Talk:Declension

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[edit] sorry

I'm sorry, I know about the case systems enough to explain them, but not enough to explain them clearly. Needs work.

I agree. From a linguistic point of view, the article merely scratches the surface. Already the name (noun case) is not precise: It's called case. There is a whole linguistic "case theory" behind it that needs to be mentioned. --66.171.5.58 01:47, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "agents" or "patients"

I have never heard of "agents" or "patients" of verbs. Are those the same as subjects and objects? -- Mike Hardy

In English, the agent is usually the subject and the patient is usually the object, but that is not always the case. The agent is the thing that is "doing" the action; the patient is the thing that is experiencing the action. Agent and patient are sometimes the same object. Consider the following:

The fire burned the house.

The house burned.

The house was burned.

In the first sentence, the subject is the agent. In the second sentence, the subject is the agent and the patient (the house did the burning, and got the effects of the burning). In the last sentence, the subject is the patient. --hb

Thanks. -- Mike Hardy

[edit] japanese

Some languages such as Japanese have different declension for different classes of nouns, e.g. persons, animals, things., says the article, but what on earth does this mean? Japanese nouns don't have cases in any normal sense of the world, and the type of noun affects only the counter affixed to the number. Jpatokal 17:52, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Chinese, Japanese and Korean have systems similar to declension whereby different counting words are used when counting different classes of nouns, e.g. persons, animals, things, cylindrical objects, flat objects, etc.

I think that the classifier systems of Chinese and Japanese would not be considered an example of "case" or "declension", but rather a gender/classifier system. Japanese, for example, has a case system that is expressed by postpositions, but its classifier system consists of suffixes IIRC. (The only Japanese classifiers I remember are -en for "yen" (currency) and -doru for "dollars".)

[edit] declination?

Maybe I'm old and confused, but wasn't this earlier called "declination"? I read a lot of books on general linguistics some ten years ago, and I can recall seeing "declension" even once. :( --Oop 23:14, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

It seems those books were really old. :( Sorry to spread my confusion. --Oop 23:19, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] InterWiki

Due to the REDIRECT from Noun case to Declension (at this point in time) the links between the languages do not match any more. Please thing about how to fix it. Thanks! Gangleri 01:59, 2004 Nov 7 (UTC)

[edit] most cases

What language has the most cases? Finnish?

There's no real answer to that question, because "case" doesn't mean the same thing in every language. Some would argue that the "cases" in a language like Finnish aren't really equivalent to Latin, and therefore aren't a fair comparison. But Finnish probably has the highest number of any national language of forms which are commonly called cases. kwami 06:09, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the answer above that it is impossible to clearly definine what constitues as a case, however, I have heard (though I'm afraid have not yet found evidence) that Georgian has more cases than Finnish. Manchu apparently uses a lot, too. Tezp 15:19, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Tsez can be analyzed as having 126 cases, which is quite typically for Northeast Caucasian languages. — N-true 23:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] definition

hi.

A declension is a traditional term that refers to an inflectional noun paradigm. However, this article seems to suggest that all inflectional noun paradigms in whatever language will indicate grammatical relations of the noun. This is not true. peace – ishwar (speak) 18:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. As I've learned it, declensions indicate singular vs. plural (English), indefinite vs. definite (Swedish) in nouns. On the other hand, cases indicate grammatical relations in nouns, adjectives, numerals and pronouns (Finnish). Those knowing Finnish might also wonder where endings such as -han, -ko and -pa belong, as they can be added to any word. This article would benefit if someone who knows the topic found relevant, modern references.--TuukkaH 09:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Inflection of nouns, adjectives, determiners, and pronouns for case is a kind of declension; it's just not the only kind. As you note, they can also be declined for such features as number (as they are in most languages) and definiteness (as in the Semitic languages, and I guess in Swedish). Ruakh 04:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question: morphological cases and/or adpositions?

Are there languages that express the grammatical relations of nouns sometimes through morphological case and sometimes through adpositions?

