Nouncase

Nouncase, in linguistics, is a grammatical category that encodes the syntactic and semantic role of a noun within a phrase or sentence. It is typically realized through inflectional endings on the noun (or via its modifiers), through prepositions with case-linked meanings, or through word order in analytic languages where case marking is minimal.

In languages with robust noun case systems, nouns change form through cases such as nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, locative, and sometimes ablative, among others. Some languages also feature a vocative case for direct address. Case systems may be nominative-accusative or ergative-absolutive in their alignment, while others exhibit more fluid patterns.

Cases indicate roles such as subject, direct object, indirect object, possession, instrument, location, or direction. The noun’s case interacts with adjectives and determiners, and in many languages case marking affects agreement and article use.

English has limited noun-case marking, mainly on pronouns (I/me/mine; he/him/his). Most nouns rely on word order and prepositions. Other languages with richer systems include Russian (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional), German (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), and Finnish (a wide array of cases).

In summary, nouncase describes how nouns morphologically encode their grammatical roles, shaping sentence structure, agreement, and interpretation across languages.