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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Talinus (talk | contribs) at 13:53, 17 October 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

sorry

I'm sorry, I know about the case systems enough to explain them, but not enough to explain them clearly. Needs work.

I agree. From a linguistic point of view, the article merely scratches the surface. Already the name (noun case) is not precise: It's called case. There is a whole linguistic "case theory" behind it that needs to be mentioned. --66.171.5.58 01:47, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"agents" or "patients"

I have never heard of "agents" or "patients" of verbs. Are those the same as subjects and objects? -- Mike Hardy

In English, the agent is usually the subject and the patient is usually the object, but that is not always the case. The agent is the thing that is "doing" the action; the patient is the thing that is experiencing the action. Agent and patient are sometimes the same object. Consider the following:

The fire burned the house.
The house burned.
The house was burned.

In the first sentence, the subject is the agent. In the second sentence, the subject is the agent and the patient (the house did the burning, and got the effects of the burning). In the last sentence, the subject is the patient. --hb

Thanks. -- Mike Hardy

japanese

Some languages such as Japanese have different declension for different classes of nouns, e.g. persons, animals, things., says the article, but what on earth does this mean? Japanese nouns don't have cases in any normal sense of the world, and the type of noun affects only the counter affixed to the number. Jpatokal 17:52, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Chinese, Japanese and Korean have systems similar to declension whereby different counting words are used when counting different classes of nouns, e.g. persons, animals, things, cylindrical objects, flat objects, etc.

I think that the classifier systems of Chinese and Japanese would not be considered an example of "case" or "declension", but rather a gender/classifier system. Japanese, for example, has a case system that is expressed by postpositions, but its classifier system consists of suffixes IIRC. (The only Japanese classifiers I remember are -en for "yen" (currency) and -doru for "dollars".)

declination?

Maybe I'm old and confused, but wasn't this earlier called "declination"? I read a lot of books on general linguistics some ten years ago, and I can recall seeing "declension" even once. :( --Oop 23:14, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

  • It seems those books were really old. :( Sorry to spread my confusion. --Oop 23:19, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

InterWiki

  • Due to the REDIRECT from Noun case to Declension (at this point in time) the links between the languages do not match any more. Please thing about how to fix it. Thanks! Gangleri 01:59, 2004 Nov 7 (UTC)

most cases

What language has the most cases? Finnish?

There's no real answer to that question, because "case" doesn't mean the same thing in every language. Some would argue that the "cases" in a language like Finnish aren't really equivalent to Latin, and therefore aren't a fair comparison. But Finnish probably has the highest number of any national language of forms which are commonly called cases. kwami 06:09, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

definition

hi.

A declension is a traditional term that refers to an inflectional noun paradigm. However, this article seems to suggest that all inflectional noun paradigms in whatever language will indicate grammatical relations of the noun. This is not true. peace – ishwar  (speak) 18:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. As I've learned it, declensions indicate singular vs. plural (English), indefinite vs. definite (Swedish) in nouns. On the other hand, cases indicate grammatical relations in nouns, adjectives, numerals and pronouns (Finnish). Those knowing Finnish might also wonder where endings such as -han, -ko and -pa belong, as they can be added to any word. This article would benefit if someone who knows the topic found relevant, modern references.--TuukkaH 09:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Inflection of nouns, adjectives, determiners, and pronouns for case is a kind of declension; it's just not the only kind. As you note, they can also be declined for such features as number (as they are in most languages) and definiteness (as in the Semitic languages, and I guess in Swedish). Ruakh 04:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question: morphological cases and/or adpositions?

Are there languages that express the grammatical relations of nouns sometimes through morphological case and sometimes through adpositions?

Conversely: English is pretty much pure-adpositional, but are their pure-morphological languages that express ALL grammatical relations through morphological cases? Seems like there'd need to be a ton of cases for a language to have 0 adpositions. Finnish's 15, Basque's 17 certainly wouldn't be enough. I recall reading about some Caucasian languages that had around 30 cases; that might be enough.67.170.176.203 06:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article hard to understand

As a native English speaker with (just) a basic grasp of grammar, I feel that this article is written for an audience that already knows the answer to the question being asked, namely, what the heck is declension? I know this is my fault for not paying enough attention in middle school, but I'm sure there are others who would appreciate a rewrite for the lay-person.

--Talinus 13:53, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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