Talk:Grammatical case/Archive 1

"Case" means "morphological case"

The article is in dire need of rewriting. Now the text uses the term 'case' in two quite distinct meanings: a) morphological case and b) some kind of 'astract case' roughly equal to a grammatical or semantic role (which is something altogether different from morphological case). The latter use of the term 'case' is not unanimously accepted by linguists, and therefore it is incorrect to state e.g. that "all languages distinguish cases in some fashion", as now maintained in the second sentence of the article. For example, Hawaiian does not distinguish (morphological) case, even though it does of course distinguish e.g. between subject and object, or between various semantic roles.

English does not have morphological case either (except for pronouns); the genitive -'s is not a case form because it is a clitic. Therefore, it an extremely odd choice to illustrate "Cases in Indo-European languages" with English sentences, which in reality only illustrate the lack of case.--AAikio 10:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

You're reaching a bit; the article in fact makes a point of distinguishing between grammatical and semantic constructs, and assigns the term "case" only to the former, while linking to thematic role for a discussion of the latter. Non-morphological case is not "abstract" at all; it's reflected in word order, for example. And these aren't two distinct meanings; rather, morphological case is a subset of grammatical case. However, as pointed out at the very beginning of the article, "it is only customary to say that a language has cases when these are codified in the morphology of its nouns". —Ruakh_TALK 18:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The examples

If we're going to give examples in modern English, wouldn't it be better to use the personal pronouns, so the reader could see them inflect? FilipeS (talk) 01:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I made this change - see how we think it works. But I think it would be even better to use a language that actually has a different inflection for each of those eight cases! Best, WikiJedits (talk) 12:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

nomen hominis est Claudius

Shouldn't this be "nomen hominis Claudius est"? (of course, the inflection makes the meaning, not the word order, which is the point of the subject here, but ...) ~~Adam 11 July 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.243.112.20 (talk) 04:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

You ask yourself a question, you give yourself an answer, hey?Dave (talk) 22:08, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Reflexive form of who

I thought that "who" did have a reflexsive form; "whosoever" but is this no longer considered modern English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.113.243 (talk) 10:22, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

No, reflexive sructures "bend back" to the speaker like a boomerang - I talk to myself, etc. There is no whomself. You're thinking of something else, but the article does not explain anything. It gives you a link to another article that does not explain anything, etc, until the Wikipedia articles close the ring and refer you to the one you are on. That's the problem. We need some solutions.Dave (talk) 22:56, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

English case

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 ending of 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.

Don't all languages have cases regardless of how they're shown? How can meaning be conveyed without case? Just because English or French rely heavily on word order and prepositions, it doesn't mean that there is no case. Glanhawr (talk) 00:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Well well. These are exactly some of the questions that need to be answered in the article.Dave (talk) 22:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Why is the so-called "Saxon genitive" < -'s > the only morphological case left in modern English? Why isn't at least one of < -en >, < -less >, < -ward >, or < -wise > a case-ending?

< -en > as in ashen, earthen, golden, leathern, oaken (possibly a semantically different, non-possessive "second genitive")? < -less > as in bootless, careless, childless, effortless, endless, friendless, guiltless, heartless, homeless, jobless, loveless, mindless, priceless, timeless, useless, valueless, worthless (possibly an abessive)? < -ward > as in homeward, landward, seaward, topward, windward (possibly an allative)? < -wise > as in clockwise, crosswise, edgwise, lengthwise, sunwise? If you had no diachronic knowledge of Middle English or Old English, and were approaching Modern English as an L2, and were trying to describe its nominal morphology: What objective criteria would you use to show that Modern English has either no morphological cases at all, or at most one -- the possessive? What objective criteria would you use to show that neither any of the above-mentioned suffixes nor any others I've overlooked were "case-endings"? --Eldin raigmore (talk) 20:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a linguist but those examples are different from what is normally referred to as case, namely changes in a noun (or related adjective) based on its role (as a subject, direct object, etc.). Those suffixes you mention form an adjective or adverb from a noun. Further, they don't apply generally to nouns as a whole but only to certain ones, for example you wouldn't say bricken for something made of brick. The languages that do utilize case also have affixes serving similar functions to the ones you mention but they aren't considered part of the case system. Gr8white (talk) 05:02, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Quandary

