Declension
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Grammatical features |
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In
Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. It is an important aspect of language families like
English-speaking perspective
Unlike English, many languages use
- "The dog chased a cat."
- "A cat chased the dog."
Hypothetically speaking, suppose English were a language with a more complex declension system in which cases were formed by adding the suffixes:
- -no (for nominative singular), -ge (genitive), -da (dative), -ac (accusative), -lo (locative), -in (instrumental), -vo (vocative), -ab (ablative)
The first sentence above could be formed with any of the following word orders and would have the same meaning:[1]
- "The dogno chased a catac."
- "A catac chased the dogno."
- "Chased a catac the dogno."
As a more complex example, the sentence:
- Mum, this little boy's dog was chasing a cat down our street!
becomes nonsensical in English if the words are rearranged (because there are no cases):
- A cat was down our street chasing dog this little boy's mum!
But if English were a highly inflected language, like Latin or some Slavic languages such as Croatian, both sentences could mean the same thing.[1] They would both contain five nouns in five different cases: mum – vocative (hey!), dog – nominative (who?), boy – genitive (of whom?), cat – accusative (whom?), street – locative (where?);[3] the adjective little would be in the same case as the noun it modifies (boy), and the case of the determiner our would agree with the case of the noun it determines (street).[4]
Using the case suffixes invented for this example, the original sentence would read:
- Mumvo, thisge littlege boyge dogno was chasing a catac down ourlo streetlo!
And like other inflected languages, the sentence rearranged in the following ways would mean virtually the same thing, but with different expressiveness:[5]
- A catac was down ourlo streetlo chasing dogno thisge littlege boyge, mumvo!
- Mumvo, down streetlo ourlo a catac was chasing thisge littlege boyge dogno!
Instead of the locative, the instrumental form of "down our street" could also be used:[6]
- Mumvo, thisge littlege boyge dogno ourin streetin was chasing a catac!
- A catac was, mumvo, ourin streetin chasing dogno thisge littlege boyge
- Ourin streetin a catac was chasing dogno thisge littlege boyge, mumvo!
Different word orders preserving the original meaning are possible in an inflected language,[5] while modern English relies on word order for meaning, with a little flexibility.[1] This is one of the advantages of an inflected language. The English sentences above, when read without the made-up case suffixes, are confusing.
These contrived examples are relatively simple, whereas actual inflected languages have a far more complicated set of declensions, where the suffixes (or prefixes, or
History
It is agreed that
Modern English
In Modern English, the system of declensions is so simple compared to some other languages that the term declension is rarely used.
Nouns
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending -s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic -'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe.
Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl. Most speakers pronounce all forms other than the singular plain form (girl) exactly the same.[note 1]
Singular | Plural | |
---|---|---|
Plain | girl | girls |
Possessive | girl's | girls' |
By contrast, a few irregular nouns (like man/men) are slightly more complex in their forms. In this example, all four forms are pronounced distinctly.
Singular | Plural | |
---|---|---|
Plain | man | men |
Possessive | man's | men's |
For nouns, in general, gender is not declined in Modern English. There are isolated situations where certain nouns may be modified to reflect gender, though not in a systematic fashion. Loan words from other languages, particularly Latin and the Romance languages, often preserve their gender-specific forms in English, e.g. alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular). Similarly, names borrowed from other languages show comparable distinctions: Andrew and Andrea, Paul and Paula, etc. Additionally, suffixes such as -ess, -ette, and -er are sometimes applied to create overtly gendered versions of nouns, with marking for feminine being much more common than marking for masculine. Many nouns can actually function as members of two genders or even all three, and the gender classes of English nouns are usually determined by their agreement with pronouns, rather than marking on the nouns themselves.
There can be other derivations from nouns that are not considered declensions. For example, the proper noun Britain has the associated descriptive adjective British and the demonym Briton. Though these words are clearly related, and are generally considered cognates, they are not specifically treated as forms of the same word, and thus are not declensions.
