Agrammatical case is a category ofnouns and noun modifiers (determiners,adjectives,participles, andnumerals) that corresponds to one or more potentialgrammatical functions for anominal group in a wording.[1] In various languages, nominal groups consisting of a noun and its modifiers belong to one of a few such categories. For instance, inEnglish, one saysI see them andthey see me: thenominative pronounsI / they represent the perceiver, and theaccusative pronounsme/them represent the phenomenon perceived. Here, nominative and accusative are cases, that is, categories of pronouns corresponding to the functions they have in representation.
English has largely lost its inflected case system but personal pronouns still have three cases, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative (including functions formerly handled by thedative), andgenitive cases. They are used withpersonal pronouns:subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, whoever),objective case (me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, whomever), andpossessive case (my, mine; your, yours; his; her, hers; its; our, ours; their, theirs; whose; whosever).[2][3] Forms such asI,he, andwe are used for thesubject ("I kicked John"), and forms such asme,him, andus are used for theobject ("John kickedme").
Languages such asSanskrit,Latin, andRussian have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of differentsuffixes) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: For example,modern Standard Arabic and modern English have three, but only for pronouns;Hungarian is among those with the most, with its 18 cases.
Commonly encountered cases includenominative,accusative,dative andgenitive. A role that one of those languages marks by case is often marked in English with apreposition. For example, the English prepositional phrasewith (his) foot (as in "John kicked the ball with his foot") might be rendered in Russian using a single noun in theinstrumental case, or in Ancient Greek asτῷ ποδί (tôi podí, meaning "the foot") with both words – the definite article, and the nounπούς (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 theirheads".[5]: 1 Cases should be distinguished fromthematic roles such asagent andpatient. They are often closely related, and in languages such as Latin, several thematic roles are realised by a somewhat fixed case for deponent verbs, but cases are asyntagmatic / phrasal category, and thematic roles are the function of a syntagma / phrase in a larger structure. Languages having cases often exhibitfree word order, as thematic roles are not required to be marked by position in the sentence.
It is widely accepted that the Ancient Greeks had a certain idea of the forms of a name in their own language. A fragment ofAnacreon seems to prove this. Grammatical cases were first recognized by theStoics and from some philosophers of thePeripatetic school.[6][7] The advancements of those philosophers were later employed by the philologists of theLibrary of Alexandria.[1][6]
The English wordcase used in this sense comes from the Latincasus, which is derived from the verbcadere, "to fall", from theProto-Indo-European root*ḱh₂d-.[8] The Latin word is acalque of the Greek πτῶσις,ptôsis, lit. "falling, fall".[a]The sense is that all other cases are considered to have "fallen" away from the nominative. This imagery is also reflected in the worddeclension, from Latindeclinere, "to lean", from the PIE root*ḱley-.
The equivalent to "case" in several other European languages also derives fromcasus, includingcas in French,caso in Italian andKasus in German. The Russian wordпаде́ж (padyézh) is a calque from Greek and similarly contains a root meaning "fall", and the GermanFall and Czechpád simply mean "fall", and are used for both the concept of grammatical case and to refer to physical falls. The Dutch equivalentnaamval translates as 'noun case', in which 'noun' has the older meaning of both 'adjective (noun)' and '(substantive) noun'. The Finnish equivalent issija, whose main meaning is "position" or "place".
Similar to Latin,Sanskrit uses the term विभक्ति(vibhakti)[10] which may be interpreted as the specific or distinct "bendings" or "experiences" of a word, from the verb भुज्(bhuj)[11] and the prefix वि(vi),[12] and names the individual cases using ordinal numbers.
On this sign in Russian memorializing an anniversary of the city ofBalakhna, the wordBalakhna (Russian:Балахна) on the right is in the nominative case, whereas the wordBalakhne (Russian:Балахне) is in the dative case inBalakhne 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 inOld English and other ancientIndo-European languages, such asLatin,Old Persian,Ancient Greek, andSanskrit. Historically, the Indo-European languages had eightmorphological cases, although 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 theBalto-Slavic languages (except Macedonian and Bulgarian[13]), with most having six to eight cases, as well asIcelandic,German,Irish andModern 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 the most conservativeGermanic language.