This here article is in quite a quandary. It starts out in the abstract. Thus it cannot explain any abstract without reference to other abstracts needing explanation. What we have is a matrix of abstracts. Wherever you jump in you can neither understand what is being said nor know how to reference concepts that do not need explanation. I didn't think "case" was that obscure. This is beginning to remind me of a presentation in theoretical linguistics or theoretical anything else; you have to know it before you can understand it. Bah. We need to start over here. It seems to me there are two choices, bottom to top or top to bottom. The "case" concept derives from the Graeco-Latin grammarians, who were trying to explain Greek and Latin. Since English grammar was based on Greek and Latin grammar, it came into English. After the discovery of Indo-European it was generalized to the whole group, then to other groups of inflected languages. As linguistics worked its way up into the abtract still further generalizations were made but this is beyond my offhand knowledge. I don't know what they are and the article isn't telling me; moreover, much of what it says is just plain wrong. For example, it mentions nouns and pronouns having case, but leaves out adjectives. We can do it that way, start with the Greek and Latin and climb up into the big blue. Or, somebody can start with general models or types of languages, show where case fits in and then work it down to the origin of the concept and its relevance to us as we bumble along through the languages. For me this is a big task so I am going to defer, to you I hope. If you are going to spout theory you need to spout authors and books and page numbers. What do you say, do we have an aspiring theoretical linguist with a bent for looking things up?Dave (talk) 22:44, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The saMskRta part may be incorrect.

As far as I know, there are seven cases in saMskRta ('sanskrit'). That along with an additional vocative makes 8, though in saMskRta-vyAkaraNa (Grammar) it is not technically considered it's own case, but an extension of the first.

The seven cases in saMskRta are--

Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Locative and lastly Vocative.

Also, the example sentence does not seem to make much sense. 'bhumau' is locative, it is not that the fruit is falling 'to' the ground, it is falling 'onto' the ground, thus necessitating the locative usage.

Adjectives will inflect to the declension of the noun. Verbs are conjugated to agree with nouns. The difference here is that there is a dual-number case conjugation, but this is a separate discussion. (i.e. 'Ron and Jon Go' vs. 'They (>2) go' the verb 'go' is conjugated differently in each case.)

Needs some work here. Though saMskRta langauge is an excellent example of case, as it is deva-bhASA -- the language of the Gods. -Ajai

Arabic is not an Indo-European Language

I'll delete it from the list of example Indo-European languages where case is supposedly clearer. User:noisms —Preceding undated comment added 12:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

Sanskrit confusion

The Sanskrit description is just one big confusion. First, the cultural relativist notion that Sanskrit cases are somehow unique and can't be identified with the one accepted for all languages in mainstream linguistics. Every description I've seen uses the common terms "nominative", "genitive" etc., and they are more similar to Latin than most case systems. The second thing - relying on Panini's ancient description. Why on earth is it surmised that Panini's description is still the best? From what I'm reading, it's clear that it is, surprisingly for a text that is just 2400 years old, slightly out of date with modern linguistics. It is claimed that Panini identified semantic roles, yet he specified the roles' morphology! Well that just means he confused semantic roles with grammatical case; grammatical case is what has morphological expression, while in turn being conditioned by the morphology. "Agent" is not a case and has no ending; "nominative" is a case and has endings, but "nominative" is just one possible expression of the semantic role "agent" (it would be different in a passive clause). If Panini didn't describe grammatical case separately from semantic roles, that's his problem; it's not a reason for this article to muddy the waters by listing semantic roles as cases, and claiming that semantic roles are in fact cases in Sanskrit! And this is what this article does. This is plain wrong, and it will just confuse anyone new to the matter. And yes, modern linguistics calls Sanskrit cases just the same it calls the respective cases in the other IE languages - nominative, genitive etc; not kartri etc..--91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:40, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree it looks like a mess and probably doesn't belong in the article at all. Assuming the Sanskrit cases are similar to Latin what does even mentioning them add to the article? The whole section could use some work as the last paragraph doesn't even correspond to the section title. Gr8white (talk) 05:26, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit worried that the article carefully distinguishes between case and thematic role, and then spends so much time on thematic roles in Sanskrit. -- Radagast3 (talk) 14:03, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Yugoslav languages

Someone insists on changing Serbo-Croatian to Yugoslav languages...which of course don't exist. The list of languages wasn't meant to be complete and is probably too long as it is. Maybe someone's feelings get hurt if their own particular favorite isn't included, I don't know. It could probably be rewritten to make it more concise. I don't know if all Slavic languages utilize cases or not, if so all the individual ones could be replaced by "Slavic languages", if not, maybe "most Slavic languages". Gr8white (talk) 01:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

removed tag "|unreferenced=November 2007". Article has multiple reliable references and sources now.

I removed the tag "|unreferenced=November 2007". It was out-of-date; this article now references multiple reliable sources. There may still be sections of the article that don't have good references or only have one good reference; I have not yet looked to see. --Eldin raigmore (talk) 00:03, 31 March 2010 (UTC)