marks the subject of transitive verbs.
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The accusative case (abbreviated ACC ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions.
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adessive case (from Latin adesse "to be present") is the fourth of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "on". For example, Estonian laud (table) and laual (on the table), Hungarian asztal and asztalon (on the table).
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The adverbial case is a noun case in the Abkhaz language and Georgian language that has a function similar to the translative and essive cases in Finnic languages. The term is sometimes used to refer to the ablative case in other languages.
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Allative case (abbreviated ALL , from Latin afferre "to bring to") is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.
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Antessive case[1] is used for marking before something ("before the concert"). The case is found in some Dravidian languages.

References

1. ^ S.

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Apudessive case[1] is used for marking location next to something ("next to the house"). The case is found in Tsez language.

References

1.

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The aversive or evitative case is a grammatical case found in Australian Aboriginal languages that indicates that the marked noun is avoided or feared.

Usage

For example, in Walmajarri:
Yapa-warnti pa-lu tjurtu-karrarla
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The benefactive case (abbreviated BEN ) is a case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door for Tom" or "This book is for Bob".

This meaning is often incorporated in a dative case.
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In linguistics, abessive (abbreviated ABESS , from Latin abesse "to be distant"), caritive and privative (abbreviated PRIV ) are names for a grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun.
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The causal or causative case (abbreviated CAUS ) is a grammatical case that indicates that the marked noun is the cause or reason for something.

External links

  • What is causative case?

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This case in Hungarian language combines the Causal case and the Final case: it can express the cause of emotions (e.g. value sb. for sg.) or the goal of actions (e.g. for bread).
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The comitative case is the case that denotes companionship, and is used where English would use "in company with" or "together with". It, and many other cases, are found in the Finnish language, the Hungarian language, and the Estonian language.
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The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. The name is derived from the Latin casus dativus, meaning "the case appropriate to giving"; this was in turn modelled on the Greek
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The delative case (from Latin deferre "to bear or bring away or down") in the Hungarian language can originally express the movement from the surface of something (e.g. "off the table"), but it is used in several other meanings (e.g.
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direct case is the name given to a grammatical case used with all three core relations: the agent of transitive verbs, the patient of transitive verbs, and the agent of intransitive verbs.
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maittain., or "The law is ratified separately in each country". It can be used to distribute the action to frequent points in time, e.g. päivä (day) has the plural distributive päivittäin (each day).
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This case in Hungarian language can express how often something happens (eg. monthly, daily); it can vary with the Distributive case at words of temporal meaning.

This adverb type in Finnish language can express that something happens at a frequent point in time (e.g.
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See Elative for disambiguation.

Elative (from Latin efferre "to bring or carry out") is a locative case with the basic meaning "out of".

In Finnish elative is typically formed by adding "sta/stä", in Estonian by adding "st" to the genitive stem.
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The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.

In such languages, the ergative case is typically marked (most salient), while the absolutive case is unmarked.
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The essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a...".

In the Finnish language, this case is marked by adding "-na/-nä" to the stem of the noun.
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In the Hungarian language this case combines the Essive case and the Formal case, and it can express the position, task, state (e.g. "as a tourist"), or the manner (e.g. "like a hunted animal").
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This case in Hungarian language can express the state, capacity, task in which somebody is or which somebody has (Essive case, e.g. "as a reward", "for example"), or the manner in which the action is carried out, or the language which somebody knows (Modal case, e.g.
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Equative is a case with the meaning of comparison, or likening.

In Ossetic it is formed by the ending -ау [aw]:
фæт — arrow, фæтау — like an arrow.

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