The eight historical Indo-European cases are as follows, with examples either of the English case or of the English syntactic alternative to case:
Corresponds to English'sobject pronouns and prepositionto andfor constructions before the object, both often marked by a definite articlethe. Together with accusative, it forms modern English'soblique case.
A means or tool utilized in/while performing an action
with a mop,
by hand,
through a tunnel
We wiped the floorwith a mop.
This letter was writtenby hand.
The inmates escapedthrough a tunnel.
How? With what or using what? By what means?
Corresponds to English prepositionsby,with andvia as well as synonymous constructions such asusing,by use of andthrough.
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-calledfusional languages.Old English was a fusional language, but Modern English does not work this way.
Theoblique case (object pronouns such asme,him,her,us), used for the direct or indirectobject of a verb, for the object of a preposition, for an absolute disjunct, and sometimes for the complement of a copula.
Most English personal pronouns have five forms: the nominative case form, the oblique case form, a distinctreflexive orintensive form (such asmyself,ourselves) which is based upon the possessive determiner form but is coreferential to a preceding instance of nominative or oblique, and the possessive case forms, which include both adeterminer form (such asmy,our) and a predicatively usedindependent form (such asmine,ours) which is distinct (with two exceptions: the third person singular masculinehe and the third person singular neuterit, which use the same form for both determiner and independent [his car,it is his]). The interrogative personal pronounwho 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, andwhosever). The pronoun "where" has a corresponding set of derived forms (whither,whence), but they're considered archaic.
Although Englishpronouns 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'); there is no manifest difference in the form ofchair between "The chair is here." (subject) and "I own the chair." (direct object), a distinction made instead by word order and context.
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:[5]: 89
This is, however, only a general tendency. Many forms ofCentral German, such asColognian andLuxembourgish, have a dative case but lack a genitive. InIrish nouns, the nominative and accusative have fallen together, whereas the dative–locative, genitive, and vocative have remained separate. In many modern Indo-Aryan languages, the accusative, genitive, and dative have merged to an oblique case, but many of these languages still retain vocative, locative, and ablative cases. Old English had an instrumental case, but not a locative case.
There are five Cases, the right [nominative], the generic [genitive], the dative, the accusative, and the vocative.[20]
Latin grammars, such asArs grammatica, followed the Greek tradition, but added theablative case of Latin. Later other European languages also followed that Graeco-Roman tradition.
However, for some languages, such as Latin, due to casesyncretism 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:
Sanskrit similarly arranges cases in the order nominative-accusative-instrumental-dative-ablative-genitive-locative-vocative. The cases are individually named as the "first," "second," "third", and so on.[10] For example, a common grammatical construction is called the सति सप्तमी (Sati Saptami)[21] or "The Good Seventh" because it uses the locative, which is the seventh case, in a fashion similar to the use of "Upon" in sequential English phrases. (E.g. Upon their arrival, the two were immediately accosted by creditors.)
