Some Common / Rare Cases

Sociative

In grammar, the sociative case is a grammatical case in the Hungarian, Tamil, and Malayalam languages that can express the person in whose company (cf. Latin socius) an action is carried out, or to any belongings of people which take part in an action (together with their owners). Latin uses instead preposition cum.

nominative / direct

The base form of the noun, typically used as citation form (lemma). In many languages this is the word form used for subjects of clauses.

Examples:

• She sleeps.
• He loves her.

accusative / oblique

Perhaps the second most widely spread morphological case. In many languages this is the word form used for direct objects of verbs.

Examples:

• He loves her.

absolutive

Some languages (e.g. Basque) do not use nominative-accusative to distinguish subjects and objects. Instead, they use the contrast of absolutive-ergative.

The absolutive case marks subject of intransitive verb and direct object of transitive verb.

Examples:

• Maria lotan dago. (Maria is sleeping.)

ergative

Some languages (e.g. Basque) do not use nominative-accusative to distinguish subjects and objects. Instead, they use the contrast of absolutive-ergative.

The ergative case marks subject of transitive verb.

Examples:

• Juanek Maria maite du. (Juan loves Maria.)

dative

In many languages this is the word form used for indirect objects of verbs.

Examples:

• Ich gebe meinem Bruder ein Geschenk. “I give my brother a present.” (meinem Bruder “my brother” is dative and ein Geschenk “a present” is accusative.)

genitive

Prototypical meaning of genitive is that the noun phrase somehow belongs to its governor; it would often be translated by the English preposition of. English has the “saxon genitive” formed by the suffix ‘s; but we will normally not need the feature in English because the suffix gets separated from the noun during tokenization.

Note that despite considerable semantic overlap, the genitive case is not the same as the feature of possessivity (Poss). Possessivity is a lexical feature, i.e. it applies to lemma and its whole paradigm. Genitive is a feature of just a subset of word forms of the lemma. Semantics of possessivity is much more clearly defined while the genitive (as many other cases) may be required in situations that have nothing to do with possessing. For example, [cs] bez prezidentovy dcery “without the president’s daughter” is a prepositional phrase containing the preposition bez “without”, the possessive adjective prezidentovy “president’s” and the noun dcery “daughter”. The possessive adjective is derived from the noun prezident but it is really an adjective (with separate lemma and paradigm), not just a form of the noun. In addition, both the adjective and the noun are in their genitive forms (the nominative would be prezidentova dcera). There is nothing possessive about this particular occurrence of the genitive. It is there because the preposition bez always requires its argument to be in genitive.

Examples:

• Praha je hlavní město České republiky. “Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic.”

Note that in Basque, Gen should be used for possessive genitive (as opposed to locative genitive): diktadorearen erregimena “dictator’s regime”; diktadore “dictator”.

vocative

The vocative case is a special form of noun used to address someone. Thus it predominantly appears with animate nouns (cf. the feature of Animacy). Nevertheless this is not a grammatical restriction and inanimate things can be addressed as well.

Examples:

• Co myslíš, Filipe? “What do you think, Filip?”

instrumental / instructive

The role from which the name of the instrumental case is derived is that the noun is used as instrument to do something (as in [cs] psát perem “to write using a pen”). Many other meanings are possible, e.g. in Czech the instrumental is required by the preposition s “with” and thus it includes the meaning expressed in other languages by the comitative case.

In Czech the instrumental is also used for the agent-object in passive constructions (cf. the English preposition by).

Examples:

• Tento zákon byl schválen vládou. “This bill has been approved by the government.” (Passive example)

A semantically similar case called instructive is used rarely in Finnish to express “with (the aid of)”. It can be applied to infinitives that behave much like nouns in Finnish. We propose one label for both instrumental and instructive (instrumental is not defined in Finnish).

