In linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words, declension is the occurrence of inflection In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case. Conjugation is the inflection of verbs; declension is the inflection of nouns, adjectives and pronouns in nouns A noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives can't. In the following, an asterisk in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical, pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun (or noun phrase) with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. The replaced phrase is called the antecedent of the pronoun, articles, and adjectives In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent. Collectively, adjectives form one of the traditional English eight parts of speech, though linguists today distinguish adjectives from words such as determiners that also used to be considered, indicating such features as number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (typically singular vs. plural), case In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is a change in form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a noun may play the role of subject , of direct object ("John kicked me"), or of possessor ("My ball"). Languages such as ancient Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit had ways of altering or (subject The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle. The other constituent is the predicate. In English, subjects govern agreement on the verb or auxiliary verb that carries the main tense of the sentence, as exemplified by the difference in verb forms between he eats and they, object An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. As an example, the following sentence is given:, and so on), gender In linguistics, grammatical genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few that belong to several classes at once, and possession Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses (owns, rules over, has as a part, etc.) the referent of the other. Declension occurs in a great many of the world's languages, and features very prominently in many European languages Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family; another major family is the Finno-Ugric. The Turkic family also has several European members, while the North and South Caucasian families are important in the southeastern extremity of geographical Europe. Basque is a language isolate directly related to ancient Aquitanian,, but is much less prominent in English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of. English nouns decline only to distinguish singular from plural (e.g., book vs. books); only very few English adjectives decline (the French loan-word blond(e) being a rare exception), and only a few English pronouns show vestiges of case-triggered declension (e.g., nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. (Generally, it is a noun that is doing something.) he, dative case The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book" or accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is a noun that is having something done to it, usually joined (such as in Latin) with the nominative case him, genitive case In grammar, the genitive case is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun but it can also indicate various relationships other than possession; certain verbs may take arguments in the genitive case; and it may have adverbial uses (see Adverbial genitive). Modern English does (possessive case The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.[citation needed]) his). As detailed below, English was once a highly inflected language, as befitting its Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia. With written attestations appearing since the Bronze Age, in the form of the Anatolian languages and Mycenaean and especially its Germanic The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a linguistic ancestry, but it became greatly simplified as it evolved.

English

In Modern English Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550, nouns have distinct singular and plural forms; that is, they decline to reflect their grammatical number. (Consider the difference between book and books.) In addition, a small number of English pronouns have distinct nominative and objective forms; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb In syntax, a verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that conveys action (bring, read, walk, run, murder), or a state of being (exist, stand). In most languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments, such as or preposition In grammar, a preposition is a part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. For example, in the sentence "The cat sleeps on the sofa", the word "on" is a preposition, introducing the prepositional phrase "on the sofa". In English, the most used prepositions are "of", "to", "in",. (Consider the difference between he (nominative The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. (Generally, it is a noun that is doing something.)) and him (dative The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book" or accusative The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is a noun that is having something done to it, usually joined (such as in Latin) with the nominative case), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him.") Further, these pronouns and a few others have distinct possessive forms, such as his. (By contrast, nouns do not have distinct possessive forms; rather, the clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level -'s attaches to a noun phrase to indicate that it serves as a possessor.)

English once had a much richer system of declension. First, there were a few more grammatical cases; Modern English's objective case results from a merging of Old English Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon's accusative The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is a noun that is having something done to it, usually joined (such as in Latin) with the nominative case, dative The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book", and instrumental cases (like a message, him, and post in "I sent a message to him via post," respectively). Second, the distinction between these cases was visible in all nouns, not just certain pronouns (indeed, the modern clitic -'s descends from an affix used to mark Old English's genitive case, the ancestor of Modern English's possessive pronoun A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a possessive adjective and a noun. For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively. Like other pronouns, possessive pronouns can thus obviate the need to repeat nouns forms). Third, adjectives were declined to reflect the number and case of the nouns they modified; this is called agreement In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words it relates to, and is analogous to conjugation In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories. All the different forms of the same verb constitute a lexeme and the form of the verb that is conventionally used to of verbs in Modern English (consider the difference between "I read" and "He reads"; here, read has changed form to agree with its subject). Fourth, every noun had a gender In linguistics, grammatical genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few that belong to several classes at once, either masculine, feminine, or neuter, which was reflected (via agreement) in adjectives that modified it and pronouns that had it as antecedent (there were some further complications as well; for example, adjectives had both weak declensions and strong declensions. For more information, see Old English morphology The morphology of the Old English language is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more highly inflected. As an old Germanic language, Old English's morphological system is similar to that of the hypothetical Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections theorized to have been common in Proto-).