In the most common[5] case concord system, only the head-word (the noun) in a phrase is marked for case. This system appears in manyPapuan languages as well as inTurkic,Mongolian,Quechua,Dravidian,Indo-Aryan, and other languages. InBasque and variousAmazonian andAustralian languages, only the phrase-final word (not necessarily the noun) is marked for case. In manyIndo-European,Finnic, andSemitic languages, case is marked on the noun, the determiner, and usually the adjective. Other systems are less common. In some languages, there isdouble-marking of a word as both genitive (to indicate semantic role) and another case such as accusative (to establish concord with the head noun).[22]
Declension is the process or result of altering nouns to the correct grammatical cases. Languages with rich nominal inflection (using 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 havefive, and Ancient Greekthree.[23] For example, Slovak hasfifteen 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 asgender,number, phonological environment, and irregular historical factors. Pronouns sometimes have separate paradigms. In some languages, particularlySlavic languages, a case may contain different groups of endings depending on whether the word is anoun or anadjective. 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'sanimacy or humanness may add another layer of complexity. For example, in Russian:
An example of a StandardArabic case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Arabic term for "book"كِتَابkitāb:
كِتَابُkitābu (Nominative):الكِتَابُ مُفِيدal-kitābu mufīd – (the book is useful)
كِتَابَkitāba (Accusative):إنَّ كِتَابَ العُلُومِ كَبِيرʔinna kitāba al-ʕulūmi kabīr – (the science book is big)
كِتَابِkitābi (Genitive):ذَهَبْتُ بِالكِتَابِḏahabtu bil-kitābi – (I went with the book)
The modernArabic colloquial dialects have abandoned the grammatical cases ofClassical Arabic, and they are only used nowadays inModern Standard Arabic. Standard Arabic is the only livingSemitic language that preserved the completeProto-Semitic grammatical cases anddeclension (ʾIʿrab). In some dialects of Northern and Central Saudi Arabia, one encounters thenunation in the -in form, e.g.دَرْبٍdarbin, "a road" (as inدَرْبٍ طويلdarbin ṭiwīl vs. the common colloquialدَرْبْ طويلdarb ṭawīl), apparently with the -i- of the former genitive, while -u < -un is preserved in some Yemenite colloquials when the noun is indeterminate (e.g.بَيْتُbaytu, "a house", but al-bayt, "the house").[24]
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 typicalr-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.[25]Dench & Evans (1988)[26] use a five-part system for categorizing the functional roles of case marking in Australian languages. They are enumerated below as they appear inSenge (2015):[25]
Relational: a suffix which represents syntactic or semantic roles of a noun phrase in clauses.
Adnominal: a suffix which relates a noun phrase to another within the one noun phrase.
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.
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).
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 ofWanyjirra 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:
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:
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[27]) because they have a singular fixed position within the phrase. ForBardi, the case marker usually appears on the first phrasal constituent[28] while the opposite is the case forWangkatja (i.e. the case marker is attracted to the rightmost edge of the phrase).[29] See the following examples respectively:
Basque has the following cases, with examples given in the indefinite, definite singular, definite plural, and definite close plural of the wordetxe, "house", "home":
absolutive (etxe, etxea, etxeak, etxeok: "house, the / a house, (the / some) houses, these houses"),
prolative (etxetzat), only in the indefinite grammatical number,
partitive (etxerik), only in the indefinite grammatical number, and
distributive (Bost liburu ikasleko banatu dituzte, "They have handed out five books to each student"), only in the indefinite grammatical number.
Some of them can be re-declined, even more than once, as if they were nouns (usually, from the genitive locative case), although they mainly work as noun modifiers before a noun clause:
etxearena (that which is of the house),etxearenarekin (with the one which pertains to the house),
neskarentzako (which is for the girl),neskarentzakoan (in the one which is for the girl),
neskekiko (which is with the girls),neskekikoa (the one which is for the girls),
arazoarengatiko (which is because of the problem),arazoarengatikoak (the ones which are due to the problems),
zurezkoaz (by means of the wooden one),
etxeetakoaz (about the one which is in the houses),etxeetakoari (to the one which is in the houses),
etxetiko (which comes from the house),etxetikoa (the one which comes from the house), etxetikoari (to the one which comes from the house),
etxeetarako (which goes to the houses),etxeetarakoa (the one which goes to the houses),etxeetarakoaz (about the one which goes to the houses),
etxeranzko (which goes towards the house),etxeranzkoa (the one which goes to the house),etxeranzkoarena (the one which belongs to the one which goes to the house),
etxerainoko (which goes up to the house),etxerainokoa (the one which goes up to the house),etxerainokoarekin (with the one which goes up to the houses)...
InGerman, 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 masculinedefinite 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 femininedefinite article with the German word for "woman".
die Frau (nominative) "the woman" [as a subject] (e.g.Die Frau isst - the woman is eating)
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 neuterdefinite 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(e) (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 (Hindustani) has three noun cases, thenominative,oblique, andvocative cases. The vocative case is now obsolete (but still used in certain regions[citation needed]) and the oblique case doubles as the vocative case. The pronoun cases in Hindi-Urdu are thenominative,ergative,accusative, dative, and twooblique cases.[31][32] The case forms which do not exist for certain pronouns are constructed using primary postpositions (or othergrammatical particles) and the oblique case (shown in parentheses in the table below).
