In
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a
word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...
, generally to express its
syntactic function
In linguistics, grammatical relations (also called grammatical functions, grammatical roles, or syntactic functions) are functional relationships between constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional gra ...
in the sentence, by way of some
inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
. Declensions may apply to
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s,
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
s,
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s,
adverbs, and
articles to indicate
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
(e.g. singular, dual, plural),
case (e.g.
nominative case,
accusative case,
genitive case,
dative case),
gender (e.g. masculine, neuter, feminine), and a number of other
grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called
''conjugation''.
Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. It is an important aspect of language families like
Quechuan (i.e., languages native to the
Andes
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...
),
Indo-European (e.g.
German,
Lithuanian, Latvian,
Slavic,
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
,
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
,
Modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
,
Classical Armenian and
Modern Armenian
Modern Armenian ( hy, աշխարհաբար, ''ashkharhabar'' or ''ašxarhabar'', literally the "secular/lay language") is the modern vernacular (vulgar) form of the Armenian language. Although it first appeared in the 14th century, it was not until ...
and
Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
),
Bantu (e.g.
Zulu,
Kikuyu),
Semitic (e.g.
Modern Standard Arabic),
Finno-Ugric
Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...
(e.g.
Hungarian,
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
,
Estonian), and
Turkic (e.g.
Turkish).
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
was an
inflectional language, but largely abandoned inflectional changes as it evolved into
Modern English. Though traditionally classified as
synthetic, Modern English has moved towards an
analytic language.
History
It is agreed that
Ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
had a "vague" idea of the forms of a noun in their language. A fragment of
Anacreon seems to confirm this idea. Nevertheless, it cannot be concluded that the Ancient Greeks actually knew what the cases were. The
Stoics developed many basic notions that today are the rudiments of
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
. The idea of grammatical cases is also traced back to the Stoics, but it's still not completely clear what the Stoics exactly meant with their notion of cases.
English-speaking perspective
Unlike English, many languages use
suffixes
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry g ...
to specify subjects and objects and word cases in general.
Inflected languages have a freer word order than modern English, an
analytic language in which
word order identifies the subject and object.
As an example, even though both of the following sentences consist of the same words, the meaning is different:
* "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:
* - (for
nominative singular), - (
genitive), - (
dative), - (
accusative), - (
locative), - (
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
), - (
vocative
In grammar, the vocative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numer ...
), - (
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
)
The above sentence could be formed with any of the following word orders and would have the same meaning:
* "The chased a ."
* "A chased the ."
* or "Chased a the ."
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, mum, our street down was chasing dog this little boy's!
But if English were a highly inflected language, like
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
or some
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
such as
Croatian, both sentences could mean the same thing.
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?); 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'').
Using the case suffixes invented for this example, the original sentence would read:
* , was chasing a down !
And like other inflected languages, the sentence rearranged in the following ways would mean virtually the same thing, but with different expressiveness:
* , a was down chasing !
* Down was chasing , !
Instead of the ''locative'', the ''instrumental form'' of "down our street" could also be used:
* , was chasing a !
* A was, , chasing
* was chasing , !
Thus it is demonstrated how different word orders preserving the original meaning are possible in an inflected language,
while modern English relies on word order for meaning (but with a little flexibility).
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
infixes) change depending on the
gender of the noun, the
quantity of the noun, and other possible factors. This complexity and the possible lengthening of words is one of the disadvantages of inflected languages. Notably, many of these languages lack
articles. There may also be ''irregular nouns'' where the declensions are unique for each word (like
irregular verbs with
conjugation). In inflected languages, other
parts of speech such as
numerals
A numeral is a figure, symbol, or group of figures or symbols denoting a number. It may refer to:
* Numeral system used in mathematics
* Numeral (linguistics), a part of speech denoting numbers (e.g. ''one'' and ''first'' in English)
* Numerical d ...
,
demonstratives, adjectives, and articles are also declined.
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
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
'' 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 en
clitic ''-'s'' or, for plural forms ending in ''s'', by just an apostrophe.
Consider, for example, the forms of the noun ''
girl
A girl is a young female human, usually a child or an adolescent. When a girl becomes an adult, she is accurately described as a ''woman''. However, the term ''girl'' is also used for other meanings, including ''young woman'',Dictionary.c ...
''. Most speakers pronounce all forms other than the singular plain form (''girl'') exactly the same.
By contrast, a few irregular nouns (like
man
A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromo ...
/men) are slightly more complex in their forms. In this example, all four forms are pronounced distinctly.
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
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
'' has the associated descriptive adjective ''
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
'' and the
demonym ''
Briton
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mod ...
''. Though these words are clearly related, and are generally considered
cognates
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical eff ...
, they are not specifically treated as forms of the ''same word'', and thus are not declensions.
Pronouns
Pronouns in English have more complex declensions. For example, the
first person "
I":
Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the
subjective (nominative) and
objective (oblique) cases, some pronouns do; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a
verb
A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
or
preposition, or
case. Consider the difference between ''he'' (subjective) and ''him'' (objective), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him"; similarly, consider ''
who
Who or WHO may refer to:
* Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun
* Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism
* World Health Organization
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book '' Horton He ...
