Editing Grammatical case (section)

{{Short description|Categorization of nouns and modifiers by function}}
{{redirect-distinguish|Case system|Caste system}}
{{More citations needed|date=November 2020}}
{{Grammatical categories}}

A '''grammatical case''' is a category of [[noun]]s and noun modifiers ([[determiner]]s, [[adjective]]s, [[participle]]s, and [[Numeral (linguistics)|numeral]]s) that corresponds to one or more potential [[grammatical function]]s for a [[Nominal group (functional grammar)|nominal group]] in a wording.<ref name=":3">{{cite journal |last=Frede |first=Michael |title=The Stoic Notion of a Grammatical Case |journal=Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies |date=1994 |volume=39 |pages=12,13–24 |doi=10.1111/j.2041-5370.1994.tb00449.x |jstor=43646836 |doi-access=free }}</ref> In various languages, nominal groups consisting of a noun and its modifiers belong to one of a few such categories. For instance, in [[English language|English]], one says ''I see them'' and ''they see me'': the [[nominative case|nominative]] pronouns ''I/they'' represent the perceiver, and the [[accusative case|accusative]] pronouns ''me/them'' represent the phenomenon perceived. Here, nominative and accusative are cases, that is, categories of pronouns corresponding to the functions they have in representation.

English has largely lost its inflected case system but personal pronouns still have three cases, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative (including functions formerly handled by the [[Dative case|dative]]) and [[Genitive case|genitive]] cases. They are used with [[personal pronoun]]s: [[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).<ref>{{cite dictionary |title=Whosever {{!}} Definition of Whosever by Merriam-Webster |dictionary=Merriam-Webster |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whosever |access-date=2021-02-22 |archive-date=2021-06-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210613012826/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whosever |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>''The Chambers Dictionary'', 11th edition</ref> Forms such as ''I'', ''he'' and ''we'' are used for the [[Subject (grammar)|subject]] ("'''I''' kicked John"), and forms such as ''me'', ''him'' and ''us'' are used for the [[object (grammar)|object]] ("John kicked '''me'''").<!-- What about vestigial/archaic adverbs like “whither” and “hither”? -->

As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in [[Ancient Greek]], the [[locative case]] merged with the dative), a phenomenon known as [[Syncretism (linguistics)|syncretism]].{{sfn|Clackson|2007|page=91}}

Languages such as [[Sanskrit]], [[Kannada]], [[Latin]], [[Tamil language|Tamil]], [[Russian language|Russian]] and [[Sinhala language|Sinhala]] have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different [[suffix]]es) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: [[Persian language|Persian]] has three; modern English has three but for pronouns only; [[Torlakian dialects]], [[Classical Arabic|Classical]] and [[Modern Standard Arabic]] have three; [[German language|German]], [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]], [[Demotic Greek|Modern Greek]], and [[Irish Language|Irish]] have four; [[Albanian language|Albanian]], [[Romanian language|Romanian]] and Ancient Greek have five; [[Bengali language|Bengali]], Latin, Russian, [[Slovak language|Slovak]], [[Kajkavian language|Kajkavian]], [[Slovenian language|Slovenian]], and [[Turkish language|Turkish]] each have at least six; [[Armenian language|Armenian]], [[Czech language|Czech]], [[Georgian language|Georgian]], [[Latvian language|Latvian]], [[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]], [[Polish language|Polish]], [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]] and [[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]] have seven; [[Mongolian language|Mongolian]], [[Marathi language|Marathi]], Sanskrit, Kannada, Tamil, [[Telugu language|Telugu]], [[Malayalam]], [[Assamese language|Assamese]] and [[Greenlandic language|Greenlandic]] have eight; [[Old Nubian]] and [[Sinhala language|Sinhala]] have nine; [[Basque language|Basque]] has 13; [[Estonian language|Estonian]] has 14; [[Finnish language|Finnish]] has 15; [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] has 18; and [[Tsez language|Tsez]] has at least 36 cases.{{citation needed|date=February 2020}}

Commonly encountered cases include [[nominative]], [[accusative]], [[dative]] and [[genitive]]. A role that one of those languages marks by case is often marked in English with a [[preposition]]. For example, the English prepositional phrase ''with (his) foot'' (as in "John kicked the ball with his foot") might be rendered in Russian using a single noun in the [[instrumental case]], or in Ancient Greek as {{lang|grc|τῷ ποδί}} ({{grc-tr|τῷ ποδί}}, meaning "the foot") with both words (the definite article, and the noun {{lang|grc|πούς}} ({{grc-tr|πούς}}) "foot") changing to dative form.

More formally, case has been defined as "a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their [[Head (linguistics)|heads]]".<ref name=Blake>Blake, Barry J. ''Case''. [[Cambridge University Press]]: 2001.</ref>{{rp|p.1}} Cases should be distinguished from [[Thematic relation|thematic roles]] such as ''[[agent (grammar)|agent]]'' and ''[[patient (grammar)|patient]]''. They are often closely related, and in languages such as Latin, several thematic roles are realised by a somewhat fixed case for deponent verbs, but cases are a [[Morphology (linguistics)|syntagmatic/phrasal]] category, and thematic roles are the function of a syntagma/phrase in a larger structure. Languages having cases often exhibit [[free word order]], as thematic roles are not required to be marked by position in the sentence.