Talk:Grammatical case

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Accusative vs. Oblique case[edit]

The opening paragraph says that English has a nominative, accusative, and genitive case. However, what it calls accusative would be more properly described as the oblique case, because it's used for more than just the direct objects of verbs. VIVIT-r (talk) 18:27, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Case is not purely morphological[edit]

Consider the German sentence "Der alten Frau wurde neue Vorhänge gekauft" (The old woman was bought some new curtains.) (Apologies for any mistakes.) The words "der", "alten" and "Frau" are all in the dative case - but the phrase "der alten Frau" is also in the dative case, and it is not word, but a phrase. Count Truthstein (talk) 00:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are right in the sense that cases are intrinsic to referring groups/expressions. However, cases are different from adpositions because the number of words does not change when we replace a wording by one of its variants in another case. See below the difference between German and Spanish in this regard.

German case system
Deictic Epithet Thing
der alte Mann
den alten Mann
dem alten Mann
des alten Mannes
Spanish preposition system
-- Deictic Thing Epithet
-- la mujer mayor
a la mujer mayor
de la mujer mayor
con la mujer mayor
por la mujer mayor
para la mujer mayor

Estonian[edit]

With 14 cases estonian is only mentioned once... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.255.183.227 (talk) 21:41, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Romanian[edit]

I changed the vocative "băiete!" (boy!) to ""băiatule!". The vocative "băiete!" is a contraction specific to this noun (boy) and few others, not the general case, and it was not reflecting the "rule" of how Romanian cases are formed. For other Romanian contrarians here, try replacing with other nouns, including "fecior" (boy/son/teenager/virgin), "cal" (horse), "bou" (bull/ox), whatever. I put the "rule" in quotes because vocative in Romanian is "very murky water", the linguists do not really agree with forms of many nouns and that is for example the reason why vocatives can't be used in a Scrabble game (they are not on the official list of accepted words). There are lots of ways to form vocatives (especially insults :P) in Romanian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LaurV (talk • contribs) 08:09, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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List of languages with extensive case structures[edit]

Should German be listed in the examples in paragraph 2?

(Also is the term Caucasian languages being used in the sense 'languages of the Caucasus'?)

Cheers ash (talk) 01:20, 3 January 2017 (UTC) 14:33, 29 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What is case, anyway?[edit]

The article says that English has no cases (the map shades light grey); the genitive in English is described as a clitic. How does one determine that the "'s" on the end of "farmer's" is a "clitic" and not an inflection? I ask, because the article also says that Japanese has lots of cases, indicated by "particles". How would a blinkered empiricist determine whether a (more-or-less invariant) bit stuck after a noun was a clitic ("not case") or a particle ("case")? Imaginatorium (talk) 13:38, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The difference is whether the inflection/clitic is attached to the head of the noun phrase or to the end of that phrase. In English, we say the king of England's palace, but the palace belongs to the king (head of the phrase) and not to England, so it's a clitic. CodeCat (talk) 14:45, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have added some information on the debate about clitic vs inflection. --Boson (talk) 20:42, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed the "'s" functions as a postposition or clitic. However, English has an "ed" suffix for nouns in expressions such as "a ten-headed dragon" and "a red-haired guy/girl" and these endings indeed work as case suffixes. These words are not participles because they do not mean that someone "ten-headed a dragon" or "red-haired someone else". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.54.119.55 (talk) 01:26, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

new intro May 2018[edit]

The first two paragraphs of the intro seemed too technical to me. I added an intro, moving those paragraphs to positions 2 and 3. The first paragraph should describe the concept to beginners, relying on familiar examples in the language of the reader. --OsamaBinLogin (talk) 22:10, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Picture[edit]