Conversely: English is pretty much pure-adpositional, but are their pure-morphological languages that express ALL grammatical relations through morphological cases? Seems like there'd need to be a ton of cases for a language to have 0 adpositions. Finnish's 15, Basque's 17 certainly wouldn't be enough. I recall reading about some Caucasian languages that had around 30 cases; that might be enough.67.170.176.203 06:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Some lanugages favour a synthetic approach (that is conveying meaning through affixes,) and some favour an analytic approach (conveying meaning through separate lexemes,) most are in between. Often languages uses an adposition in conjunction with morphological inflection for the sentence to be grammatically correct. Though it is theoretically possible, it is highly unlikely that any language will only use one system. Tezp 16:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article hard to understand

As a native English speaker with (just) a basic grasp of grammar, I feel that this article is written for an audience that already knows the answer to the question being asked, namely, what the heck is declension? I know this is my fault for not paying enough attention in middle school, but I'm sure there are others who would appreciate a rewrite for the lay-person.

--Talinus 13:53, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's much that can be done about it. People who have studied languages that have declension (Latin, German, etc.), already know what declension is; and it's hard to explain to people who don't. Take a look at Inflection and Grammatical case; they should help, at least. Ruakh 14:14, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually and unhappily, Grammatical case just is a redirect to Declension. List of grammatical cases isn't, but also seems to be written mainly for those already in-the-know. I don't think this is necessary; e. g., the German article de:Kasus contains a short description for the layperson.

I'm afraid the introduction in the article Inflection also would tend to scare away a number of those readers, who haven't grasped how simple and natural most of the basic concepts in grammar are:

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) to reflect grammatical (that is, relational) information, such as gender, tense, number or person. The concept of a "word" independent of the different inflections is called a lexeme, and the form of a word that is considered to have no or minimal inflection is called a lemma. An organized list of the inflected forms of a given lexeme is called an inflectional paradigm.

Perhaps a combination of a precise definition in the introduction and a few simple examples directly afterwards would be a good compromise. In this case, Taline, you may look at the discussion of the s-declination and the n-declination in English. For some reason, this example is 'hidden' at the end of the subsection Latin and Sanscrit. (And why did I call you Taline, when your user name is Talinus? Well, it was a 'pedagogical joke': I was using the name in addressing you directly, and in such cases some words in Latin have a special form, called vocative. Taline is the vocative of Talinus, if Talinus changes forms in the way most masculine Latin names ending in -us do. To someone knowing Latin grammar this could be expressed faster, by saying 'I assume Talinus belongs to the second declination'. I hope this gives you a few hints...)--JoergenB 17:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

As a native English speaker who struggled for some time with the concept of declension, I can sympathise with the Talinus' comments. And I agree, for native English speakers, the article lacks the 1:1 correspondence that purists and pedants are all-too reluctant to give (and there's a good reason for that, but we needn't go into it). Though it's not rife for publication, here is a simple explanation:

As noted, English has very few actual instances of case-declension - so few, in fact, that the average English speaking person has no real idea of what a 'case' is. This is understandable, for in English, we don't really need them. This is because we almost always use prepositions in conjunction with nouns to serve the same purpose.

Let us take the simple sentence "This is John's house". Here, the word "John's" is in the genitive case (recognizeable by the genitive case-ending 's). We could rewrite this sentence to read "This is the house of John" and, though less common, it would still be correct and would express the same idea. Notice that "John's" and "of John" are two ways of expressing the notion of 'belonging' or 'possession'. In the first instance, we used a genitive case-ending ('s), and in the second we used what could be called a 'genitive' preposition (of). In heavily declined languages, this option generally does not exist, and one instead uses the proper case-ending.

To give another example but with a case that does not exist in it's own right in English: To express the idea of instrumentality, we use an 'instrumental' preposition before the agent-noun, i.e. with or by. The prepositions 'with' and 'by' serve to indicate that the noun they procede is the instrument through which the action indicated by the verb in the sentence takes place. "The ball was hit by the boy." In this passive sentence, the boy is the instrument through which the 'hitting' takes place. English uses an 'instrumental' preposition to indicate this. But in a heavily declined language like Sanskrit, such a preposition is not needed, the noun instead receiving an instrumental case-ending. In other words, "by-the-boy" would appear as one word, much like 'of-John' being expressed by the single word "John's" in the setence above.

Thus, as a rule: English generally uses prepositions to express what are considered case-relations in other languages.

