CASE

CASE. A term for a set of forms for a NOUN, PRONOUN, or ADJECTIVE in an inflected language, the choice of form depending on syntactic function. In Latin, the noun form dominus (lord) is in the nominative case, used when the word is the subject of the sentence, whereas dominum is accusative, used when the word is the direct object. A set of cases constitutes a paradigm for the class to which a word belongs: dominus is a masculine noun of the second declension, whose paradigm consists of 12 forms for six cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, and ablative, each with singular and plural forms) that were regarded in classical times as ‘falling’ away from an upright nominative.

Case in Old English

ANGLO-SAXON or OLD ENGLISH had the following cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and to a limited extent instrumental. The equivalent of modern stone was masculine stān nominative and accusative cases (singular), stānas nominative and accusative (plural), stānes genitive singular (of a stone), stāna genitive plural (of stones), stāne dative singular (for a stone), stānum dative plural (for stones).

Case in Modern English

The contemporary language has cases for nouns and pronouns, mainly the common case (Tom, anybody) and the genitive or possessive case (Tom's, anybody's). Potentially, countable nouns have four case forms: two singular (child, child's), two plural (children, children's). In regular nouns, these manifest themselves only in writing, through the APOSTROPHE (girl, girl's, girls, girls'), since in speech three of the forms are identical. The genitive case is used in two contexts: dependently, before a noun (This is Tom's/his bat), and independently (This bat is Tom's/his). Most personal pronouns have different forms for the dependent and independent genitive: This is your bat and This bat is yours. The genitive case forms of personal pronouns are often called possessive pronouns. A few pronouns have three cases: subjective or nominative, objective or accusative, and genitive or possessive (see table).

Subjective	Objective	Genitive (1)	Genitive (2)
I	me	my	mine
we	us	our	ours
he	him	his	his
she	her	her	hers
they	them	their	theirs
who	whom	whose	–
whoever	whomever	–	–

The subjective is used when the pronoun is the SUBJECT of a finite verb: I in I like strawberries. The objective is used when the pronoun is the direct OBJECT (me in The noise does not disturb me), the indirect object (me in She gave me her telephone number), or the complement of a preposition (The letters are for me). When the pronoun is the subject complement, there is a divided usage: the objective is generally used (It's only me), but the subjective case occurs in formal style (It is I who have the honour of introducing our guest speaker). Except in formal style, who and whoever are generally used in place of whom and whomever. Compare the formal Whom did you nominate? and For whom are you waiting? with the more usual Who did you nominate? and Who are you waiting for? See DATIVE CASE, GENITIVE CASE, NOMINATIVE CASE.