nominative

Nominative is a grammatical case used to mark the subject of a finite verb or a predicate noun in languages that have a case system. The term comes from the Latin nominativus, from nomen, meaning “name,” reflecting its role in identifying the subject. In languages with nominative–accusative alignment, the subject of both intransitive and transitive sentences is typically in the nominative, while the object appears in another case such as the accusative.

In English, the nominative case is largely a feature of pronouns. Nouns generally do not change form for truthfully marking subject position. Subject pronouns—I, you, he, she, it, we, they—appear in the nominative, whereas object pronouns—me, you, him, her, it, us, them—occur in object positions. For example, in the sentence “She runs,” she is in the nominative. A traditional but debated example is the predicate after a linking verb: “It is I” versus the more common “It is me,” with prescriptive styles often preferring the former.

Across languages with richer inflection, the nominative is a distinct morphological form used to mark subjects or predicate nouns. German, Russian, Latin, and many others assign nominative forms to nouns, adjectives, or articles in subject positions, and these forms differ from other cases such as the accusative, dative, or genitive. In Latin, the nominative is frequently the dictionary form of a noun.

Overall, the nominative serves as the foundational subject-marking case in many languages, contrasting with other grammatical cases that mark objects or other syntactic roles.