I hope that helps rather than confuses.Varoon Arya 02:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

That's not completely accurate. First of all, -'s isn't really a case marker in Modern English; it has more in common with of than with a true morphological case. (To see why, consider a phrase like "the Queen of England's son"; the -'s attaches to the end of the noun phrase, just as of attaches to the beginning. If we had a real possessive case — like Old English's genitive case, which is where -'s originally came from — then it would be marked on the noun Queen, rather than on the last word of whatever phrase Queen is the head of.) Second of all, in languages that have morphological case, every noun is marked for case, whether it has a preposition or not, such that sometimes there's redundancy when the preposition is conveying the same sense as the case marking. (We see relics of this in English — again, remnants of Old English's genitive — when we say "a friend of my sister's", where the of and the -'s are serving the same purpose, or "from whence it came", where whence means of/from where.) That said, you do have the right general idea, and if people find your text more understandable than what's currently in the article, perhaps we can find a way to incorporate some version of it. —Ruakh_TALK 02:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I realize that to anyone well-versed in the subject, I've overlooked the details and simplified a great deal. But then again, that was my intention. The main problem for beginners is that they are overwhelmed by the great number of exceptions without ever being given the broad outline of what is going on. What needs to be found is a clear way of explaining what declension does from an English point of view. (With that being said, however, I think it would be a mistake to do away with the terminology 'dative', 'ablative', 'genitive', etc. in such an outline. Actually, I think the main article could be improved through their addition.) Varoon Arya 02:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

But what you describe as "the great number of exceptions" are actually the norm. I think that if our main goal is for the first paragraph to explain grammatical case in a manner that can be easily understood by someone who speaks English and no other languages, then the first paragraph should talk only about the English pronoun he/him/his, which IMHO is the best English exemplar of case marking — it has a separate form for each surviving case, and has only one possessive-case form. (I guess the same can be said of who/whom/whose in formal speech and writing, but few English speakers have a very good grasp of the difference between who and whom and many English speakers confuse whose with who's; by contrast, I think nearly all English speakers understand the general use of he/him/his, even if there's some variation in contexts like "Him/He and Me/I are good friends.") —Ruakh_TALK 03:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

P.S. By the way, note that when Talinus expressed confusion, the article looked very different: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Declension&oldid=80957561. The question is, would someone reading the current version of the article have the same problem? Perhaps we can ask Talinus to take another look. —Ruakh_TALK 04:02, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I am looking at the current version of the article - and I see little that gives an English-only reader an idea of what declension actually does. Yes, there is the standard declaration of the grammatical function of the changes observed under declension and the ever-present reminder that English possesses only vestiges of a real declination system. But - and perhaps this is directed as much at the page on Grammatical case as at this page, the two of which are so very closely related - there seems to be little that helps to actually explain the semantic (rather than grammatical) role of declension and case. For example, saying that "The ablative case indicates the object of most common prepositions" is not as helpful to an English speaker as explaining that the ablative is the case denoting whence an action takes place and that it is usually expressed by prepositions such as from and out of (in origins), of and at (in distances), than (in comparisons) since and after (in times), etc. Naturally, this can be done with all the cases (excluding, perhaps, the nominative - of which, historically, the other cases are but modifications). Of course, some may see this as an 'over-simplification' or 'dumbing-down', but this method has been used by grammarians of great renoun (Whitney, Speijer, etc.) whose works have enjoyed continued popularity for this very reason. Varoon Arya 12:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Declension in English

I disagree with the examples given. Number inflections are not a good example of declension. For example, all the Romance languages have number inflections — and much more extensive ones than English — yet everyone agrees that Romance languages, overall, have lost declensions. English is no different from them in this regard.

Simply put, not all forms of inflection are declensions, and not even all forms of noun inflection are declensions (even though the two are often taught together in languages with declensions, for didactical reasons). Declensions are inflections that reflect the grammatical function of a word: subject, object, possessor, and so on. A better example in English would be the personal pronouns. FilipeS 18:28, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

*consults the dictionary* Interesting. The OED agrees with you (though its definition for the sense that allows e.g. "Latin's first declension" is ambiguous, and could well be taken to allow e.g. "English's n-declension"), but Merriam-Webster and all of Dictionary.com's dictionaries (AHD4, Random House, and WordNet) agree with me. So, I guess we need to decide which sense is more worth discussing in this article. Ruakh 18:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I think mine is. What makes the concept of "declension" relevant are those pesky languages like Latin, where nouns have different forms, depending on whether they're subjects, direct objects, instruments, or what-have-you. This is totally irrelevant in a language like English, except for the personal pronouns, and, if you wish, for the pronoun who(m). Even though English language grammarians seem to cling on nostalgically to terms like "accusative", "nominative", and so on, the truth is that if you take a noun like "house", or "dog", you don't need to use different forms when it's a subject than when it's the object of a verb. Open up a Latin dictionary, and you will see that along with every noun they list its different endings in the various cases. Open an English dictionary, and you will find no such thing.

