A direct case ( abbreviated ) is a

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

used with all three core relations: both the agent and

patient A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by Health professional, healthcare professionals. The patient is most often Disease, ill or Major trauma, injured and in need of therapy, treatment by a physician, nurse, op ...

of transitive verbs and the argument of intransitive verbs, though not always at the same time. The direct case contrasts with other cases in the language, typically oblique or genitive. The direct case is often imprecisely called the "nominative" in South Asia and "absolutive" in the Philippines, but linguists typically reserve those terms for grammatical cases that have a narrower scope. (See

nominative case In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants ...

and absolutive case.) A direct case is found in several

Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages or collectively the Aryan languages) constitute the largest branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.7 billion speakers ...

, there it may contrast with an oblique case that marks some core relations, so the direct case does not cover all three roles in the same tense. For example, DixonR. M. W. Dixon, ''Ergativity'', p. 202 describes " proto-Pamir" as having, in the present tense, the direct case for S and A and the oblique case for O (a nominative–accusative alignment), and, in the past tense, the direct for S and O and the oblique for A (an absolutive–ergative alignment). Because of this split (see split ergativity), neither "nominative" nor "absolutive" is an adequate description of the direct case, just as neither "accusative" nor "ergative" is an adequate description of the oblique case. The

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

''nominative'' case is also an example of a direct case, which evolved as the accusative became indistinguishable in both speech and writing from the nominative as a result of phonetic change. The situation in the

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

is similar, though some pronouns retain a distinction (e.g. "you" (singular) - nominative ''tú'', accusative ''thú'') In languages of the Philippines, and in related languages with Austronesian alignment, the direct case is the case of the argument of an intransitive clause (S), and may be used for either argument of a transitive clause (agent or patient), depending on the

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

of the verb. The other transitive argument will be in either the ergative or accusative case if different cases are used for those roles. In languages where a single case is used for the other argument, as in Tagalog, it is called the indirect case. This is analogous to the direct–oblique distinction in proto-Pamir, but with the split conditioned by voice rather than by tense.

References

* {{Grammatical cases Grammatical cases