The picture contradicts the text. It says that the English language has no cases, but the text says that "...personal pronouns still have three cases that are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative and genitive cases that are used with personal pronouns: subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, whoever), objective case (me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, whomever) and possessive case (my, mine; your, yours; his; her, hers; its; our, ours; their, theirs; whose; whosever)." Even nouns have grammatical case in nominative and genitive. The same applies to Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. Is the text or the picture correct? --213.112.69.209 (talk) 18:50, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I tweaked the caption to say the gray languages don’t inflect nouns for case, so that it’s right to have gray for English, French, and various others. English is not considered to have a genitive case for nouns, but rather a clitic -’s. This is because it can be used in situations like “the queen of England’s hat”, in which England is not in the genitive. I’m not sure if the suffix -s in the Scandinavian languages is analyzed the same way or is a genuine genitive. Loraof (talk) 16:16, 24 April 2018 (UTC) Danish language#Nouns says “Only pronouns inflect for case, and the previous genitive case has become an enclitic.” Loraof (talk) 18:00, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Just like @Loraof: wrote, similar things as mentioned above for the English genitive apply to the (Mainland) Scandinavian Languages; there's a disseration about the development of -s from a case marker to a clitic in the history of Swedish (Muriel Norde (1997): The history of the genitive in Swedish. A case study in degrammaticalization.), which can be read on academia.edu. I would also very much like to remove Swedish from "German, Icelandic and Swedish have four [cases]" in the introduction, because - even though this is valid for Old Swedish/fornsvenska, modern Swedish pretty much is usually analysed 3 cases at the most, usually less (i.e. the normal dictionary form and the genitive (if seen as a case) for nouns; for pronouns the distinction between nominative (e.g. han), oblique (honom) and genitive (or: possessive pronoun) (hans)). AccioFelicis (talk) 22:25, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient Greek[edit]

'Ancient Greek,' as a broad classification of dialects spoken over relatively large time periods, is inclusive of potentially non Indo-European dialects. 'Ancient Greek' should be removed from the Indo-European section or made to be more specific. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.165.64.198 (talk) 23:43, 27 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ancient Greek is not inclucive of potentially non Indo-European dialects as non Indoeuropean dialects would not be Greek dialectsl; Latin and Sanskrit are also broad classifications of... Such outrageous claims require outrageous evidence. Removing promptly the disputed tag. Thanatos|talk|contributions 18:12, 9 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Map is incorrect. Dutch does have cases.[edit]

See: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geslacht_(Nederlands)

And: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitief#De_genitief_in_het_Nederlands

Also: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datief#Datief_in_het_Nederlands

And: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusatief

Dutch used to have three(four?) genders like German, dictionaries still mention gender as it still applies in some circumstances where you'll still see the genitive/dative/accusative applied.


Examples:

- In naam der wet.

- De vader des vaderlands

- De burgemeester, op wiens gezag ik u dit in vertrouwen meedeel

- De directrice, op wier gezag ik u dit in vertrouwen meedeel,

- op den duur

- met voorbedachten rade

Someone who knows how to properly translate the grammar related lexicon should have a look at the linked Dutch wiki article.

I would translate, but I'm simply not up to the task translating it. Eg. the genders are female/male/neuter + 'Commun'=?? - Sorry, no idea.

I think you are confusing case (naamval ?) with gender (geslacht, or genus in Latin). Dutch has case for pronouns, just like English, but not for nouns. (My knowledge of Dutch is elementary, so open to correction.) Imaginatorium (talk) 14:02, 27 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Cases are not productive in Dutch and are limited to fixed phrases and sound very archaic and formal. Nobody knows how to use them anymore. Rua (mew) 15:59, 27 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Map is still incorrect: English does have case.[edit]

The map is not correct: English does still preserve at least one case, namely, the genitive/possessive.

Consider, for example, the book of the child versus the child's book. The possessive case of the word, "child", is indicated by the addition of -(e)s. (Historically, the unpronounced letter, e, has been subsituted with an apostophe -- but, it's still there.) Mwidunn (talk) 20:15, 1 March 2020 (UTC)mwidunn[reply]

It's a clitic, not an ending. By this logic, you could say the prepositional phrases are 'cases' as well, and almost all languages would have a hundred cases or so.--62.73.69.121 (talk) 07:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nouns show only a singular/plural and a possessive/non-possessive distinction[edit]

What about uppercase and lowercase? --Backinstadiums (talk) 22:27, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Croatian and Serbian[edit]

Croatian and serbian have six cases not seven. (It is distinguished in textbooks (historical reasons), but locative is always the same as genitive in standard language.) 213.150.1.108 (talk) 08:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

one correction, locative and dative (not genitive) have the same endings 213.150.1.108 (talk) 08:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Contradiction[edit]

'Nevertheless, it cannot be inferred that the Ancient Greeks really knew what grammatical cases were. Grammatical cases were first recognized by the Stoics and from some philosophers of the Peripatetic school.'

Surely, if the Stoics and some Peripatetics 'recognised' them, and considering the fact that the Stoics and Peripatetics were Ancient Greeks, that would mean that the Ancient Greeks 'knew' them?! Of course 'the' Ancient Greeks can't mean every single member of their societies. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 07:48, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the nonsense sentence. Exarchus (talk) 12:28, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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