This does not mean that English nouns can't be inflected, of course. Most of them are inflected for number. But some of them also have diminutives, for example; are you going to call the diminutive a "case"?

This is not to say that concepts like "grammatical number" or "diminutive" are not important; but they are different categories from "case/declension". FilipeS 20:10, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you're begging the question a bit. Case definitely has to do with grammatical role; declension does not necessarily have to do with case. I don't think English diminutives can be considered declension, because they're formed by derivation rather than by inflection, but English plurals most certainly can be. Also, I think you're mistaken to say that the only thing that makes declension pesky is case; declension in Hebrew is fairly complex, with a typical noun having twenty-six different forms — more in Biblical Hebrew — even though Hebrew has no morphological cases. Ruakh 21:09, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to ask where you got the idea that "case" and "declension" are supposed to be different notions. I'd never heard of such a thing. FilipeS 21:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

See my original comment (above). The OED does (mostly) tie "declension" to "case", but Merriam-Webster and the Dictionary.com dictionaries do not. Ruakh 23:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Why not consult a book of linguistics, or a grammar? Dictionaries are often quite poor at defining technical terms. FilipeS 23:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

None of my grammars seems to use the word declension at all (or a cognate, in the case of grammars in foreign languages), except for the miniature Hebrew grammar in the front of my Hebrew-English dictionary, which uses it in a way I don't quite follow; it speaks of the declension of — this is in Hebrew, but I'm translating it for your benefit — e.g. book to produce my book, your book, etc., and of books to produce my books, your books, etc.; and of e.g. for to produce for me, for you, etc. Now, this isn't just completely crazy — in Hebrew, those are all one-word inflections of the underlying forms — but I don't see why book→my book is a declension and book→__'s book (also a one-word form) and book→books aren't. Ruakh 00:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Why don't you two have a look at declension? Any change of form for nouns and adjectives to indicate grammatical features is included. −Woodstone 14:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Dude, that's the article we're discussing. (See Help:Talk page.) I recently modified Declension to emphasize that (so far as I know) it doesn't necessarily have to do with case, and FilipeS objected on the grounds that (as far as he knows) it does necessarily have to do with case. Ruakh 15:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the author of that Hebrew grammar is confusing "declension" with the broader concept of "inflection". Mind you, this is understandable, in languages that have declensions, because, as I said, the plural forms are usually taught together with the declensions in strict sense. But here's something: the feminine, masculine, and neuter forms of nouns are often taught together with declensions, too -- does that make grammatical gender a declension?

Let me make an analogy. Declension is the noun-equivalent to verb conjugation. Now, when one teaches a conjugation paradigm, the plural and the singular forms are typically listed together, for didactical reasons. And, informally, people will speak of "the first person singular", "the second person singular", and so on. But does that mean that grammatical number is a type of person; that for instance French has six grammatical persons, three of them plural? Or would it be more accurate to say that it has three grammatical persons, which are crossed with two numbers, and that person and number are orthogonal categories? FilipeS 15:26, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for my confusion above, I must have been half asleep. I have never seen form changes for number excluded from either declension or conjugation. These concepts cover the whole pattern of form changes depending on grammatical context. Can you point to a source where this is not so? −Woodstone 15:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia's own article on Inflection clearly treats number and case/declension as orthogonal.
The article on grammatical agreement even more explicitly treats number and person as orthogonal. As a matter of fact, the way this article lists conjugations can be found in many articles across Wikipedia, for instance this one. I'm surprised that any of this is new to you. FilipeS 15:50, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Again, you seem to be begging the question and assuming that declension has to do with case — an assumption that's not borne out by the articles you link to. Inflection defines declension as a "noun inflectional paradigm (often including pronouns, adjectives, and determiners as well; often involving number, case, and/or gender)"; Agreement (linguistics) does not use the term declension, but says that French adjectives decline to reflect their subjects' genders and numbers; and Irish morphology does not use the term declension, but says that Irish nouns decline for gender, number and case. (The Irish morphology article seems a bit screwed up, though, as it implies that Irish verbs decline for person and number.) Ruakh 16:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the term seems to be used loosely by many people. Can you find a reliable external source which defines "declension" in such a way that number inflections alone could define a declension? FilipeS 16:16, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Random House Unabridged Dictionary: "the inflection of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives for categories such as case and number." (via Dictionary.com)
American Heritage Dictionary: "In certain languages, the inflection of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in categories such as case, number, and gender." (via Dictionary.com)
WordNet: "the inflection of nouns and pronouns and adjectives in Indo-European languages." (via Dictionary.com)
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: "noun, adjective, or pronoun inflection especially in some prescribed order of the forms."
Columbia Encyclopedia: "noun inflection." (in the article on inflection; via Encyclopedia.com)
SIL French/English Linguistic Glossary: "déclinaison, flexion nominale."

