Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number (at least singular and plural), case (nominative or subjective, genitive or possessive, etc.), and gender. A declension is also a group of nouns that follow a particular pattern of inflection.

Declension occurs in many of the world's languages, and features very prominently in many European languages. Old English was a highly inflected language, as befits its Indo-European and especially its Germanic linguistic ancestry, but its declensions greatly simplified as it evolved into Modern English.

Modern English

Further information: Old English grammar: nouns

In Modern English, nouns have distinct singular and plural forms; that is, they decline to reflect their grammatical number; consider the difference between book and books. In addition, a few English pronouns have distinct nominative (also called subjective) and oblique (or objective) forms; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb or preposition, or case. Consider the difference between he (subjective) and him (objective), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him"; similarly, consider who, which is subjective, and the objective whom. Further, these pronouns and a few others have distinct possessive forms, such as his and whose. By contrast, nouns have no distinct nominative and objective forms, the two being merged into a single plain case. For example, chair does not change form between "the chair is here" (subject) and "I saw the chair" (direct object). Possession is shown by the clitic -'s attached to a possessive noun phrase, rather than by declension of the noun itself.

Gender is at best only weakly grammaticalized in Modern English. While masculine, feminine, and neuter genders are recognized, nouns do not normally decline for gender, though some nouns, especially Latin words and personal names, exist in multiple forms corresponding to different genders: alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular); Andrew and Andrea, Paul and Paula, etc. Suffixes such as -ess, -ette, and -er can also derive overtly gendered versions of nouns, with marking for feminine being much more common than marking for masculine. Many nouns can actually function as members of two genders or even all three, and the gender classes of English nouns are usually determined by their agreement with pronouns, rather than marking on the nouns themselves.

Adjectives are rarely declined for any purpose. They can be declined for number when they are used as substitutes for nouns (as in, "I'll take the reds", meaning "I'll take the red ones" or as shorthand for "I'll take the red wines", for example). Also the demonstrative determiners this and that are declined for number, as these and those. Some adjectives borrowed from other languages are, or can be, declined for gender, at least in writing: blond (male) and blonde (female) or a bonie lad as compared to a bonnie lass. Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English, though they were in Old English. The article is never regarded as declined in Modern English, although formally, the words that and possibly she correspond to forms of the predecessor of the (se m., þæt n., sēo f.) as it was declined in Old English.

Basic declension theory

Core examples

The following hypothetical English grammar demonstrates how declension works in practice. Assume that in English the subject of a sentence has the suffix -troo and the object takes the suffix -woo. Sentences would appear as follows:

These examples show how simple declension works in action. Note that, since the subjects and objects are marked with suffixes, the word order can change. As English depends on word order to identify the subject and object, word order cannot change. In the following, the first sentence is the only way to express John reading his book. The second example has a different meaning.

However in our theoretical English with declensions, the word order can be changed but the meaning will remain the same as long as the subject and object are marked with the correct suffix.

Note that the suffixes remain the same even though the word order has changed. In many languages with declension, the word order is not important; however, the declension is not optional and nouns must be marked. The following are hypothetical cases and suffixes that would be used in this declined English.

Other possible cases

Now assume that: using something as a tool takes the suffix -pree, going to/in direction of takes the suffix -zee, doing something with an object or person takes the suffix -pow, and addressing someone by their name takes the suffix -croo.

The following sentences in this theoretical English will demonstrate how this would seem to us if there were declensions.

Note that these sentences could be written in any order and the meaning would stay the same:

This word order is not possible in modern English as there are no cases or declension as in some other languages. This means that in English, word order is essential to constructing coherent sentences.

This theoretical system of declension is relatively simple and is more or less how declension works in languages such as Hungarian. Other languages have a far more complicated set of declensions where the suffixes (or prefixes or infixes) change depending on the gender of the noun, the quantity of the noun and many other possible factors. There may also be irregular nouns where the declensions are unique for each word. In many languages, articles, demonstratives and adjectives are also declined. The following example demonstrates such declension in our theoretical English.

Cases applied to adjectives and particles

Cases exotic to Indo-european languages

Finally, assume that: an object that another object is located on top of takes the suffix -kroo, the object a person is moving away from takes the suffix -thee, and a person mentioned who is being ordered to do something takes the suffix -zaa.

Latin

Main article: Latin declension

An example of a Latin noun declension is given below, using the singular forms of the word homo (man), which belongs to Latin's third declension.

There are two further noun cases in Latin, the vocative and the locative. The vocative case indicates that a person or thing is being addressed (e.g., O Tite, cur ancillam pugnas? O Titus, why do you fight the slave girl?). Though widely used, it differs in form from the nominative only in the masculine singular of the second declension (that is, never in the plural, never in the feminine or neuter, and never in any declension other than the second). The locative case is rare in classic Latin, and it is mostly absorbed in the ablative case.

Sanskrit

Main article: Sanskrit nouns

Sanskrit has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, locative and instrumental.[1] Some count vocative not as a separate case, despite it having a distinctive ending in the singular, but consider it as a different use of the nominative.[2]

Sanskrit grammatical case was analyzed extensively. The grammarian Pāṇini identified seven semantic roles or karaka, which correspond closely to the eight cases:[3]

For example, consider the following sentence:

{| style="text-align: center;"

| style="padding-right: 1em;" | vṛkṣ-āt | style="padding-right: 1em;" | parṇ-aṁ | style="padding-right: 1em;" | bhūm-āu | patati |- |from the tree || a leaf || to the ground || falls |}"a leaf falls from the tree to the ground"

Here leaf is the agent, tree is the source, and ground is the locus. The endings -aṁ, -at, -āu mark the cases associated with these meanings.

See also

Declension in specific languages

Latin and Greek

Related topics

References

  1. ↑ James Clackson (2007) Indo-European linguistics: an introduction, p.90
  2. ↑ Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf (eds), Sanskrit Computational Linguistics: First and Second International Symposia Rocquencourt, France, October 29-31, 2007 and Providence, RI, USA, May 15-17, 2008, Revised Selected Papers, Volume 5402 of Lecture notes in artificial intelligence, Springer, 2009, ISBN 3-642-00154-8, pp. 64–68.
  3. ↑ Pieter Cornelis Verhagen, Handbook of oriental studies: India. A history of Sanskrit grammatical literature in Tibet, Volume 2, BRILL, 2001, ISBN 90-04-11882-9, p. 281.

External links

Look up declension in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.