Case refers to a pattern of inflection of nouns, pronouns,
and adjectives that expresses different syntactic functions in
a sentence. In inflected languages, case is indicated by endings
(i.e., morphemes known as suffixes); in noninflected languages,
case is indicated by the position of a word in a sentence. (A
morpheme is a combination of sounds that has meaning, but does
not necessarily equal a word: s, as in the mark of the
plural, is a morpheme.)
English is a member of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European
(IE) family of languages. Its ancient case system was much the
same as those of Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Gothic, Old Norse, Old
Saxon, and Old High German. However, by the time Old English
(aka Anglo-Saxon) literature was committed to writing, this case
system had broken down. Cases had begun to assimilate or fall
together (often because of phonetic change); that is, two or
more cases that were originally separate and distinct had become
identical. In other instances, one case ending was abandoned
for another.
In Modern English, it is said that we have two cases only: the
common case and the genitive case. Actually, what this really
means is that we only mark one case, the genitive; the other
"cases" are identified by word order and meaning.
The historical IE cases and their functions (much simplified)
are:
nominative (aka subjective): subject of a finite
verb (i.e., not infinitive form: to + verb)
genitive: modification, possession, etc.
dative: indirect object, object of a preposition
accusative (aka objective): direct object of the
verb
in the following sentences, the italicized part is the indirect
object, the underlined the direct object
The judges awarded Pumpsie the prize.
The judges awarded the prize to Pumpsie.
instrumental: means, accompaniment, manner, place, time
(sometimes used with a preposition in Latin and English [by,
with, from, in, on, at], sometimes without)
ablative: separation, direction away from; sometimes manner
or agency
vocative: direct address
locative: place or the place where
The instrumental case is rare in OE, and had assimilated with
the ablative and was expressed by the dative case; it functions
more fully in other languages. The vocative had the same form
as the nominative in Latin. The locative is still found in Sanskrit.
In Old English, nouns and adjectives had grammatical gender (as
is still the case in Romance languages). To complicate matters,
each gender of noun had a separate ending: stan, "stone,"
for example, is classed as a masculine noun, and is declined
according to a different paradigm than wif, "wife,
woman" a neuter noun, and giefu, "gift,"
a feminine noun. Furthermore, an adjective in OE had to correspond
(or, as grammarians say, agree) in case with the noun it modified.
Today, we classify nouns in English not by inflectional ending,
but by natural gender: a buck is masculine, a doe is feminine,
a chair is neuter.
. . . . . . . Old
English . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . Middle
English
. . . . . . singular
. . . . . plural . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . singular . . . . . . .
. plural
. .N. . . .stan . . . . . stanas . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . ston . . . . . .stones
. .G. . . .stanes . . . stana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . stones . . . . stones
. .D./I. . stane . . . . stanum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. .ston(e) . . . .stones
. .A.. . . stan . . . . . stanas . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . ston . . . . . . stones
Modern English is part inflected; it still contains "fossils"
of the earlier, fully-inflected OE system: who/whom,
he/him, they/their. (She/her
is a more complicated issue.) In the Middle English period, English
began to lose most of its inflectional endings. These processes
still continue today--witness how people misuse or avoid whom,
which may lead to its final demise. Today, English nouns have
two grammatical inflections, one indicating number and one indicating
case (we lost gender, remember). Adjectives have no inflections
at all. The apostrophe is a relatively recent invention.