The other cases are constructedadpositionally 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 andaccusative को (ko),instrumental andablative से (se),genitive का (kā),inessive में (mẽ),adessive पे (pe),terminative तक (tak),semblative सा (sā).[33]
An example of aLatin case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Latin term for "cook", which belongs toLatin'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)
For some toponyms, a seventh case, thelocative, also exists, such asMediolānī (inMediolanum).
TheRomance languages have largely abandoned or simplified the grammatical cases of Latin. Much like English, most Romance case markers survive only in pronouns.
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.
An example of aRussian 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" (e.g.Дружу с моряком: (I) have a friendship with the sailor)
о/на/в моряке́ (prepositional) "[about/on/in the] sailor" (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.
Grammatical case was analyzed extensively inSanskrit. The grammarianPāṇini identified six semanticroles orkāraka,[34] which are related to the following eight Sanskrit cases in order:[35]
For example, in the following sentenceleaf is the agent (kartā, nominative case),tree is the source (apādāna, ablative case), andground is the locus (adhikaraṇa, locative case). Thedeclensions are reflected in the morphemes-āt,-am, and-au respectively.
vṛkṣ-āt
from the tree
parṇ-am
a leaf
bhūm-au
on the ground
patati
falls
vṛkṣ-āt parṇ-am bhūm-au patati
{from the tree} {a leaf} {on the ground} falls
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 thekartā, but appears in the instrumental case, andrice, thekarman, object, is in the nominative case (as subject of the verb). Thedeclensions are reflected in the morphemes-ena and-am.
TheTamil case system is analyzed in native and missionary grammars as consisting of a finite number of cases.[36][37] The usual treatment of Tamil case (Arden 1942)[38] 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[37] and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.[39]
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 tryto read a lot of books).[40]
As languages evolve, case systems change. In early Ancient Greek, for example, the genitive and ablative cases of given names became combined, giving five cases, rather than the six retained in Latin. In modernHindi, the cases have been reduced to three: a direct case (for subjects and direct objects) andoblique case, and avocative case.[41][32] 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.[5]: 167–174 Postpositions 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 are subject to various phonological processes such asassimilation, vowel centering to theschwa, phoneme loss, andfusion, and these processes can reduce or even eliminate the distinctions between cases. Languages can then compensate for the resulting loss of function by creating postpositions, 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.[42] 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.
Languages are categorized into several case systems, based on theirmorphosyntactic alignment—how they group verbagents andpatients into cases:
Nominative–accusative (or simplyaccusative): 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 thenominative case, with the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb being in theaccusative case.
Ergative–absolutive (or simplyergative): 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 theabsolutive case, with the agent (subject) of a transitive verb being in theergative case.
Ergative–accusative (ortripartite): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in its own case (theintransitive 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 simplyactive): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb can be in one of two cases; if the argument is anagent, as in "He ate", then it is in the same case as the agent (subject) of a transitive verb (sometimes called theagentive case), and if it is apatient, as in "He tripped", then it is in the same case as the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb (sometimes called thepatientive case).
Trigger: One noun in a sentence is the topic or focus. This noun is in thetrigger case, and information elsewhere in the sentence (for example averbaffix inTagalog) 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 thegenitive 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.
With a few exceptions, most languages in theFinno-Ugric family make extensive use of cases.Finnish has 15 cases according to the traditional description (or up to 30 depending on the interpretation).[43] However, only 12 are commonly used in speech (seeFinnish noun cases andFinnish locative system).Estonian has 14 (seeEstonian locative system) andHungarian has 18, both with additional archaic cases used for some words.
Turkic,Mongolic, andTungusic languages also exhibit complex case systems. Since the abovementioned languages, along withKorean andJapanese, shared certain similarities, linguists proposed anAltaic family and reconstructed its case system; although the hypothesis had been largely discredited.
The original version of John Quijada'sconstructed languageIthkuil has 81 noun cases,[44] and its descendantIlaksh and Ithkuil after the 2011 revision both have 96 noun cases.[45][46]
Thelemma form of words, which is the form chosen by convention as the canonical form of a word, is usually the mostunmarked or basic case, which is typically the nominative, trigger, or absolutive case, whichever a language may have.
