Grammatical case

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 most 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 of 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: the nominative case (such subjective pronouns as I, he, she, we), used for the subject of a finite verb and sometimes for the complement of a copula; the accusative/dative case (such objective pronouns 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 the genitive case (such possessive pronouns 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 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).

Simplified illustration of some common case categories

On this memorial sign, an anniversary of the city of Balakhna, the word Balakhna on the right is in the nominative case, while in 500 Let Balakhne ('500 Years to Balakhna') on the front of 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, Greek, German, Sanskrit, and 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:

  We 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 clerk remembered us.

• The dative case indicates the indirect object of a verb:

  The clerk gave us a discount.

• The ablative case indicates movement from something, and/or cause:

  The victim went from us to see the doctor.

  He was unhappy because of depression.

• The genitive case, which corresponds to English's possessive case, indicates the possessor of another noun:

  Our citizens are proud of our country.

• The vocative case indicates an addressee:

  You there, are you O.K.?

• The locative case indicates a location:

  We live in China.

• The instrumental case indicates an object used in performing an action:

  We wiped the floor with it.

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 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.