Questions tagged [cases]
Inflectional forms that indicate the grammatical functions of nouns, pronouns and their modifiers (such as adjectives).
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Are there signed languages that have a case system?
In a prior question I asked whether word order in ASL has a special significance, which naturally lead to another question: do any signed languages, that is languages communicated mostly if not fully ...
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How do English people understand the grammatical cases? [closed]
In Czech poetry you can say something like this:
"zvukem kulek k tobe promlouvam"
which is "I speak to you with(through) the sound of bullets/shots"./"Mluvim k tobe se(skrz) zvukem(zvuk) kulek."
...
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Across ergative languages, is there a case that typically marks arguments in copular & existential clauses?
Across ergative languages, is there a case that typically marks the arguments in copular & existential clauses?
For example, in sentences that translate as "The beetle is red" and "There is a ...
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Do applicative verbs ever govern the cases of their objects?
From what I've read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_case) applicative voice occurs when an oblique noun phrase becomes an argument of the verb when the verb takes some applicative morpheme....
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Where did Latin and its descendants retain a case system most recently?
So we know that Latin nouns and adjectives inflect for case as well as person, number, and gender.
Also we know that all the major modern Romance languages except Romanian no longer have a case ...
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Their class has more singers than (we/us) -- possible syntactical derivations?
Forgive me if this is not the right sort of question to post here, but I was curious as to the derivation of the above sentence. (Apparently the correct choice is 'we').
Their class has more singers ...
user2194
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What is "contacting case"?
According to Wikipedia, the Bats language of Eastern Georgia has a case called "contacting", but no description is offered as to its function.
I checked the Russian and Georgian versions of the page ...
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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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Is it okay that Ergative case be unmarked?
I found a language of Celebes island in Indonesia, its name is Mongondow (mog). It has a Phillipine's Alignment morphosyntactic which it has combination of Accusative and Ergative languages. The word ...
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Does the Finnish translative case exist in other languages?
The Finnish translative case expresses the concept of becoming or turning into something else. Does this case exist in other languages, or is it unique to Finnish? How is this concept most commonly ...
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Is there a name for the "case" that is a conflation of nominative and accusative?
In Indo-European languages, the neuter is often characterized by syncretism between nominative and accusative.
There are other examples of syncretism and also historical change where the nominative ...
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Is there a language known to have developed a case system?
There are many languages which, having descended from a language with a complex case system, have lost or greatly simplified theirs: Bulgarian (Slavic), English (Germanic), most Romance languages etc. ...
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Declinable conjunctions
Duolingo states: “In German, conjunctions do not change with the case (i.e. they are not declinable).”1 I started to think of languages I know, and I don't remember any which would have this property.
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Are there any languages where the genitive case changes according to its object?
In forms like Claudio's house or Claudio's dogs, are there languages in which the Claudio's would change depending on gender and number of the houses or dogs?
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Why is the number of grammatical cases in Germanic and Romance languages decreasing?
There is a tendency in Germanic and Romance languages that the number of the grammatical cases is decreasing.
The Indo-European proto-language should have 8 grammatical cases, in Latin we already ...
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Are there languages with PCC effects and a more developed person system?
The Person-Case Constraint (PCC) is a constraint on which arguments can co-occur in a construction such as a causative/applicative/ditransitive. It might cause a combination of persons to be ...
user325
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What are the differences between inherent, lexical and structural case?
What are the differences between these three kinds of case? How do we know that they are real? I kind of understand that inherent and lexical case are idiomatic and lead to variation in case marking, ...
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In Polish, how do people say "Call <name>" when giving their phone a command? [closed]
In phones, you now can use speech to do VAD (Voice Activated Dialing). As in, "Call Bob". This works fine in isolating languages.
I was told that in Polish (pl-PL), it is more natural to say "Call ...
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How do linguists distinguish between case endings and postpositions, especially in languages which have both and/or have no traditional grammar?
In my attempt to learn Georgian, an agglutinative language of the South Caucasus, I have learned that it has both case endings and postpositions.
I also have some familiarity with Korean and Japanese ...
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Thematic roles in some languages
I have a question about semantic roles in Latin and Russian.
Latin
Quibusdam […] sudor erumpit.
someone. DAT.PL sweat. NOM.SG come out.PRES.3SG.
‘Some people start sweating.’
...
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Are there any recent articles on the current state of Case theory?
Specifically I'm interested in the split between Structural Case and Morphological case.
Structural Case has been part of Chomskyan syntactic theory since at least Government & Binding (GB). ...
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Case reassignment without change in number of cases
Most languages with cases seem to be either gaining or losing them diachronically (The Indo-European languages are an example of the latter, and the Uralic languages of the former). Manchu and Xibe (a ...
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Are there any papers etc analyzing Japanese as a language with noun cases rather than particles?
Japanese is often included in lists of agglutinating languages.
Many (most?) agglutinating languages are analysed as having case systems.
Of course cases and prepositions/postpositions fill the same ...
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