^Latin cāsus used to translate Greek πτῶσις literally "falling, fall".Aristotle applied πτῶσις 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 theStoics, restricted πτῶσις to nouns, and included the nominative under the designation.[9]
^Thestatus of the possessive as an affix or a clitic is the subject of debate.[14][15] 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"[16]) or as an inflection[17][18] of the last word of a phrase ("edge inflection").[19]
^Yaşamı sevmek, gazeteyi okumak, camları silmek, ödevini yapmak, sesini duymak, kapıyı açmak, üzümü toplamak.Not: Saat yediyi beş geçiyor. Üçü çeyrek geçiyor.
^Saat dokuza on var. On ikiye çeyrek var. Kaç liraya? Kaça?
^Edatlardan –e ile bağlananlar: bize göre, bize karşı, her şeye karşın, kışa doğru, o konuya dair, size ait, yağmura karşın, iyiliklerine karşılık
^Kesir sayları kurar: Yüzde yirmi faiz, dörtte bir elma, yüzde yetmiş devam, binde bir olasılık, yüzde on beş indirim.
^-de+ek-fill örneği: –Yarın evde misiniz? – Yok, 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).
^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, öğleden beri, bügünden itibaren, Ayça’dan başka.
^-den+ek-fill (ait olma bildirir): Kimlerdensiniz? Alp te bizdendir. (Bizim takımdandır.) Bulgaristan göçmenlerindenmiş. Sizin öğrencilerinizdenim.
^"Whosever".Merriam-Webster (online ed.).Archived from the original on 13 June 2021. Retrieved22 February 2021.Definition of 'Whosever' by Merriam-Webster.
^ab"Linguaggio" [Language].l'Enciclopedia Treccani[The Treccani Encyclopedia] (in Italian).Archived from the original on 25 September 2020. Retrieved2 November 2018 – via treccani.it.
^Hudson, Richard (2013). "A cognitive analysis of John's hat". InBörjars, Kersti; Denison, David; Scott, Alan (eds.).Morphosyntactic Categories and the Expression of Possession. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 123–148.ISBN9789027273000.
^Börjars, Kersti; Denison, David; Krajewski, Grzegorz; Scott, Alan (2013). "Expression of Possession in English". InBörjars, Kersti; Denison, David; Scott, Alan (eds.).Morphosyntactic Categories and the Expression of Possession. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 149–176.ISBN9789027273000.
^Greenbaum, Sidney (1996).The Oxford English Grammar.Oxford University Press. pp. 109–110.ISBN978-0-19-861250-6.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
^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 plurals (boys')
^Payne, John;Huddleston, Rodney (2002). "Nouns and noun phrases". InHuddleston, Rodney;Pullum, Geoffrey (eds.).The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 479–481.ISBN978-0-521-43146-0.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.
^abSenge, Chikako (2015).A Grammar of Wanyjirra, a language of Northern Australia (Ph.D. thesis). Canberra, CT, AU: The Australian National University.
^Dench, Alan; Evans, Nicholas (1 June 1988). "Multiple case-marking in Australian languages".Australian Journal of Linguistics.8 (1):1–47.doi:10.1080/07268608808599390.ISSN0726-8602.
^abSpencer, A. (2005)."Case in Hindi"(PDF). In Butt, Miriam; King, Tracy Holloway (eds.).Proceedings of the LFG'05 Conference, University of Bergen. Lexical Functional Grammar 2005 Conference (LFG'05). Palo Alto, CA: CSLI Publications.ISSN1098-6782.Archived(PDF) from the original on 11 September 2024. Retrieved10 September 2025 – via stanford.edu.
^abK. V. Zvelebil (1972). "Dravidian Case-Suffixes: Attempt at a Reconstruction".Journal of the American Oriental Society.92 (2):272–276.doi:10.2307/600654.JSTOR600654.
^Arden, A.H. 1942, repr. 1969.A Progressive Grammar of the Tamil Language. Madras: Christian Literature Society.
^Harold F. Schiffman (June 1998). "Standardization or restandardization: The case for "Standard" Spoken Tamil".Language in Society.27 (3):359–385.doi:10.1017/S0047404598003030.
