Case

In morphosyntax, case is a grammatical category system marked on noun phrases to indicate the syntactic-semantic relationship between the noun phrases and other elements in the clause. Case categories are marked by affixes or occasionally by other morphological means (such as stem changes), mostly on the head noun of the noun phrase.

• “Case: an inflectional dimension of nouns that serves to code the noun phrase's semantic role.” (Haspelmath 2002:267)

Examples

Frequently encountered cases are the genitive case for the adnominal possessor (e.g. English the girl’s book), the accusative case for the direct object (e.g. Latin video Ciceron-em [I.see Cicero-ACC]), and the dative case for the recipient (e.g. Japanese watashi-wa Taro-ni hon-o age-ta [I-TOP Taro-DAT book-ACC give-PAST] ‘I gave Taro a book.’).

Comments

• “There is among many scholars a strong feeling that the term [case] should be used only where clear case morphemes are discoverable in the inflection of nouns.” (Fillmore 1968:19)

Subtypes

• grammatical cases vs. concrete cases
• spatial cases
• structural cases vs. inherent cases vs. lexical cases
• direct case vs. oblique cases

Subcategories

• nominative case
• accusative case
• ergative case
• absolutive case
• genitive case
• dative case
• instrumental case
• comitative case
• locative case
• allative case
• ablative case

Polysemy

The term case is also used

• for semantic roles -- see deep case
• for an abstract and often invisible/inaudible feature licensing the occurrence of noun phrases -- see abstract case
• as a general term for cases and adpositions --- see flag

Origin

The term case goes back to the earliest Western grammatical works (Dionysius Thrax, perhaps Aristotle). In Latin, the term casus (literally 'falling') is found in Varro (?), evidently as a loan translation from Greek ptóòsis ‘falling’. According to Blake (2001:18), the metaphor "seems to have been of falling away from an assumed standard form". Fillmore (1968:6) translates it as ‘deviation’.

References

• Blake, Barry J.. 2001. Case. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Butt, Miriam. 2006. Theories of case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521-79731-4
• Fillmore, Charles J. 1968. The case for case. In: Bach, Emmon & Harms, Robert T. (eds.) Universals in linguistic theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1-88.
• Haspelmath, Martin. 2002. Understanding morphology. London: Arnold.

Other languages

Czech pád French cas German Kasus Russian падеж Spanish caso