Inflectional Morphology - Case

Dr. Will Styler - LIGN 120

Today’s Plan

Case Marking
A Case Study
Other case systems around the world

Case Systems

“Case System?”

Let’s back up for a second.

### “Jony chased Dieter”

“How do we know who did what to whom?”

Grammatical Relations

How a language marks who did what to whom

English uses word order to mark grammatical relations.

“Jony chased Dieter”
“Kevin waved to Niloo”
“Niloo waved to Kevin”
“Will ate his tofu wistfully”

… but that’s not the only way!

Some languages affix morphemes onto words to mark grammatical relations

We call these morphemes “case markers”
Nominative Case - “The Subject”
Accusative Case - “The Object”

Grammatical Case

Tacking morphemes onto words to indicate their role in the sentence

Grammatical case is found in 60% of languages in WALS

Russian Case Marking

sobaka vidye-la koshk-u
dog.NOM see-SG.FEM.PST cat-ACC.FEM
“The dog saw the cat.”
koshka vidye-la sobak-u
cat.NOM see-SG.FEM.PST dog-ACC.FEM
“The cat saw the dog.”

Russian Case Marking

Ya tyebya vizh-u
I.NOM you.ACC see-1SG
“I see you”
Ti myenya vid-yesh
you.NOM I.ACC see-2SG
“You see me”

If we put the sentence “Niloo hugged the turtle” into Russian, the proper cases would be…

Niloo - NOM, Turtle - ACC
Niloo - ACC, Turtle - NOM
Niloo - NOM, Turtle - NOM
Niloo - ACC, Turtle - ACC

If we put the sentence “Niloo hugged the turtle” into Russian, the proper cases would be…

A) Niloo - NOM, Turtle - ACC

Niloo - ACC, Turtle - NOM
Niloo - NOM, Turtle - NOM
Niloo - ACC, Turtle - ACC

Nominative and Accusative cases are really common!

German
IE:Germanic - Germany

Der Hund beißt den Mann.
The-NOM dog bite-3sg the-ACC man.
‘The dog bites the man.’
Der Mann beißt den Hund.
The-NOM man bite-3sg the-ACC dog.
‘The man bites the dog.’

English
IE:Germanic - All over

	Singular Nominative	Plural Nominative	Singular Accusative	Plural Accusative
1st	I	we	me	us
2nd	you	y’all	you	y’all
3rd	he/she	they	him/her	them

English
IE:Germanic - All over

* I see him * I-NOM see he-ACC

* He sees me * He-NOM see-3sg I-NOM

Geonosian
??? - Geonosis

So, Nominative and Accusative cases are really useful!

… but Russian has more cases!

The Russian Case System

Nominative Case - “The Subject”
Accusative Case - “The Direct Object”
Dative Case - “The Indirect Object or Recipient”
Genitive Case - “The Possessor (and more)”
Locative Case - “The Location (and more)”
Instrumental Case - “The Tool (and more)”

Dative Case

Marks the indirect object, or recipient of an item

Dative Case

Kevin dayot tsvet-i Lis-ye
Kevin-NOM give.3sg Flowers-ACC.PLUR Lisa-DAT
“Kevin gave Lisa flowers”
Enchilad-i mne da-la Niloo
Enchilada-ACC.PLUR 1sg.DAT give-PAST.FEM Niloo-NOM
“Niloo gave me Enchiladas”

Dative as “Goal”

Ya pomoga-yu Kevinu
1sg.NOM help-present.1sg Kevin-DAT
“I’m helping Kevin”
Mne zvoni-l Barack Obama
1sg-DAT call-past.masc Barack Obama-NOM
“Barack Obama called me”

If we put the sentence “Jony gave Dieter some pellets” into Russian, the proper cases would be…

Jony - ACC, Dieter - DAT, Pellets - NOM
Jony - NOM, Dieter - DAT, Pellets - ACC
Jony - NOM, Dieter - ACC, Pellets - DAT
Jony - DAT, Dieter - ACC, Pellets - NOM

If we put the sentence “Jony gave Dieter some pellets” into Russian, the proper cases would be…

Jony - ACC, Dieter - DAT, Pellets - NOM

B) Jony - NOM, Dieter - DAT, Pellets - ACC

Jony - NOM, Dieter - ACC, Pellets - DAT
Jony - DAT, Dieter - ACC, Pellets - NOM

Genitive Case

Marks possession

Genitive Case in Action

Ya vi-zhu sharik Pong-a
1sg.NOM see-1sg ball-ACC Pongo-GEN
“I see Pongo’s ball”
Michael Bay sam-aya bolsh-aya problem-a Amerik-ii
Michael Bay single-NOM large-NOM problem-NOM America-GEN
“Michael Bay is America’s biggest problem”

If we put the sentence “Will stole the dragon’s iPad” into Russian, the proper cases would be…

Will - ACC, Dragon - NOM, iPad - GEN
Will - NOM, Dragon - GEN, iPad - ACC
Will - GEN, Dragon - ACC, iPad - NOM
Will - NOM, Dragon - ACC, iPad - GEN

Locative Case

Marks the location of events

(this is also called the “Prepositional Case”)

Locative Case in action

Ya zhiv-u v Californi-i
1sg.NOM live-1sg in California-LOC
“I live in California”

Instrumental Case

Marks an object being used

Instrumental Case in Action

Andres pish-et karandash-om
Andres-NOM write-3sg pencil-INST
“Andres writes with a pencil”
Ya yem borscht so smetanoy
1sg-NOM eat borscht-ACC with sour.cream-INST
“I eat borscht with sour cream”

Russian used to have a Vocative case!

Calling out to somebody
Would differentiate ‘Will’ from ‘will’
Perhaps it’s coming back

The Russian Case System

Nominative Case - “The Subject”
Accusative Case - “The Direct Object”
Dative Case - “The Indirect Object or Recipient”
Genitive Case - “The Possessor (and more)”
Locative Case - “The Location (and more)”
Instrumental Case - “The Tool (and more)”
It’s actually way more complicated than this!

So, now you know the Russian system

Just in case.

Other Case Systems

Languages have different case systems

Common cases to mark the subject of an intransitive or agent of transitive sentence (Nominative), the direct object (Accusative), the indirect object (Dative).
- … but it doesn’t always work that way!
There are lots of other cases out there
Often, they code things that prepositions are used for in other languages
But we’re not Finnished yet

Finnish Cases

NOM, ACC, GEN
Partitive: Marks a part, not the whole
Inessive: Marks being inside the noun
Elative: Marks coming out from the noun
Illative: Marks going into the noun
Adessive: Marks being near or close to the noun
Ablative: Marks moving from off of the noun
Allative: Marks moving onto the noun

Finnish Cases (Continued)

Essive: Marks a temporary state of being (“as a grad student” or “on Thursday”)
Translative: Marks a change of state
Instructive: Roughly instrumental, but more generic manner
Abessive: Marks something that’s lacked.
Comitative: Marks being with something

Cases mean different things in every language!

Just because the grammar says ‘Dative’, it doesn’t mean it’s the same as Russian or German
You’ll need to learn these details for every language you encounter
You never know what kind of cases you’ll deal with
Don’t make a deadly assumption!

Wrapping Up

Case is a very important grammatical feature
Don’t assume it works the same in all languages
It’s magical

For Next Time

Some more data, then we’ll start verbal inflection!
HW1 is online

Thank you!