fourcase

Fourcase is a term used in linguistic typology to denote a grammatical system or a language that marks four distinct cases on nouns and pronouns. In a fourcase system, the four cases encode syntactic relations such as subject, direct object, indirect object, and possession or source, with the exact functions varying between languages.

The four-case inventory commonly includes nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. Some languages realize this pattern with one of these functions replaced by a prepositional phrase, or with genitive and dative merged into a single category. Marking is usually suffixal or clitic, and adjectives or determiners often agree in case.

Fourcase systems tend to allow relatively flexible word order because the case endings signal grammatical roles rather than relying solely on position in a sentence. Morphology may interact with phonology, leading to assimilations or irregular forms in inflected nouns and pronouns.

In contemporary German and Icelandic, among others, the standard noun inflection paradigm illustrates a four-case system. Historical languages such as Latin contributed to the conceptual development of case inventories, though Latin itself had more than four cases. Fourcase is primarily a descriptive label used in typology rather than a formal universal category.

See also: case system, nominative-accusative alignment, ergative-absolutive systems, syntactic case.