Cases: Morphemes Denoting Function
Case is usually an inflectional (usually realized as endings) feature of nouns and, depending on language, other parts of speech (pronouns, adjectives, determiners, numerals, verbs) that mark agreement with nouns.
Case helps specify the role of the noun phrase in the sentence, especially in free-word-order languages. For example, the nominative and accusative cases often distinguish subject and object of the verb, while in fixed-word-order languages these functions would be distinguished merely by the positions of the nouns in the sentence.
Here on the level of morphosyntactic features we are dealing with case expressed morphologically, i.e. by bound morphemes (affixes). Note that on a higher level case can be understood more broadly as the role, and it can be also expressed by adding an adposition (that is, either a preposition or a postposition) to the noun. What is expressed by affixes in one language can be expressed using adpositions (prepositions or postpositions) in another language.
Indo-European Cases
Historical Indo-European had eight cases, which are preserved in Sanskrit and to a lesser extent in Baltic and Slavic languages.
The most common cases in European languages are nominative (subject), accusative (object), dative (personal object) and genitive (possession). German and Greek have these four cases.
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) | John's book was on the table. The pages of the book turned yellow. The table is made out of wood. | 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! O John, how are you! (archaic) | Roughly corresponds to the archaic use of "O" in English. | |
| 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 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? | Corresponds to English prepositions by, with and via as well as synonymous constructions such as using, by use of and through. |