Ruakh 17:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

As I wrote above, I do not trust common dictionaries. As for the SIL French/English Linguistic Glossary, their definition is a little odd. Declension is any noun inflection. Does that mean that adjectives can't be declined? FilipeS 17:13, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Rather than criticizing my case, why don't you make one of your own? So far we've found only one source that it agrees with you, and it's a "common dictionary"; what would you consider a reliable source, and what does it say on the subject? Ruakh 17:16, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is often better than your average, non-specialised dictionary. Let's see what I get when I put in "case". Hmm, it takes me to a disambiguation page, which directs me to "grammatical case". And "grammatical case" redirects to... declension! Oops! :-)

P.S. I have made my case, several times, in this page. FilipeS 19:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

That A redirects to B does not mean they're the same thing; note that Preposition redirects to Adposition, which is not intended to imply that all adpositions are prepositions. I'd agree that Wikipedia is often better than non-specialized dictinaries (though for obvious reasons, we can't use it as an actual reference), and everywhere I look, Wikipedia uses a not-specific-to-cases definition of declension (see above links, for example). If the case that you've made here is the entirety of your case, then I'm sorry, but I'm 100% completely unconvinced by it. You've made a decent argument that case and number should be taken to be orthogonal, but I already took them as such; you've made no argument, so far as I can see, to support your position that declension refers strictly to case, beyond your statement that "everyone agrees that Romance languages, overall, have lost declensions", which strikes as too vague to be useful. Ruakh 19:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Nor have you made any substantive case that they should be regarded as different things. No, sorry, common dictionary entries won't cut it. FilipeS 19:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Here are a few references (not clones of wikipedia) that explicitly include plural forms as part of the declension of nouns.

−Woodstone 21:59, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

O.K. That works for me. I think this page in particular has some interesting examples which could be added to the article (unless it's copyrighted). However, the definition in the article needs to be fleshed out, and, for example, you should add that there may be declensions associated with grammatical gender, too. FilipeS 22:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grammatical case

Grammatical case is its own article now; please contribute to it! Also, some of the content here should probably be moved there. —Ruakh_TALK 20:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about Welsh?

Declensions and mutations due to cases also happen in Welsh and various other dialects of Celtic Language. Would this be suitable for me to include in the article? (Cepb 14:05, 4 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] "Via" post?

The sentence "I sent him a message via post" might need to be changed.

"Via" means "by way of" and can not, contrary to popular belief, be used to describe the means of accomplishing an action. "I went to the library via the front door" is fine. "I went to the library via taxi" is incorrect. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.186.8.10 (talk) 10:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC).

The Random House Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, and Merriam Webster all disagree with you, but if you feel strongly about it, I really don't mind if you replace via with by in that sentences. —Ruakh_TALK 17:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] a collective word?

Hi, is there a collective word for words that can be declined? Like in Icelandic then they are called "Fallorð".

Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.249.188.27 (talk) 22:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC).

Nomen/pl:nomina (in Latin). This wikipedia seems to have no article on that term. Juro 00:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English example for an adjective that declines

There is one adjective in the English language, which (in the orthographic system) is declined according to gender.

a) The man is blond. b) The woman is blonde.

It's a quirk of the language, and is unknown to the majority of speakers. Do you think it's worth including?

