Case in English

[Rachel Adams]

Hello.

Are there only 3 cases in modern English? Are my examples correct? Instead of genitive case, do you use possessive case, and do you use objective case instead of dative and accusative?

Nouns. Subjective case. Anna works in a hotel.
Objective case. He called Anna yesterday.
Possesive case. This is Anna's book.

Pronouns Subjective I live in Paris.
Objective She invited me to her party.
Possesive This is my book.

 

[PaulMatthews]

I'd say there are four.

Since case is an inflectional system of the noun, it's fair to say that Present-day English has only genitive, nominative and accusative cases, and a plain case which is non-genitive and neither nominative nor accusative.

So in your first and second examples, we can't say that "Anna" is respectively subjective and accusative -- it is plain case. In your third example, "Anna's" is an inflected form and hence is genitive case.

A few pronouns have distinct nominative and accusative cases instead of plain case as in your fourth and fifth examples.

Notes:

1. The term 'genitive' is preferable to 'possessive', especially for pronouns, since not all such nouns and pronouns express possession (e.g. "a glorious summer's day” / "two bachelor's degrees" / "her infancy", "her rapid action".
2. English has no dative case; it was lost in earlier stages of the language.
3. The terms nominative and accusative are preferable to subjective and objective. For example, the nominative is not restricted to subject function (e.g. in "It was I who found it", "I" is subjective case but is not the subject. Likewise, in "For him to go alone would be very dangerous", "him" is objective case but it is the subject not an object.)

 

[jutfrank]

I agree with most of what you said, but not with that last sentence. The subject of your sentence is not 'him' but 'For him to go alone'.

I think PaulMatthews meant that him is the subject of the non-finite to go rather than the subject of the sentence as a whole.

 

[bubbha]

The historic dative and accusative cases of Old English merged to form the objective case in English: in "Give me the book", "me" is the indirect object.

The instrumental case no longer exists in English, but a remnant of it exists: "why" is derived from "hwi", the instrumental case of "hwæt" ("what") in Old English.