- "A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals) which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording."
Grammatical roles are the functions that words play within a sentence. These roles include subject, object, predicate, complement, and modifier.
Parts of Speech: Understanding the different categories of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) and their functions in a sentence.
Subject: The actor in a sentence who performs the action of the verb.
Predicate: The part of the sentence that contains the verb and describes what the subject is doing.
Object: The recipient of the action in a sentence.
Direct Object: The noun or pronoun that receives the action of the verb directly.
Indirect Object: The noun or pronoun that receives the action indirectly, usually preceded by a preposition such as "to" or "for".
Complement: A word or group of words that completes the meaning of a verb, adjective, or noun.
Predicate Nominative: A complement that renames or identifies the subject of the sentence.
Predicate Adjective: A complement that describes or modifies the subject of the sentence.
Adverbial: A word or phrase that modifies a verb or adjective, often indicating time, place, manner, or degree.
Prepositional Phrase: A phrase that contains a preposition, its object, and any modifiers of the object.
Participial Phrase: A phrase that contains a verb in the participle form and any modifiers, used as an adjective or adverb in a sentence.
Infinitive Phrase: A phrase that contains an infinitive verb and any modifiers, used as a noun, adjective, or adverb in a sentence.
Nominalization: The process of using a verb or adjective as a noun in a sentence.
Passive Voice: A construction in which the subject of the sentence receives the action rather than performing it.
Active Voice: A construction in which the subject of the sentence performs the action.
Transitive Verb: A verb that takes a direct object.
Intransitive Verb: A verb that does not take a direct object.
Linking Verb: A verb that connects the subject of the sentence to a predicate nominative or predicate adjective.
Verb Tense: The form of a verb that indicates the time of the action or state of being.
Subject: The noun or noun phrase that performs the action of the sentence or is being described.
Object: The noun or noun phrase that is affected by the action of the sentence.
Direct object: The noun or noun phrase that directly receives the action of the verb.
Indirect object: The noun or noun phrase that indicates to or for whom or what the action is being done or to whom the action is being done on behalf of.
Predicate nominative: The noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb and renames or identifies the subject.
Predicate adjective: The adjective that follows a linking verb and describes or modifies the subject.
Appositive: A noun or noun phrase that renames or explains the noun or noun phrase that comes before it.
Adverbial: A word or phrase that modifies the verb or the clause in which it occurs.
Adjectival: A word or phrase that modifies a noun or pronoun.
Complement: A word or phrase that completes the meaning of a sentence.
Prepositional phrase: A group of words consisting of a preposition, its object, and any modifiers of the object.
Infinitive phrase: A verb form that acts as a noun, adjective, or adverb and is always preceded by the word "to.".
Participial phrase: A verb form that acts as an adjective and ends in -ing or -ed.
Gerund phrase: A verb form that acts as a noun and always ends in -ing.
Clause: A group of words that contains a subject and a predicate and can function as a sentence or as part of a sentence.
Dependent clause: A clause that cannot stand alone as a sentence and depends on an independent clause to complete its meaning.
Independent clause: A clause that can stand alone as a sentence and expresses a complete thought.
- "Languages such as Sanskrit, Kannada, Latin, Tamil, and Russian have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different suffixes) to indicate their case."
- "English has largely lost its inflected case system but personal pronouns still have three cases, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative (including functions formerly handled by the dative) and genitive cases."
- "Modern English has three but for pronouns only."
- "They are used with personal pronouns: subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, whoever), objective case (me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, whomever) and possessive case (my, mine; your, yours; his; her, hers; its; our, ours; their, theirs; whose; whoever)."
- "Forms such as I, he and we are used for the subject ('I kicked the ball')."
- "Forms such as me, him and us are used for the object ('John kicked me')."
- "As a language evolves, cases can merge, a phenomenon known as syncretism."
- "Bengali, Latin, Russian, Slovak, Kajkavian, Slovenian, and Turkish each have at least six."
- "A role that one of those languages marks by case is often marked in English with a preposition."
- "More formally, case has been defined as 'a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads.'"
- "Cases should be distinguished from thematic roles such as agent and patient."
- "Languages having cases often exhibit free word order, as thematic roles are not required to be marked by position in the sentence."
- "Commonly encountered cases include nominative, accusative, dative and genitive."
- "Armenian, Czech, Georgian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, and Ukrainian have seven."
- "For example, the English prepositional phrase with (his) foot (as in 'John kicked the ball with his foot') might be rendered in Russian using a single noun in the instrumental case."
- "or in Ancient Greek as τῷ ποδί (tôi podí, meaning 'the foot') with both words (the definite article, and the noun πούς (poús) 'foot') changing to dative form."
- "In languages such as Latin, several thematic roles are realized by a somewhat fixed case for deponent verbs."
- "Languages such as Bengali, Latin, Russian, Slovak, Kajkavian, Slovenian, and Turkish each have at least six cases."
- "Hungarian has 18."