9. Inflectional categories of nouns and verbs
9.1. Case
Case is used to mark the role a noun phrase plays in a sentence. Some languages do not mark case at all, some mark case on on only some nouns, some mark case on all nouns, and some mark case on determiners. In English, we have case distinctions only on pronouns. We use the nominative case form in the subject position of finite clauses, the genitive case for possessives, and the accusative case form on the objects of active voice clauses. In English, the accusative case also acts as the default and shows up in additional contexts, as well.
(3) a. I saw them.
1SG.NOM (no gloss for saw) 3PL.ACC
b. They saw me.
3PL.NOM (no gloss for saw) 1SG.ACC
The pronoun paradigm for English is shown in Table 1. In addition to case, English pronouns also have person, number, and gender distinctions, which we will discuss later in this section.
| Features | Morphological forms | ||||
| Person | Number | Gender | nominative case | accusative case | genitive case |
| 1st | singular | — | I | me | mine |
| 2nd | singular | — | you | you | yours |
| 3rd |
singular | masculine | he | him | his |
| 3rd |
singular | feminine | she | her | hers |
| 3rd |
singular | inanimate | it | it | its |
| 3rd |
singular | non-binary or unspecified | they | them | theirs |
| 1st | plural | — | we | us | ours |
| 2nd | plural | — | you | you | yours |
| 3rd | plural | — | they | them | theirs |
In English, we use the accusative case for both direct and indirect objects, but in many other languages, they use the accusative case only for direct objects, and have another case, the dative case, for indirect objects. German, as shown in (4), is one example of a language that uses dative case. The example in (4) also illustrates how in some languages, including German, case is marked on determiners rather than on the noun itself.
(4) Sie hat dem Mann das Buch geschenkt.
she.NOM has the.M.DAT man the.N.ACC book given
‘She has given the man the book.”
German (Beermann 2001, as cited in Alexiadou et al. 2010: 2).
Some languages have extensive case marking systems that they use in addition to or instead of prepositions. Hungarian is an extreme example of this, with 21 cases, as shown in (5).
| (5) | Hungarian | |
| hajó | nominative | |
| hajó-t | accusative | |
| hajó-ban | inessive | |
| hajó-ból | elative | |
| hajó-ba | illative | |
| hajó-n | superessive | |
| hajó-ról | delative | |
| hajó-ra | sublative | |
| hajó-nál | adessive | |
| hajó-tól | ablative | |
| hajó-hoz | allative | |
| hajó-ig | terminative | |
| hajó-nak | dative | |
| hajó-val | instrumental-comitative | |
| hajó-képp | formal | |
| hajó-ul | essive | |
| hajó-ként | essive-formal(-similitive) | |
| hajó-vá | translative-factitive | |
| hajó-ért | causal-final | |
| hajó-nként | distributive | |
| hajó-stul | sociative | |
(Tompa 1968: 206-209, as cited in Iggesen 2013)
Languages such as English, German, and Hungarian have what is called nominative-absolutive case alignment, which means that we use the same case marker for the subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs, and a different case marker for the objects of transitive verbs. This is shown in Figure 1.
| (6) | a. | She saw her. |
| b. | She slept. |
On the other hand, other languages mark the sole argument of intransitive verbs with the same case as the object of transitive verbs, which is called absolutive case. The case that is used to mark only subjects of transitive verbs is called ergative case. Ngarinyman, a Pama-Nyungan language of Australia, is an example of an ergative-absolutive language. For example, sentence (7a) is intransitive, and so the sole argument garu ‘child’ appears in absolutive case. In (7b), when the same verb is used transitively, the subject, yawardarlu ‘horse’ appears in ergative case. The object in (7b) appears only as agreement on the verb.
| (7) | Ngarinyman | ||||
| a. | Bard | wan | -inya | garu. | |
| fall.down | change.location | -pst | child.abs | ||
| ‘The kid fell down.’ | |||||
| (7) | b. | Yawarda | -rlu | bardba | -yi | yuwa | -ni. |
| horse | -erg | fall.down | -1sg.obj | put | -pst | ||
| ‘The horse threw me off.’ | |||||||
(Denniss 2023: 142)
We can see another transitive-intransitive pair in (8). Sentence (8a) is intransitive, and the sole argument warlagu ‘dog’ is again marked in absolutive case. In the transitive version, the subject warlagu ‘dog’ is marked with ergative case while the object, janga ‘woman’ is marked in absolutive.
| (8) | Ngarinyman | ||||
| a. | Rungab | garr | -any | warlagu. | |
| bark | be.at | -pres | dog.abs | ||
| ‘The dog is barking.’ | |||||
| (8) | b. | Warlagu | -rlu | rungab | nya | -nga | jan.ga. |
| dog | -erg | bark | perceive | -pres | woman.abs | ||
| ‘The dog barked at the woman.’ | |||||||
(Denniss 2023: 145-146)
Many languages use a combination of nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive case. This is called split ergativity. The contexts in which each case system is used can be determined by tense, person, or other factors.
The names and meanings of some common cases are listed in Table 3.
| Case | Meaning |
| nominative | subject of a finite verb |
| accusative | object of an active verb |
| ergative | subject of a transitive verb |
| absolutive | argument of an intransitive verb or object of a transitive verb |
| dative | indirect object of a verb |
| genitive | possessor of another noun |
| ablative | movement away from |
| vocative | addressee |
| locative | location |
| instrumental | a tool or means used to perform the action |
Key takeaways
Check yourself!
References and further resources
Academic sources
Alexiadou
Denniss, Jessica. 2023. Non-conflating roots: The syntax of light verbs and complex predicates in Ngarinyman. PhD thesis, University of Toronto.
Iggesen, Oliver. 2013. Number of cases. In WALS, ed. Matthew Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Zenodo. https://wals.info/chapter/49
