Case is a feature of nouns and pronouns that helps show their relation to other parts of speech in a sentence. The case of a noun is shown by the inflectional ending attached to it. For instance, in some languages a noun may have one ending when it is the subject of a verb, another when it is the direct object, a third when it is the indirect object, and so on.
Languages differ widely in the number of cases they have. Old English nouns have five cases, but modern English nouns have only two. Latin has six. Some languages, such as Hungarian, have as many as 25 or 30 cases.
Cases in Latin
Latin provides a good example of a case system. The Latin word servus, which means slave, has the following forms in the singular:
nominative: servus vocative: serve genitive: servi dative: servo accusative: servum ablative: servo
The nominative form occurred when the word was the subject of a verb: “The slave was waiting.” The vocative was used when a person called or addressed someone else: “Get me my toga, slave.” The genitive resembled the English possessive, and denoted possession or origin: “The slave’s clothes,” “A child of the slave.” The dative corresponded to the English indirect object: “He gave the slave his freedom.” The accusative was used when the word was the object of a verb: “I saw the slave.” The ablative followed certain prepositions: “He went with the slave.” The ablative and dative are listed as separate cases, although the forms for this particular noun are the same, because some nouns had different forms. For example, the word for foot (pes) is pedi in the dative and pede in the ablative.
Cases in English
Nouns.
Over a period of about 1,000 years, the case forms of English nouns were reduced from five to two—common and possessive. The common, or all-purpose, case is the base form of the noun used in either the subject or object position. The possessive case is the base form, plus, in writing, ‘s. For example, the common case nouns girl, boy, and monkey become girl’s, boy’s, and monkey’s in the possessive case. If the form is both plural and possessive, an apostrophe follows the plural ending: girls’, boys’, monkeys’. In speech, the possessive ending is identical with the plural ending. The following pairs are pronounced alike: boy’s and boys, rat’s and rats, witch’s and witches.
As the name suggests, the possessive ending usually indicates that the noun names a possessor or owner of something else: “the boy’s car,” “the rat’s nest.” Often, however, the possessive indicates meanings other than physical possession. Thus we have the possessive in “the boy’s picture,” though the boy may not own the portrait of himself. Other examples showing the varied meaning of the possessive are “a day’s work,” “land’s end,” and “a stone’s throw.” Notice that the expression “Shakespeare’s plays” has two meanings: plays owned by Shakespeare and plays written by Shakespeare.
Proper nouns ending in s are sometimes written in the possessive with just the apostrophe and no additional s. For example, either “Keats’s poems” or “Keats’ poems” is correct. Common nouns ending in s are generally written ‘s (the waitress’s husband), though the ending may sometimes drop out in speech.
An interesting feature in English is illustrated by the expression “the king of Spain’s hat.” The possessive ending is attached to Spain, not to king, although the hat belongs to the king, not to Spain. The possessive always follows the whole possessive phrase occurring just before the noun modified by the possessive: “someone else’s hat,” “the man in the back row’s remark.”
Pronouns.
Some English personal pronouns and the relative pronoun who retain three case forms instead of two. The subject forms are I, he, she, we, they, and who. These pronouns are said to be in the subjective, or nominative, case. The object forms are me, him, her, us, them, and whom. These pronouns are in the objective case. The pronouns you and it have a common case form for subject and object positions. All pronouns show a possessive form (my, your, his, her, its, their, whose). Most have a variant form of the possessive (mine, yours, hers, ours, theirs). This form is used for special positions (“my book,” but “The book is mine” and “Mine is lost”).
Generally, the subject form is used when the pronoun is the subject of a verb (“She sang”) or when it is a complement after the verb to be (“This is she“). The object form is used when the pronoun is the object of a verb (“The light blinded her“), the indirect object of a verb (“John did her a favor”), or the object of a preposition (“The class gave special recognition to her“). The possessive forms are often used as modifiers (“their house,” “This is his“). They also serve in the subject position (“Hers has been destroyed”) or the object position (“I bought mine“).
Informal usage often interferes with the orderly use of case forms. For example, many people use who in a question like “Who are you going with?” because who occupies what is ordinarily a subject position, even though it is the object of the preposition with. Despite such trends in usage, many writers still maintain careful case distinctions. They prefer “Whom are you going with?” or “With whom are you going?”