No. It's not even a quirk of the language, more like a quirk of the spelling. The differentiation blond/blonde was inherited from French, where it reflects different pronunciations. But in English both words are pronounced exactly the same, even though their spelling is conventionally different. So it's just an orthographic artifact. Moreover, as I understand "blond" is only very rarely used for males. FilipeS 16:12, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmmm. I was in two minds myself, probably best not to include then. Thanks. Tezp 16:33, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Accidence

I've just been perusing Wikipedia for accidence and I've realised that its not used at all. The term accidence[1] is synonymous with declension and is used very widely in the UK as far as Latin and Classical Greek instruction is concerned. I would like to propose that it be included as part of this article and perhaps reference it on other linguistic discussions of grammar. Any thoughts are welcomed. Thanks in advance. --rkstaylor 10:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

You can add it yourself, but please include a reference. FilipeS 11:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Declension of adjectives

What about comparative trios such as "wide - wider - widest"? Does this count as declension? FilipeS 16:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Good question. In most manuals of Sanskrit Grammar, for example, the formation of comparatives and superlatives is discussed in conjunction with substantive, adjectival and pronominal declination due to their similarity. Though, I'm sure there are some who would shudder at the thought of including them here. :) It would be best to get an 'expert' opinion on this. Varoon Arya 13:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Only a Few English Pronouns?

I can't think of any English pronouns which do not decline according to case. This sentence should be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.162.246.111 (talk) 01:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Pronouns that do: I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them, and (in some registers and dialects) who/whom. Pronouns that do not: it, you, one, someone, somebody, something, anyone, anybody, anything, no one (which is written with a space but is really a single pronoun), nobody, nothing, everyone, everybody, everything, what, (in some registers and dialects) who, this, that, these, those, which, and so on. (Part of this depends how broadly you define "pronoun" — a few of those would be considered "determiners" by most modern linguists, but dictionaries generally give them as "adjective and pronoun" — as well as "case" — "you", "it", "one", and "who" do have special possessive and/or reflexive/intensive forms, but whether they can be considered "cases" is a matter of some debate — but regardless, it's clear that the majority of English pronouns do not inflect for case.) —Ruakh_TALK 01:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"You" declines in the possessive, and I would consider "this/these" and "that/those" to be declined forms of the same words, but yes, I can see your point. There are pronouns I hadn't considered. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.162.246.111 (talk) 03:23, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Declension, Conjugation, Inflection

Sorry if I have seemed rude to you. I thought my edit comment was clear enough without comment on the talk page. Inflection is the general term for changing word forms to indicate grammatical aspects of the words. Applied to nouns (adjectives, pronouns) it is also called declension. Applied to verbs it is also called conjugation. −Woodstone (talk) 08:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese adjective conjugation

What distinguishes declension from the kind of form-changes seen in Japanese adjectives? For example, hayai (速い), meaning "fast" can become hayaku (速く, [to do] quickly), hayakunai (速くない, not fast), hayasa (速さ, speed), hayakatta (速かった, fast [past tense]) ...

From what little I understand about how declension works in Latin, it doesn't even seem all that different from what we call particles in Japanese. And while I think just about everyone (including native Japanese learning/studying their own language) finds it easier to think of particles as separate entities and not forms or even suffixes of other parts of speech, I wonder if it really is all that different.

For example:

homo (nominative) "[the] man" [as a subject] (e.g. homo ibi stat the man is standing there)
- In Japanese, otokoha (男は), e.g. otokoha soko ni tatteiru 男はそこに立っている
hominis (genitive) "of [the] man" [as a possessor](e.g. nomen hominis est Claudius the man's name is Claudius)
- In Japanese, otokono (男の), e.g. otokono namae ha kuraujiusu (男の名前はクラウジウス)
homini (dative) "to [the] man" [as an indirect object] (e.g. homini donum dedi I gave a present to the man; homo homini lupus est Man is a wolf to man.)
- In Japanese, otokoni (男に), e.g. otokoni purezento wo ageta (男にプレゼントをあげた); ningenha ningen nitaishite ookami da (人間は人間に対して狼だ)
hominem (accusative) "[the] man" [as a direct object] (e.g. ad hominem toward the man, in the sense of argument directed personally; hominem vidi I saw the man)
- In Japanese, otokowo (男を), e.g. otokowo mita (男を見た)

So, outside of the fact that the noun itself doesn't change in Japanese, and simply has something stuck onto the end of it, is there any other basic, fundamental difference between declension and the kind of adjective conjugation and particle use in Japanese? I'm not trying to argue that Japanese ought to be described as a language which uses declension, here on Wikipedia. That would be an untruth, as no Japanese textbook or teacher as far as I am aware would support it. But, for the sake of better understanding and defining "declension" by explaining how it is different from what it is not, I wonder if this might not help to spur further discussion and in turn clearer explanations... Thanks to all involved in this article for their hard work, and for reading this unexpectedly massive post of mine. LordAmeth (talk) 12:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)