Task : English Used to Have Four Cases

Nominative Case

a.       Meaning

The Nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its objector other verb arguments. Generally, the noun that is doing something is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in dictionaries.

b.     Example

Nominative cases are found in Arabic, Estonian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Georgian, German, Latin, Greek, Icelandic, Old English, Old French, Polish, Serbian, Czech, Romanian, Russian, and Pashto, and other languages.

Genitive Case

a.       Meaning

The Genitive case in grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks amounts modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun. However, it can also indicate various relationships other than possession: certain verbs may take arguments in the genitive case, and it may have adverbial uses. Placing the modifying noun in the genitive case is one way to indicate that two nouns are related in agentive construction.

b.      Example

Many languages have a genitive case, including Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Basque, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, German, Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Sanskrit, Scottish Gaelic, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish and all Slavic languages except Bulgarian and Macedonian.

Dative Case

a.       Meaning

The Dative case is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate, among other uses, the noun to which something is given, as in Maria Jacob opotum dedit, the Latin is Maria gave Jacob a drink. In such examples, the dative marks the indirect objector adverb, although in some instances, the dative is used for the direct objector a verb pertaining directly to an act of giving something.

b.      Example

This may be a tangible object (e.g. "a book" or "a tapestry"), or an intangible abstraction (e.g. "an answer" or “help")

Accusative Case

a.       Meaning

The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct objector transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is a noun that is having something done to it, usually used together (such as in Latin) with the nominative case.

b.      Example

                  "They" in English is nominative, "them" is accusative. The sentence "They like them"                         shows the nominative case and accusative case working in conjunction using the same                         base word.