Case, Morphological: Linguistics

Abstract

Case, as traditionally understood, refers to a system of inflection, usually in the form of suffixes, which marks the relation of nouns in a clause. In the Latin sentence Calpurnia Clodiam vīdit ‘Calpurnia saw Clodia’ the fact that Clodia rather than Calpurnia is the one who is seen is signaled by the -m suffix on Clodia, rather than by word order as in English. This -m is a case suffix. Cases can be classified as grammatical (signaling a grammatical relation) or semantic (signaling a semantic role). Grammatical cases include the nominative marking the subject, the accusative marking the direct object, the dative marking the indirect object and the genitive marking a dependent of a noun. In some languages the subject of a transitive verb is distinguished by an ergative case and the subject of an intransitive verb and the direct object are treated alike, usually left unmarked in what some call the absolutive case. Semantic cases include the locative indicating location or place where (e.g., ‘in,’ ‘at’), the allative indicating movement toward (e.g., ‘to’) and the ablative indicating direction from (e.g., ‘from’). Case may be marked on the head of a noun phrase and on its dependents via concord, or it may be marked on only one constituent of the noun phrase, usually the last, whether the last member is the head or not.