Pronouns
Singular | Plural | |
---|---|---|
Subjective | I | we |
Objective | me | us |
Dependent possessive | my | our |
Independent possessive | mine | ours |
Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the
The one situation where gender[note 2] is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third person singular. Consider the following:
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
non-person | person | |||
Subjective | he | she | it | they |
Objective | him | her | them | |
Dependent possessive | his | its | their | |
Independent possessive | hers | theirs |
The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is peculiar to English. This has existed since the 14th century.[11][12] However, the use of singular they is often restricted to specific contexts, depending on the dialect or the speaker. It is most typically used to refer to a single person of unknown gender (e.g. "someone left their jacket behind") or a hypothetical person where gender is insignificant (e.g. "If someone wants to, then they should"). Its use has expanded in recent years due to increasing social recognition of persons who do not identify themselves as male or female.[13] (see gender-nonbinary) The singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins.
Adjectives and adverbs
Some English adjectives and adverbs are declined for
Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English (though they were in Old English), nor number nor gender.[note 3]
Determiners
The demonstrative determiners this and that are declined for number, as these and those.
The article is never regarded as declined in Modern English, although formally, the words that and possibly she correspond to forms of the predecessor of the (sē m., þæt n., sēo f.) as it was declined in Old English.
Latin
Just as verbs in Latin are conjugated to indicate grammatical information, Latin nouns and adjectives that modify them are declined to signal their roles in sentences. There are five important cases for Latin nouns: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. Since the vocative case usually takes the same form as the nominative, it is seldom spelt out in grammar books.[dubious ] Yet another case, the locative, is limited to a small number of words.
The usual basic functions of these cases are as follows:
- Nominative case indicates the subject.
- Genitive case indicates possession and can be translated with 'of'.
- Dative case marks the indirect object and can be translated with 'to' or 'for'.
- Accusative case marks the direct object.
- Ablative case is used to modify verbs and can be translated as 'by', 'with', 'from', etc.
- Vocative case is used to address a person or thing.
The genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative also have important functions to indicate the object of a preposition.
Given below is the declension paradigm of Latin puer 'boy' and puella 'girl':
Case | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural |
---|---|---|---|---|
Nominative | puer | puerī | puella | puellae |
Genitive | puerī | puerōrum | puellae | puellārum |
Dative | puerō | puerīs | puellae | puellīs |
Accusative | puerum | puerōs | puellam | puellās |
Ablative | puerō | puerīs | puellā | puellīs |
Vocative | puer | puerī | puella | puellae |
From the provided examples we can see how cases work:
liber
book
puerī
boy.GEN
the book of the boy
puer
boy.NOM
puellae
girl.DAT
rosam
rose.ACC
dat
give.3SG.PRES
the boy gives the girl a rose
Sanskrit
Sanskrit grammatical cases have been analyzed extensively. The grammarian Pāṇini identified six semantic roles or karaka, which correspond closely to the eight cases:[16]
- agent (kartṛ, related to the nominative)
- patient (karman, related to the accusative)
- means (karaṇa, related to the instrumental)
- recipient (sampradāna, related to the dative)
- source (apādāna, related to the ablative)
- relation (sambandha, related to genitive)
- locus (adhikaraṇa, related to the locative)
- address (sambodhana, related to the vocative)
For example, consider the following sentence:
vṛkṣ-āt
from the tree
parṇ-aṁ
a leaf
bhūm-āu
to the ground
patati
falls
"a leaf falls from the tree to the ground"
Here leaf is the agent, tree is the source, and ground is the locus. The endings -aṁ, -at, -āu mark the cases associated with these meanings.
Verse 37 of the Rāmarakṣāstotram gives an example of all 8 types of declensions in Sanskrit for the singular proper noun Rāma.[17]
Verse | Case | Translation and remarks |
---|---|---|
Rāmo rājamaṇiḥ | Nominative | Rāma is a jewel among kings
The case declension here is Rāmaḥ but the visarga has undergone sandhi. |
sadā vijayate Rāmaṃ rameśaṃ bhaje | Accusative | Ever victorious, I worship that Rāma who is Ramā's lord.
