Oblique case

In

An objective case is marked on the English personal pronouns and as such serves the role of the accusative and dative cases that other Indo-European languages employ. These forms are often called object pronouns. They serve a variety of grammatical functions which they would not in languages that differentiate the two. An example using first person singular objective pronoun me:

• in an accusative role for a direct object (including double object and oblique ditransitives):

Do you see me?

The army sent me to Korea.

• in a dative role for an indirect object:

Kim passed the pancakes to me.

Kim passed me the pancakes.

• as the
  except in possessives
  ):

That picture of me was blurry.

(cf. double genitive as in That picture of mine was stolen.)

• in copular deixis:

[referring to a photograph] This is me on the beach.

• in existentials (sometimes, but not always, replaceable by the nominative—in very formal style):^[10]

It's me again.

(cf. Once again, it is I. [formal])

Who is it?—It's me.

(cf. It is I [to whom you are speaking].)

It's me who should fix it.

(cf. Since I made it, it is I who should fix it.)

• in a nominative role with predicate or verbal ellipsis:

Who made this bicycle?—Me.

(cf. Who made this bicycle?—I did.)

I like him.—Hey, me too.

(cf. I like him.—Hey, I do too.)

Who's gonna clean up this mess?—Not me!

• in coordinated nominals:

Me and him are going to the store. (only in colloquial speech)

(cf. Is he going? Yes, he and I are going.)

• as a disjunctive topic marker:

Me, I like French.

The pronoun me is not inflected differently in any of these uses; it is used for all grammatical relationships except the genitive case of possession (in standard English) and a non-disjunctive nominative case as the subject.

• It may also be used as a comedic stylistic effect of blatant error (
  nonstandard, pidgin, baby or foreigner talk or "broken English
  "):

[spoken by Cookie Monster] Me so hungry.

(the above example also employs copula deletion to similar effect)

French

Old French had a nominative case and an oblique case, called cas sujet and cas régime respectively.

In Modern French, the two cases have mostly merged and the cas régime has survived as the sole form for the majority of nouns. For example, the word "conte (count, earl)":

• Old French:
  • Nominative: li cuens (singular), li conte (plural)
  • Oblique: le conte (singular), les contes (plural)
• Modern French:
  • le conte (singular), les contes (plural)

In some cases, both the cas sujet and cas régime of one noun have survived but produced two nouns in Modern French with different meanings. For example, today's copain means "friend" and compagnon means "companion", but in Old French these were different declensions of the same noun.

Kurdish

• Object pronoun, which in English take the oblique case
• Oblique argument
• Object (grammar)
• Subject pronoun
• Disjunctive pronoun
• Quirky subject

References