| Grammatical Case |
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In Linguistics , declension is a Paradigm of Inflected Nouns . In many Indo-European Languages , the inflected forms indicate its Grammatical role. An example in English is the way "he" changes to "him" when it follows a verb or preposition, and to "his" when it is possessive. (HE is my friend. I know HIM. I sent it to HIM. This is HIS book. Or a better example of this: Whose books are these? To whom belong these books?) In inflected languages, nouns are said to ''decline'' into different forms, or morphological cases, which indicate the nouns' function in a sentence. Morphological cases are one way of indicating '''grammatical case'''; other ways are listed below. Morphological cases are usually indicated by ''desinences'' (endings), but additionally, or alternatively, morphological modifications of the nominal stem may occur (see Nonconcatenative Morphology , Apophony , Umlaut ) Declension is seen, for example, in many Indo-European Languages like Latin , Russian, German and Sanskrit ; in Dravidian Languages like Tamil ; in most Uralic Languages , such as Finnish and Hungarian ; in Swahili and many others. Old English had an extensive case system. In modern English Grammar , the same information is now mostly conveyed with Word Order and Preposition s, though a few remnants of the older declined form of English still exist (as in "he" vs. "him"; see Declension In English ). An example of a Latin noun declension is given below, using the word homō 'man.' Since Latin has no Articles , that is, no words for 'the' or 'a,' they have been added in the translations.
The term declension can also refer to the varied forms working together as a system. For example, the above declension differs from the a-declension, which consists mostly of feminine nouns.
Notice that the direct object form of homo ends in -em and the direct object form of '''femina''' ends in -am. The direct object form of '''manus''' 'hand' ends in -um. Declensions are distinguished by the presence of certain vowels or consonants. Though English pronouns can have subject and object forms (he/him, she/her), '''nouns''' show only a singular/plural- and a possessive/non-possessive-distinction (chair, chairs, chair's, chairs'). Note there is no difference in form between "the chair is here" (subject) and "I saw the chair" (direct object). Generally the only variation in English nouns is the insertion of an -e or e-sound for purposes of pronunciation (beach, beaches, beach's, beaches'). The '''n-declension''' is restricted to words like ox-oxen, brother-brethren, and child-children, though in Medieval English the s-declension and the n-declension were in stronger competition. The hard-core grammarian might also wish to know the following: Languages are categorized into several case systems, based on how they group verb Agents and Patients into cases:
The following are systems that some languages use to mark case instead of, or in addition to, declension:
Some languages have more than 20 cases. For an example of a language that uses a large number of cases, see Finnish Language Noun Cases . The Lemma forms of words, which is the form chosen by convention as the canonical form of a word, is usually the most Unmarked or basic case, which is typically the nominative, trigger, or absolutive case, whichever a language may have. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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