'', which is subjective, and the objective ''whom'' (although it is increasingly common to use ''who'' for both).
The one situation where
gender is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third person singular. Consider the following:
The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is peculiar to English. This has existed since the 14th century.
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. (see
gender-nonbinary) Note that the ''singular they'' still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins.
Adjectives and adverbs
Some English adjectives and adverbs are declined for
degree of comparison. The unmarked form is the
positive
Positive is a property of positivity and may refer to:
Mathematics and science
* Positive formula, a logical formula not containing negation
* Positive number, a number that is greater than 0
* Plus sign, the sign "+" used to indicate a posi ...
form, such as ''quick''. Comparative forms are formed with the ending ''-er'' (''quicker''), while superlative forms are formed with ''-est'' (''quickest''). Some are uncomparable; the remainder are usually periphrastic constructions with ''more'' (''more beautiful'') and ''most'' (''most modestly''). See
degree of comparison for more.
Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English (though they were in Old English), nor number nor gender.
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
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
. Since the
vocative case
In grammar, the vocative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and nume ...
usually takes the same form as the nominative, it is seldom spelt out in grammar books. 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
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
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’:
From the provided examples we can see how cases work:
* ''liber puerī'' → the book of the boy (''puerī'' boy=genitive)
* ''puer puellae rosam dat'' → the boy gives the girl a rose (''puer'' boy=nominative; ''puellae'' girl=dative; ''rosam'' rose=accusative; ''dat'' give=third person singular present)
Sanskrit
Sanskrit, another Indo-European language, has eight cases:
nominative,
vocative
In grammar, the vocative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numer ...
,
accusative,
genitive,
dative,
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
,
locative and
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
. Some do not count vocative as a separate case, despite it having a distinctive ending in the singular, but consider it as a different use of the nominative.
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
grammatical cases have been analyzed extensively. The grammarian
Pāṇini identified six semantic
roles or ''karaka'', which correspond closely to the eight cases:
[Pieter Cornelis Verhagen, ]
Handbook of oriental studies: India. A history of Sanskrit grammatical literature in Tibet, Volume 2
', BRILL, 2001, , p. 281.
* agent (, related to the nominative)
* patient (, related to the accusative)
* means (, related to the instrumental)
* recipient (, related to the dative)
* source (, related to the ablative)
*relation (, related to genitive)
* locus (, related to the locative)
* address (, related to the vocative)
For example, consider the following sentence:
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.
Declension in specific languages
*
Albanian declension
*
Arabic ʾIʿrab
*
Basque declension
*
Hindi declension
Greek and Latin
*Ancient Greek and Latin
First declension
*Ancient Greek and Latin
Second declension The second declension is a category of nouns in Latin and Greek with similar case formation. In particular, these nouns are thematic, with an original ''o'' in most of their forms. In Classical Latin, the short ''o'' of the nominative and accusativ ...
*Ancient Greek and Latin
Third declension
*
Greek declension
*
Latin declension
Latin declension is the set of patterns according to which Latin words are declined—that is, have their endings altered to show grammatical case, number and gender. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are declined (verbs are conjugated), and a gi ...
Celtic languages
*
Irish declension
Germanic languages
*
Dutch declension system
*
German declension
*
Gothic declension
Gothic is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five grammatical cases ...
*
Icelandic declension
*
Middle English declension
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
Baltic languages
*
Latvian declension
*
Lithuanian declension
Slavic languages
*
Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian declension
*
Czech declension
Czech declension is a complex system of grammatically determined modifications of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals in Czech, one of the Slavic languages. Czech has seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locati ...
*
Polish declension
*
Russian declension
*
Slovak declension
*
Slovene declension
*
Ukrainian declension
Uralic languages
*
Finnish language noun cases
See also
*
Grammatical conjugation
*
Grammatical case
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. In various languages, nomin ...
*
Strong inflection
*
Weak inflection
Weak may refer to:
Songs
* "Weak" (AJR song), 2016
* "Weak" (Melanie C song), 2011
* "Weak" (SWV song), 1993
* "Weak" (Skunk Anansie song), 1995
* "Weak", a song by Seether from '' Seether: 2002-2013''
Television episodes
* "Weak" (''Fear t ...
Notes and references
Notes
Citations
External links
The Status of Morphological Case in the Icelandic Lexiconby Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson. Discussion of whether cases convey any inherent syntactic or semantic meaning.
Optimal Case: The Distribution of Case in German and Icelandicby Dieter Wunderlich
*
Lexicon of Linguistics:Declension*
Lexicon of Linguistics:BaseStemRoot*
Lexicon of Linguistics:Defective Paradigm*
Lexicon of Linguistics:Strong Verb*
Lexicon of Linguistics:Inflection Phrase (IP)INFLAGRTense*
Lexicon of Linguistics:Lexicalist Hypothesis
{{Authority control
Grammatical cases
Grammar
Linguistic morphology
Linguistics terminology