Though English pronouns can have subject and object forms (he/him, she/her), nouns show only a singular/plural and a possessive/non-possessive distinction (e.g., chair, chairs, chair's, chairs'). Note that chair does not change form between "the chair is here" (subject) and "I saw the chair" (direct object). The n-declension is restricted to a few words like ox-oxen, brother-brethren, and child-children, though in Middle English Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language in use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s the s-declension and the n-declension were in stronger competition.

Latin

An example of a Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many noun declension is given below, using the singular forms of the word homo (man), which belongs to Latin's third declension.

• homo (nominative The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. (Generally, it is a noun that is doing something.)) "[the] man" [as a subject] (e.g., homo ibi stat the man is standing there)
• hominis (genitive In grammar, the genitive case is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun but it can also indicate various relationships other than possession; certain verbs may take arguments in the genitive case; and it may have adverbial uses (see Adverbial genitive). Modern English does) "of [the] man" [as a possessor](e.g., nomen hominis est Claudius the man's name is Claudius)
• hominī (dative The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book") "to [the] man" [as an indirect object] (e.g., homini donum dedi I gave a present to the man; homo homini lupus est Man is a wolf to man.)
• hominem (accusative The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is a noun that is having something done to it, usually joined (such as in Latin) with the nominative case) "[the] man" [as a direct object] (e.g., ad hominem toward the man, in the sense of argument directed personally; hominem vidi I saw the man)
• homine (ablative In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ. The name "ablative" is derived from the Latin ablatus, the (irregular) perfect passive participle of auferre "to carry away") "[the] man" [in various uses not covered by the above] (e.g., sum altior homine I am taller than the man).

There are two further noun cases in Latin, the vocative The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence. For example, in the sentence, "I don' and the locative Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases together with the lative and separative case. The vocative case indicates that a person or thing is being addressed (e.g., O Tite, cur ancillam pugnas? O Titus, why do you fight the slave girl?). Though widely used, it differs in form from the nominative only in the masculine singular of the second declension (that is, never in the plural, never in the feminine or neuter, and never in any declension other than the second). The locative case is rare in Latin.

Sanskrit

Grammatical case was analyzed extensively in Sanskrit Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism[note 1]. Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand. Sanskrit has been declared a classical language by the Government of India. The grammarian Pāṇini identified six semantic roles or karaka, which are related to the seven Sanskrit cases (nominative The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. (Generally, it is a noun that is doing something.), accusative The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is a noun that is having something done to it, usually joined (such as in Latin) with the nominative case, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative),^[1] but not in a one-to-one way. The six karaka are:^[2]

• agent (kartri, related to the instrumental)
• patient (karman, related to the accusative)
• means (karaṇa, related to the instrumental)
• recipient (sampradāna, related to the dative)
• source (apādāna, related to the ablative)
• locus (adhikaraṇa, related to the locative)

For example, consider the following sentence:

Here leaf is the agent, tree is the source, and ground is the locus, the corresponding declensions are reflected in the morphemes -am -at and -au respectively.

See also

Declension in specific languages

• Basque declension
• Czech declension
• Dutch declension system
• Finnish language noun cases
• German declension
• Greek declension
• Icelandic declension
• Irish declension
• Latin declension
• Lithuanian declension
• Middle English declension
• Old English declension
• Polish declension
• Russian declension
• Serbian declension
• Slovak declension
• Slovenian declension

Latin and Greek

• First declension
• Second declension
• Third declension

Related topics

• Grammatical case
• Grammatical conjugation
• Inflection
• Strong inflection
• Weak inflection

References

1. ^ Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf (eds), Sanskrit Computational Linguistics: First and Second International Symposia Rocquencourt, France, October 29-31, 2007 and Providence, RI, USA, May 15-17, 2008, Revised Selected Papers, Volume 5402 of Lecture notes in artificial intelligence, Springer, 2009, ISBN 3642001548, pp. 64–68.
2. ^ Pieter Cornelis Verhagen, Handbook of oriental studies: India. A history of Sanskrit grammatical literature in Tibet, Volume 2, BRILL, 2001, ISBN 9004118829, p. 281.

External links

• The Status of Morphological Case in the Icelandic Lexicon by Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson. Discussion of whether cases convey any inherent syntactic or semantic meaning.
• Optimal Case: The Distribution of Case in German and Icelandic by Dieter Wunderlich

• Lexicon of Linguistics: Declension
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Base, Stem, Root
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Defective Paradigm
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Strong Verb
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Inflection Phrase (IP), INFL, AGR, Tense
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Lexicalist Hypothesis
• classical Greek declension

Categories: Grammar | Linguistic morphology

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