Examples:

• ähteä “to leave”: 2003 lähtien “since 2003” (second infinitive in the instructive case)
• >yllättää “to surprise”; sekaantui yllättäen valtataisteluun lit. was-involved-in by-surprise.Ins power-struggle.Ill.

partitive

In Finnish the partitive case expresses indefinite identity and unfinished actions without result.

Examples:

• kolme taloa “three houses”; (the -a suffix of talo)
• rakastan tätä taloa “I love this house”
• saanko lainata kirjaa? “can I borrow the book?” (the -a suffix of kirja)
• lasissa on maitoa “there is (some) milk in the glass”

Examples comparing partitive with accusative: ammuin karhun “I shot a bear.Acc” (and I know that it is dead); ammuin karhua “I shot at a bear.Par” (but I may have missed).

Using accusative instead of partitive may also substitute the missing future tense: luen kirjan “I will read the book.Acc”; luen kirjaa “I am reading the book.Par”

distributive

The distributive case conveys that something happened to every member of a set, one in a time. Or it may express frequency.

Examples (Hungarian):

• fejenként “per capita”
• esetenként “in some cases”
• hetenként “once per week, weekly”
• tízpercenként “every ten minutes”

essive / prolative

The essive case expresses a temporary state, often it corresponds to English “as a …” A similar case in Basque is called prolative.

Examples:

• [fi] lapsi “child”; lapsena “as a child / when he/she was child”
• [et] laps “child”; lapsena “as a child”
• [eu] erreformista “reformer”; erreformistatzat “as a reformer”

translative / factive

The translative case expresses a change of state (“it becomes X”, “it changes to X”). Also used for the phrase “in language L”.

Examples:

• [fi] pitkä “long”; kasvoi pitkäksi “grew long”
• [fi] englanti “English language”; englanniksi “in/into English”
• [fi] kello kuusi “six o’clock”; kello kuudeksi “by six o’clock”
• [et] kell kuus “six o’clock”; kella kuueks “by six o’clock”
• [hu] Oroszlány halott várossá válhat. lit. Oroszlány dead city.Tra could-become. “Oroszlány could become a dead city.”

comitative / associative

The comitative (also called associative) case corresponds to English “together with …”

Examples:

• [et] koer “dog”; koeraga “with dog”

abessive / caritive / privative

The abessive case (also called caritive or privative) corresponds to the English preposition without.

Examples:

• [fi] raha “money”; rahatta “without money”
• [kpv] сьӧмтӧг “without money”

causative / motivative / purposive

The noun in this case is the cause or purpose of something. In Hungarian it also seems to be used frequently with currency (“to buy something for the money”) and it also can mean the goal of something.

Examples:

• [hu] Egy világcég benzinkútjánál 7183 forintért tankoltam. lit. a world-wide.company petrol.station.Ade 7183 forint.Cau refueled “I refueled my car at the petrol station of a world-wide company for 7183 forints.”
• [hu] Elmentem a boltba tejért. lit. went the shop.Ill milk.Cau “I went to the shop to buy milk.”
• [eu] jokaera “behavior”; jokaeragatik “because of behavior”

benefactive / destinative

The benefactive case corresponds to the English preposition for.

Examples:

• [eu] mutil “boy”; mutilarentzat “for boys”

considerative

The considerative case denotes something that is given in exchange for something else. It is used in Warlpiri (Andrews 2007, p.164).

Examples:

• [wbp] miyi “food”; miyiwanawana “for food” (Japanangkarlu kaju karli yinyi miyiwanawana “Japanangka is giving me a boomerang in exchange for food”)

comparative

The comparative case means “than X”. It marks the standard of comparison and it differs from the comparative Degree, which marks the property being compared. It occurs in Dravidian and Northeast-Caucasian languages.

Examples:

• [mr] हे फूल त्या फुलापेक्षा सुंदर आहे. (Hē phūla tyā phulāpēkṣā sundara āhē.) “This flower is more beautiful than that flower.”