Both words 'Rāma Rameśa' are individually declined as 'rāmaṃ rameśaṃ |
Rāmeṇābhihatā niśācaracamū | Instrumental | Rāma, by whose hands are the armies of demons annhiliated
Rāmeṇa is the declension that underwent sandhi with the word abhihatā |
Rāmāya tasmai namaḥ | Dative | I bow to that Rāma.
Dative case is used here to show that Rāma is the receiver of the reverence. |
Rāmānnāsti parāyaṇaṃ parataraṃ | Ablative | There is no better support than Rāma
The declension here is Rāmāt that has undergone sandhi with nāsti. Ablative case is also used for comparisions in Sanskrit |
Rāmasya dāso’smyahaṃ | Genitive | I am a servant of Rāma.
Normal declension without sandhi. |
Rāme cittalayaḥ sadā bhavatu me | Locative | Let my thoughts always be focused on Rāma.
Locative case to indicate the 'focus of thoughts' |
Bho Rāma māmuddhara! | Vocative | O Rāma save me!
Vocative case uses the plain form. Unlike Nominative which adds a visarga. Some times vocative is considered to be a different use of nominative. [15] |
Declension in specific languages
Greek and Latin
- Ancient Greek and Latin First declension
- Ancient Greek and Latin Second declension
- Ancient Greek and Latin Third declension
- Greek declension
- Latin declension
Celtic languages
Germanic languages
- Dutch declension system
- German declension
- Gothic declension
- Icelandic declension
- Middle English declension
Baltic languages
Slavic languages
- Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian declension
- Czech declension
- Polish declension
- Russian declension
- Slovak declension
- Slovene declension
- Ukrainian declension
Uralic languages
- Finnish language noun cases
See also
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ The elided possessive-indicating s of the plural possessive may be realised as [z] in some speakers' pronunciations, being separated from the plural-indicating s normally by a central vowel such as [ɨ̞].
- natural gender.
- ^ A few adjectives borrowed from other languages are, or can be, declined for gender, at least in writing: blond (male) and blonde (female).
Citations
- ^ a b c d e Drout, Michael. "Word Order and Cases". King Alfred's Grammar. Archived from the original on 2020-02-24. Retrieved 2021-05-22.
{{cite book}}
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ignored (help) - ^ Martin, Howard; Ng, Alan; Korpi, Sarah. "Word Order". A Foundation Course in Reading German. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
- ^ "Imenice" [Nouns]. Hrvatska školska gramatika (in Croatian). Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje. Archived from the original on 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
- ^ "Atribut" [Attribute]. Hrvatska školska gramatika (in Croatian). Archived from the original on 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
- ^ a b "Red riječi u rečenici" [Word order in sentences]. Hrvatska školska gramatika (in Croatian). Archived from the original on 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
- ^ Stolac, Diana. "Zagrebačka slavistička škola – Izražavanje prostornih značenja padežnim oblicima". hrvatskiplus.org (in Croatian). Archived from the original on 2021-05-20.
- ^ "Vrste riječi". Hrvatska školska gramatika (in Croatian). Archived from the original on 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
- ^ Martin, Howard; Ng, Alan; Korpi, Sarah. "Cases". A Foundation Course in Reading German. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Archived from the original on 2015-09-19. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
- JSTOR 43646836.
- ^ "Linguaggio nell'Enciclopedia Treccani".
- ISBN 978-0-19-966135-0.
- ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
- ^ Andrews, Travis M. (March 28, 2017). "The singular, gender-neutral 'they' added to the Associated Press Stylebook". Washington Post.
- ^ James Clackson (2007) Indo-European linguistics: an introduction, p.90
- ^ ISBN 978-3-642-00154-3.
- ISBN 978-90-04-11882-9.
- ^ "Shrirama RakshA Stotram". sanskritdocuments.org. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
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
- Lexicon of Linguistics: Declension
- Lexicon of Linguistics: Base, Stem, Root
- Lexicon of Linguistics: Defective Paradigm
- Lexicon of Linguistics: Strong Verb
- Lexicon of Linguistics: Inflection Phrase (IP), INFL, AGR, Tense
- Lexicon of Linguistics: Lexicalist Hypothesis
- classical Greek declension