Declension

In linguistics, declension is a paradigm of inflected nouns and adjectives. 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 a book of his.)

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 in many Indo-European languages, including Latin, Russian, German, and Sanskrit; in Dravidian languages like Tamil; in most Uralic languages, such as Finnish and Hungarian; in Swahili; and in many others. Old English had an extensive case system. In modern English grammar, the same information is now mostly conveyed with word order and prepositions, 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), which belongs to Wiktionary Appendix:Latin third declension.

homō man [as a subject (e.g. homō ibi stat the man is standing there)
hominis of ^* man (e.g. nōmen hominis est Claudius the name of the man is Claudius)
hominī to ^* man (e.g. hominī donum dedī I gave a present to the man)
hominem man [as a direct object (e.g. hominem vidi I saw the man)
homine man [in various uses not covered by the above (e.g. sum altior homine I am taller than the man)

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 (e.g., chair, chairs, chair's, chairs'). Note that chair does not change 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.

Declension and linguistic typology

Languages are categorized into several case systems, based on their morphosyntantic alignment — how they group verb agents and patients into cases:

Nominative-accusative (or simply accusative): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in the same case as the agent (subject) of a transitive verb; this case is then called the nominative case, with the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb being in the accusative case.
Ergative-absolutive (or simply ergative): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in the same case as the patient (direct object) of an transitive verb; this case is then called the absolutive case, with the agent (subject) of a transitive verb being in the ergative case.
Ergative-accusative (or tripartite): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb is in its own case (the intransitive case), separate from that of the agent (subject) or patient (direct object) of a transitive verb (which is in the ergative case or accusative case, respectively).
Active-stative (or simply active): The argument (subject) of an intransitive verb can be in one of two cases; if the argument is an agent, as in "He ate," then it is in the same case as the agent (subject) of a transitive verb (sometimes called the agentive case), and if it's a patient, as in "He tripped," then it is in the same case as the patient (direct object) of a transitive verb (sometimes called the patientive case).
Trigger: One noun in a sentence is the topic or focus. This noun is in the trigger case, and information elsewhere in the sentence (for example a verb affix in Tagalog) specifies the role of the trigger. The trigger may be identified as the agent, patient, etc. Other nouns may be inflected for case, but the inflections are overloaded; for example, in Tagalog, the subject and object of a verb are both expressed in the genitive case when they are not in the trigger case.

The following are systems that some languages use to mark case instead of, or in addition to, declension:

Positional: Nouns are not inflected for case; the position of a noun in the sentence expresses its case.
Prepositional/postpositional: Nouns are accompanied by words that mark case, but the noun itself is not modified.

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.

External links

The Status of Morphological Case in the Icelandic Lexicon by Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson. Discussion of whether cases convey any inherent syntactic or semantic meaning.
Optimal Case: The Distribution of Case in German and Icelandic by Dieter Wunderlich
A long list of names for cases found in one language or another
Scene 8, Monty Python's the Life of Brian explains Latin declension. Best if viewed in the context of the movie before reading.

Grammar

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Declension and linguistic typology

See also

External links