Questions tagged [cases]
Inflectional forms that indicate the grammatical functions of nouns, pronouns and their modifiers (such as adjectives).
181 questions
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How common is it for languages with declension to decline names like nouns?
This question pertains specifically to languages that both have case-marking on nouns and do that case-marking through declension rather than solely things like adpositions.
Some Indo-European ...
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How does a language end up with ergative-absolutive alignment on nouns, but nominative-accusative in verb concord?
In Two Types of Ergative Agreement: Implications for Case (Coon, 2015), the author explains that there are broadly two different ways a language can be "ergative". One is that it can be ...
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When and by whom was the term absolutive (case) created?
While the question on the origin of the ergative case (When and by whom were the terms 'ergative case' and 'absolutive case' coined?) is answered, the origins of the terminus ...
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How do we characterize the thematic relations between verbs and subordinate phrases (clauses?) in languages without explicit case marking (eg English)
I've been trying to understand correct terminology for describing the "case" of phrases (as opposed to individual nouns) where that case is not marked on any word within the phrase. Is it ...
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Why is "I am me" not "I am I"?
In Latin, the case of a noun that follows a link verb is nominative, not accusative.
But in English, why do people say "I am me" not "I am I"? Is it different in English?
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What criteria are used to determine whether a morpheme is a case ending or a postposition?
Both postpositions and case endings are morphemes placed after the meaning-bearing morpheme of the noun and convey information like position and grammatical role, among others. Particularly in ...
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Is there a reason why certain verbs use certain cases?
For examples, in German there are certain verbs that always use the dative cases and others that always use the accusative case. Is there a logical or semantical reason for this?
Does the use of a ...
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Are there languages with free argument order that lack a passive voice? If not, why not?
Consider German, with its four cases and relatively free argument-order.
Now consider the following German sentence, courtesy of Google Translate.
Johan schenkte dem Mädchen eine Katze. (Johan gave ...
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What differences are between Ablative of Manner and Ablative of Means/Instrument? [closed]
Keller's Learn to Read Latin says on p42
Association/Instrument
In the sentence "The farmer came to the party with a poet", the phrase
"with a poet" indicates that the farmer was ...
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What is the argument position of a noun in vocative case in a sentence?
What is the argument position (e.g. subject, direct object, ...) of a noun in vocative case in a sentence, for example, in Latin?
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Mysterious uncertainty about ablative case in Turkish
Yesterday I was watching a Turkish trivia game show on TV when a question came up about the ablative case in Turkish. The question, asked during a part of the show when questions are generally deemed ...
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How many grammatical cases does Telugu have?
I can't figure out how many grammatical cases Telugu has:
Wikipedia says 8 (Telugu grammar)
Telugu itself says 8, but I'm not sure if they map 1-1 to linguistic cases (విభక్తులు/viḅaktulu)
I found a ...
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Word for difference between "in" and "into"
I was wondering whether there are words for the two types of prepositions, or a word for the distinction between them. I understand that the difference between them is that one is a "static" ...
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Determining factor for the default inflection of a noun
In Arabic, a noun can have three different inflections depending on its role in a given sentence. For example, for the word "book", it can be kitabun, or kitaban, or kitabin. The default ...
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Question about a phrase with the Polish case genetive (dopełniacz)
in the following sentence:
"Teraz idę do żabki po sok"
What is the function of the genitive case applied on the noun "żabka"?
I'm aware that with the preposition "do", ...
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