Questions tagged [cases]
Inflectional forms that indicate the grammatical functions of nouns, pronouns and their modifiers (such as adjectives).
32 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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How did Old Norse influence Old English to lose genders and cases?
Wikipedia says that "Norse influence is ... considered to have stimulated and accelerated the morphological simplification found in Middle English, such as the loss of grammatical gender and ...
user35806
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List of Hungarian toponyms by interior/surface case
Hungarian toponyms can be grouped grammatically according to whether they take the "interior" cases (inessive, illative, and elative) or the "surface" cases (superessive, sublative, and delative) to ...
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Are there any universals about how m-case can pattern for predicate NPs?
Predicate noun phrases (NPs) have different patterns of case in different languages.
Even closely related languages can show significant differences (Sigurðsson 2008). For example, among the Germanic ...
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Origin of Italian plurals
Some sources say that italian plurals come from the nominative case, so "italiano" has the plural "italiani", and "italiana" has the plural "italiane".
However ...
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Month names variants
Regarding the question on TeX.stackexchange I am looking for generally used languages that use different cases for their month and day names.
Based on Czech and Slovak languages I can imagine two ...
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Kuryłowicz on cases and prepositions
I've read Kuryłowicz's classic paper "Le problème du classement des cas" and I'm not sure how to interpret what he says about the difference between case affixes and prepositions. Does he in effect ...
user8145
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When and by whom was the term absolutive (case) created?
While the question on the origin of the ergative case (When and by whom were the terms 'ergative case' and 'absolutive case' coined?) is answered, the origins of the terminus ...
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What is the argument position of a noun in vocative case in a sentence?
What is the argument position (e.g. subject, direct object, ...) of a noun in vocative case in a sentence, for example, in Latin?
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How does Case work in an impersonal sentence?
The Case filter is what prohibits the phonetic realization of a DP that recieves no grammatical Case. In languages such as Portuguese, people use impersonal constructions like "há/tem um carro na ...
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Question about cases in Polish
Cases are baffling and puzzling to me. I'm trying to learn Polish and trying to master the cases, and I'm sincerely confused at all the different uses one case can have.
If one case is, say, used with ...
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Is there "adjunct indexation" in some languages?
The arguments of a verb may leave markers on the verb about the person and number features, which is commonly called as argument indexation. We know the distinction between arguments and adjuncts is ...
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Direct–inverse marking on the noun, or the possiblity of inverse alignment
A direct-inverse language, Wikipedia claims, is one which
involve[s] different grammar for transitive predications according to the relative positions of their "subject" and their "object" on a ...
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What does CGEL mean by 'instability in the system' in their explanation of case?
Consider the following passage from CGEL (p. 458, boldfaced emphasis mine):
We look first at the contrast between nominative and accusative case, where we find a considerable amount of variation ...
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Subjective pronouns in English copulas: gradual loss of objective case, or emphatic construction taking over?
I'm interested in the historical linguistics of constructions like "that's me" versus "this is she" when answering the phone. Searching online led to a Google Books peephole view ...
user12663
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What is some standard analysis for "Look me in the eye"
I am looking for hints where to find a ("standard") analysis of something like this english dative construction:
Look me in the eye
Clearly, the "the" in this phrase is semantically scoped BY the me ...
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In a Latin ablative absolute, how is the ablative case being used?
In Latin, a common way of expressing when an action is happening relative to another action is to use an ablative absolute, consisting of an ablative noun and an ablative participle. As an example, ...
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About ECMs and considering Adjective Phrases as predicates
I'll just jump right to it.
I'm given the following sentence - "We remembered the scary dream", with the instructions to draw an X-Bar, and decide whether this is an ECM or a normal control type.
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How can the polysemy of the Polish instrumental case be explained?
If the instrumental case in Polish is used to designate the tool with which an action, or state of being, is being performed/is, how is it that the instrumental is also used to express time and ...
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What is the definition of a “case” in grammar?
Among others, according to Wikipedia:
"Case" is a linguistics term regarding a manner of categorizing nouns,
pronouns, adjectives, participles, and numerals according to their
traditionally ...
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How common object/subject case being applied to determiners/demonstrative/articles instead of nouns?
I'm talking about a language where say, a certain case is only expressed on the determiners/demonstrative/article?
So they might say for example:
Which-a Cat?
Which-LOC. Cat?
Rather than:
Which Cat-...
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Is there a language where presence/absence of V-O agreement would reflect presence/absence of accusative case?
I am trying to find a language which would show the following pattern with respect to agreement/morphological Case:
presence of verb-object morphological agreement yields accusative morphology
...
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What is meant by the term 'genitive of appurtenance'
In his Sanskrit Grammar, William Dwight Whitney describes the uses of the genitive case in Sanskrit and he mentions the 'genitive of possession or appurtenance':
The genitive in its normal ...
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wals chapter 50 regarding german language
Regarding asymmetrical case marking in German referring WALS chapter 50, I understand the asymmetry in German (ich : I; mich : me; mir : to me; er : he; ihm : to him; ihn : him, etc.) but the value is ...
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Overt Subjects of Non-Finite Clauses and Accusative Case
How do overt subjects of non-finite clauses such as the gerund clause below obtain accusative case despite there being no accusative case or ECM assigner?
Me arriving late is a sure thing
I think I ...
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Distinguishing "Eskimo"/"Inuit" languages by the passive agent morpheme
In The Origin of Agent Markers by Enrique L. Palancar an attempt has been made to list morphemes used both 1.) as a case morpheme belonging to a noun and 2.) as a morpheme on such nouns that express ...
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What is the difference between case marking particles and adpositions?
Apparently there is some relevant book which claims, more or less:
Case marking particles and adpositions are not identical, one is a morphological, one a syntactic unit.
This claim was heard ...
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Do Germanic languages have partitive case?
Finnish, among a few other languages, is known for its partitive case. I have been told that in some Germanic language, partitive case is required whenever SV-order is absent. SV-order is absent, e.g.,...
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How do I know if ECM happens in a foreign language?
I have learned about ECM and how it works within the English language, but I don't understand it thoroughly. How would we be able to decide whether a language has ECM?
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Two questions about Icelandic (syntax)
The following sentence is from Icelandic language:
Mér vir›ast tNP [hestarnir vera seinir]
meDAT seemPL the-horsesNOM be slow
‘It seems to me that the horses are slow.'
...
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Are there languages in which overt morphological accusative case is obligatory on the second conjunct of a conjunction?
For example: (1) The officer believed [NP Mary and me]
Of course, the distribution of ACC pronouns in English doesn't really map onto ACC in overt morphological case languages.
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What is the difference between predicate-argument structure and case structure
Predicate's arguments are just case slots, aren't they? So predicate-argument structure and case structure are just the same thing?
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Is there any universal semantic coding for noun cases similar to verb aspectology?
I am aware of the argument/actant theories, but perhaps there is something like universal semantical coding for the nouns as well.
For Argument concepts,you can see the relevant Wikipedia page for ...
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