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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 of English) a
predicative nominal or adjective, as opposed to its
object, or other
verb arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in dictionaries.
Etymology
The English word ''nominative'' comes from
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
''cāsus nominātīvus'' "case for naming", which was translated from
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
ὀνομαστικὴ πτῶσις, ''onomastikḗ ptôsis'' "inflection for naming", from ''onomázō'' "call by name", from ''ónoma'' "name".
Dionysius Thrax
Dionysius Thrax ( ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the Greek language, one that was used as a st ...
in his
The Art of Grammar
''The Art of Grammar'' ( - or romanized, Téchnē Grammatikḗ) is a treatise on Greek grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax, who wrote in the 2nd century BC.
Contents
It is the first work on grammar in Greek, and also the first concerning a We ...
refers to it as ''orthḗ'' or ''eutheîa'' "straight", in contrast to the
oblique or "bent" cases.
Characteristics
The reference form (more technically, the ''least
marked'') of certain parts of speech is normally in the nominative case, but that is often not a complete specification of the reference form, as the number and the gender may need to be specified. Thus, the reference or least marked form of an adjective might be the nominative masculine singular.
The parts of speech that are often
declined and therefore may have a nominative case are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and (less frequently) numerals and participles. The nominative case often indicates the subject of a verb but sometimes does not indicate any particular relationship with the other parts of a sentence. In some languages, the nominative case is unmarked, and it may then be said to be marked by a
null morpheme
In morphology, a null morpheme or zero morpheme is a morpheme that has no phonetic form. In simpler terms, a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix. It is a concept useful for analysis, by contrasting null morphemes with alternatives that do have ...
. Moreover, in most languages with a nominative case, the nominative form is the
lemma; that is, it is the reference form used to cite a word, to list it as a dictionary entry etc.
Nominative cases are found in
Albanian,
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
,
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also ...
,
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
,
Slovak,
Ukrainian,
Hungarian,
Lithuanian,
Georgian,
German,
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
,
Icelandic,
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), 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 developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
,
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th Polish, Serbian language">Serbian, Czech language">Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus
*Czech (surnam ...
,
Romanian, Russian language">Russian and Pashto language">Pashto
Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...
, among other languages. English still retains some nominative pronouns, which are contrasted with the accusative case, accusative (comparable to the
oblique or disjunctive case, disjunctive in some other languages): ''I'' (having the accusative ''me''), ''we'' (having the accusative ''us''), ''he'' (having the accusative ''him''), ''she'' (having the accusative ''her''), ''they'' (having the accusative ''them'') and ''who'' (having the accusative ''whom''). A usage that is
Old English, archaic in most current English dialects is the singular second-person pronoun ''
thou
The word ''thou'' () is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word '' you'', although it remains in use in parts of Northern England and in Scots (). ''Thou' ...
'' (accusative ''thee''). A special case is the word ''you'': originally, ''ye'' was its nominative form and ''you'' the accusative, but over time, ''you'' has come to be used for the nominative as well.
The term "nominative case" is most properly used in the discussion of
nominative–accusative languages, such as Latin, Greek and most modern Western European languages.
In
active–stative languages, there is a case, sometimes called nominative, that is the most marked case and is used for the subject of a
transitive verb
A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...
or a voluntary subject of an
intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Add ...
but not for an involuntary subject of an intransitive verb. Since such languages are a relatively new field of study, there is no standard name for this case.
Subjective case
English is now often described as having a subjective case, instead of a nominative, to draw attention to the differences between the "standard" generic nominative and the way that it is used in English.
The term objective case is then used for the
oblique case
In grammar, an oblique ( abbreviated ; from ) or objective case ( abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case and, sometimes, the vocative.
A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role except as subject, ...
, which covers the roles of accusative, dative and objects of a preposition. The
genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...
is then usually called the ''possessive'' form, rather than a noun case ''per se''. English is then said to have two cases: the subjective and the objective.
Examples
Subject
The nominative case marks the subject of a verb. When the verb is active, the nominative is the person or thing doing the action (
agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...
); when the verb is passive, the nominative is the person or thing receiving the action.
*The boy saw her.
*She was seen by the boy.
Predicate noun or adjective
In
copular sentences, the nominative is used for both subject and predicate.
*Socrates was a wise man.
*Socrates was wise.
References
{{More categories, date=December 2024
Grammatical cases
Grammar
Grammatical construction types
Language