Quote:
Originally Posted by SPX
I'm not sure what you mean by "cases." I have seen that term used a lot recently but the only cases that I know about are uppercase and lowercase and something tells me that's not what you're talking about, ha ha.
|
And you're right! "Case" is a linguistics term for a particular grammatical phenomenon that some languages use. It refers to using inflection (that is, some type of modification of the form of nouns) to encode the grammatical function of nouns within an utterance, rather than relying on word order or on the use of function words such as prepositions.
Modern English evolved from earlier Germanic languages that used case as a core feature of their grammars, but modern English has lost most of these features. What remains now is the possessive suffix that we spell using an apostrophe as in man, man's, men, men's or in girl, girl's, girls, and girls', and in the different personal pronouns (I/me, you/you, he/him, she/her, it/it, we/us, they/them).
Similarly, Latin also used case as a core feature of its grammars, and most of its modern descendents retain only variation of personal pronouns as the only remnant of that system with the grammar of the language.