Case (grammar)

In grammar, the case is indicative of the role that certain words and phrases play within a given sentence. It can be understood in two ways, related to each other:

• More broadly, from a syntactic point, the term case or syntactic case indicates the role of a word or syntagma within a sentence; this paper can be indicated by a particular declination of the syntagma (propio of synthetic languages, such as Latin, German, or Slavic languages, among others), but can also be deduced from the attached particles, such as prepositions, by the order of the phrase, or any other mechanism, according to the grammar of each specific language.

• The morphological case, on the other hand, it is one among various forms of flexionar (i.e. to modify, or to decline) substantive, adjectives, pronouns, determinants, etc. in synthetic languages. Declination is used to indicate the role they play in prayer.

Therefore, while only some languages exhibit morphological cases, all languages have syntactic cases, which is a more abstract concept. It is important to mention that a certain morphological case can be indicative of different syntactic cases, through the combination of morphological case and other structures, such as prepositions, postpositions, etc.

Morphological case and syntactic case

The term morphological case refers to the possibility that exists in some synthetic languages (for example, Hungarian, which has twenty-six) of adding a morphological or distinctive mark to nouns, adjectives or pronouns according to the syntactic function they are performing in the sentence. Many languages, such as Spanish, have morphological cases only in pronouns, while other languages, such as Chinese, do not have morphologically marked cases in any type of word.

The syntactic case or abstract case, on the other hand, is an abstract category postulated by generative grammar for all languages. It is associated with the reaction of a predicative element, usually a verb. The case theory explains how the nucleus of every nominal phrase receives one and only one semantic-thematic interpretation at the request of a case assigner (e.g. verb, preposition, etc.), which allows recognizing its function in the sentence.

Even in languages that have morphological cases, the same case can indicate different syntactic cases by using other particles; For example, in German the preposition mit (with) is used to indicate the commitative syntactic case (in the company of) or the instrumental syntactic case (through the use of), even if it is followed by the morphological dative case. (Whether the phrase fulfills a commitative or instrumental function will depend on the context, since there is no grammatical difference). Similarly, in some languages, even without adding any additional particles, the same morphological case can be used to indicate two or more syntactic cases; for example, in Russian the instrumental morphological case is used to indicate both the instrumental syntactic case (through the use of) and the ergative syntactic case (the agent of a passive construction). Note further that in Russian, the same morphological instrumental case will indicate syntactic commitative case (in the company of) when occurring after the preposition с (with).

Realization of the morphological case

In synthetic languages, the morphological case indicator, that is, the specific feature that allows to recognize the morphological case, can be indicated in the following ways:

• Afijosas in many languages from the indo-European, such as Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic languages and to a lesser extent in Germanic languages. In most Romance languages, case bending has been lost almost entirely and remains only in the pronominal system, the system of three Romanian synchronous cases being a notable exception. Within the marking by suffixes it is advisable to distinguish between merging languages and agglutinating languages.
• Morfonemic modification of the root by procedures such as apophony or the construct state of the semitic languages.
• Indexing on the verb with gender concordance, as in some languages of Papua-New Guinea. For example, in the Yimas language, a language with about 250 speakers exists 11 nominal classes or grammatical genres, the word order is not relevant and its case is inferible by a particle added to the verb that matches the name in gender, so

(1a) narmang uranngk kï-n-am-ït

woman(II.sg) coconut(V.sg) V.sg O-II sg A-comer-perf

"The woman ate a coconut."

(1b) urangk narmang kï-n-am-ït

coconut(V.sg) woman(II.sg) V sg O- II sg A-comer-perf

"a coconut ate the woman"

Where the abbreviations are: II = name of the second class, V = name of the fifth class, sg = singular, O = verbal object, A = verbal agent.

Examples of Morphological Cases

The following is a table with cases and their use in some inflectional languages:

Grammatical cases can have different functions depending on the language spoken, so we have to:

• In the accusatory languages:
  • nominative case: mark the intransitive subject or agent
  • accustive or direct case: marking the patient (direct object)
• In the ergative languages:
  • abstract case: mark the intransitive subject or patient
  • case: marks the agent
• In active languages:
  • active case or agentivo: mark the active intransitive subject or agent
  • inactive or passive case: mark the passive intransitive subject or patient
• In any of them:
  • case or indirect: mark the indirect object
  • genitive case, possessive or proprietary case: subordinate to a nominal syntagma

Optimity of the case

Grammatical case is one way of reducing the potential ambiguity of a certain number of sentences, another possibility for reducing such ambiguity is syntactic order. The optimality of the use of one case system or another, that is, the morphosyntactic alignment that each language will use may also be conditioned by the freedom of order. Recently, within evolutionary game theory, an argument was put forward by which most languages opt for a few systems despite the large logically possible number of systems.

Specifically G. Jäger proved that in languages with a very free basic order the optimal strategy is a split ergativity system, while in languages with a very rigid word order the optimum is the occasional marking of the accusative or the absence total case, situation that is observed in the languages of the world.

Abstract Case Theory

The distribution and positions within the sentence in which phonetically non-empty noun phrases (NS) can appear, as well as the conditions under which they are semantically interpretable, seem to be regulated by fairly well-defined conditions and principles. This set of well-formed principles and conditions is known as abstract case theory. Some of the principles of good training are the following:

• Case filter. The basic principle is that any SN that appears in a sentence should be "legitimized" by a non-designative element ([-N]) that assigns a case. In Spanish the [-N] elements are the verbs, prepositions and the inflection core are the only element of case allocation. This can be clearly seen when comparing a verbal and other nominal construction to the same meaning:

(1) [_SV established [chuckles]_SN new economic measures]

(2) *_SN establishment [chuckles]_SN new economic measures]

(3) [_SN establishment [chuckles]_SPof [chuckles]_SN new economic measures] ] ]

In (1) and (3) the last SN (new economic measures) is licensed by a verb or a preposition and therefore well-formed expressions result. However, in (2) the simple juxtaposition of nominal phrases does not result in a correct expression, since the second phrase is not properly legitimized, since it does not receive the case of any constituent [-N].

• Self-recruitment. Another universal principle linked by case assignors (verbs, prepositions,...) is the following:

A case assignor of a nominal syntagma must rule the syntagma. That is to say between the assignor and the case receiver there must be a syntactic relationship of self-recruitment.