 This e-lecture introduces the central properties of case in a cross-linguistic fashion using examples from a variety of languages. In particular, we will exemplify the notion of case using examples from several languages. We will draw a distinction between direct and oblique case. And we will define some aspects of what is known as case syncretism. The term case, Latin casus, is a name for the entire class of relational categories applicable to noun inflection or declension, reflecting the roles played by nouns in sentences. And languages differ enormously concerning the complexity of their case systems. Let us illustrate this on the basis of the morphosyntactic part of some entries from the VLC Language Index. At one extreme, we have languages such as Finnish, a Uralic language. And this language is well known for its elaborate case system. Now here are our examples. The woman is sleeping. And we are interested in the form of the item woman. Our second example, the man sees the woman. And here is example number three. The man gives to the woman the book. And in each example, we have a morphologically different form of the Finnish equivalent of woman. Nainen in the nominative case, marked as a subject. Nysen in the genitive case, marked as an object. And Nysilla, marked in the allative case, which is something like to the woman. Thus, in summary, a very complex case system. And this case system is even more complex if we take cases that not only define syntactic functions, but semantic relationships such as the partitive, for example. Corian auton, I fix the car, is first of all the genitive, as we know. Now if we compare that with Corian auton, I fix some car. Here we have the partitive, a different morphological structure. And he is in the car, is marked as the inesif, some sort of locative relationship. And finally, autostar, he is getting out of the car, the so-called elative case. And I could go on with all the other examples that you can find here. If you consult the language index entry finish, you can access all these examples. So finish is extremely complex as far as its case system is concerned. Other languages, for example the Sino-T-Baton languages, have relatively little or no case marking at all. Here is an example from Mandarin Chinese. Well, again the woman is sleeping. Now compare that with the man sees the woman. And finally the last example, the man gives the woman the book. Well, and in all three cases, in all three examples, human female, the Chinese equivalent of woman, does not undergo any morphological alternation. So there is no case marking in Mandarin Chinese. Well, and what about English? Well, English has only retained few cases from a formally very complex case system which is illustrated over here. So these are the two cases that are generally left in present-day English. For some pronouns, a maximum of three cases can be defined. The nominative case, the genitive case, and a case form that is used if these pronouns occur in object positions. So let's call it the object case. Well, and in standard nouns, as you all know, we have just two cases left. The genitive case again? Well, and an unmarked case, we might want to call it common case or oblique case. There are several terms around. The common case is thus simply the form that is used when the genitive is not used. Despite the slightly more complex case system for pronouns, one could, perhaps with some care, define English as a language without case distinctions at all. But with a special form, often in a sort of periphrastic, that is complex phrasal form, used to express relationships such as the possessive, partitive, etc., you know, the off-genitive. Having exemplified variants of case, let us now look at the classification of case in general. The notion of case can be subdivided into two central categories, direct case or grammatical or syntactic case, and the oblique case, that is also referred to as semantic case. Let us start with the treatment of the oblique or semantic case. Now, the oblique case, as I said, also referred to as semantic case, can be expressed in many ways. Here are two examples from present-day English. In the car versus into the car, and the difference, as you may know, is a difference between a location and a direction. How do we express that in present-day English? Well, the semantic relationship is expressed via specific prepositions. This can be contrasted, again, with finish, where case endings do the same thing. Autosar versus auto-on. And then we have split systems. In German, for example, this semantic relationship is expressed via a proposition. However, the proposition is identical for both semantic relations. In dem auto, in das auto. To draw a distinction, case inherent in the determiners takes over. In dem auto, the dative case, which marks the locative relationship. In das auto, where das is the accusative case, could also be the nominative case, but here, accusative, and it marks a directional relationship. Oblique cases denote a semantic content that is not dependent on structural roles. Here is a collection of the semantic relationships expressed by the languages in the world, either by means of prepositions or postpositions or by means of case. We have the partitive relationship, something like some car, the commentative relationship, something like with a car. The instrumental relationship, something like by, again with, by means of. And then we have locative and directional relationships such as the translative into the car, the elative out of the car, the elative into again, and the elative to another object. And also, we have special relationships such as the esive, which means as a car, the abesive without, and the instructive with, and the adesive relationship, which means on. Having discussed the variants of the realization of the oblique case, let us now turn our attention to the discussion of direct case. Now, direct case, as I said already, also referred to as grammatical or syntactic case, is used to mark the basic syntactic functions subject, direct object, and indirect object. Cross-linguistically, six direct cases can be identified. For subjects and direct objects, we find the nominative, the accusative, the absolutive, and the ergative cases. And for indirect objects, we have cases such as the dative and the genitive case. For the marking of these cases, two possible systems can be distinguished, the accusative case system and the ergative case system. Now, in the accusative case system or case marking system to be precise, subjects are generally marked by the nominative and objects of transitive verbs by the accusative case. This system can be found in most of the Indo-European languages. Usually, the nominative is the base form of a noun and the accusative an inflected variant. Let us look at the main variants of the accusative case system. Here is the first one, a language with formal direct case distinction. And the example I chose from the VLC language index is Russian. Again, I have the three sentences. The woman is sleeping, the man sees the woman, and the man gives the woman the book. Let's listen first. The woman is sleeping, the man sees the woman, the man gives the woman the book. And as you can see, we have three forms. The woman, the woman, and the woman saw clearly a formal case distinction, a direct case distinction in terms of different suffixes. The next variant exhibits a language with partial formal direct case distinction. And the example I chose here is German. And since I am a native speaker of German, I can produce these sentences myself. Again, same sentences, the man sleeps, the woman sees the man, and the woman gives the man the book. The man is sleeping, the woman sees the man, and the woman gives the man the book. Now what is happening here, if you look at the noun itself, man, man, there is no distinction at all. But here, case is expressed by the inherent marking of the determiner, der, the nominative, dien, accusative, and dien, the dative case. Well, and finally, there are languages with no formal direct case distinction. And the example, of course, we all know, is present-day English. So a quick look at it may suffice. The man sleeps, the woman sees the man, the woman gives the man the book. So in each case, we have the man with no case marking at all. Let's now contrast this with the ergative system of direct case marking. Well, this system draws a distinction between the case marking of the subjects of intransitive and transitive verbs. The Caucasian and the Australian aboriginal languages typically use the ergative case marking system. Here is an example from Georgian. Now, let's first of all listen, and again, we have the two sentences, the man is sleeping and the man sees the woman. Kats Stinas. Quite interesting. Kats Stinas and kats involves an adjective consonant, a typical feature of Georgian. And if you contrast that with the second sentence, the man sees the woman. Katsi Hedavs Karls. We have katsi, and clearly we have a special case for the subject in the transitive context. C is a transitive verb, monotransitive, and sleep is used intransitively in Georgian. So clearly the base form, the absolute form is used in the intransitive context, and the ergative case is used in transitive context. Having defined the various types of case, let us now discuss the question what happens if a language has little or no case marking versus languages with very elaborate case systems as far as the syntax is concerned. And this leads me to the discussion of case syncretism. As you may know, English underwent several changes from its early period, old English, until today. One change was the weakening of the case system, technically referred to as case syncretism. That is a mechanism of merging formally distinct case forms. In old English, for example, the period from 600 to 1100 after Christ, there were four cases. Four morphological cases. Here we have the example of the noun tale, talu, tala, tala, and tala, talum, tala. Four different forms. In the singular, the syntactic cases talu and tala were clearly distinguished. In the plural, the nominative and the accusative forms had already merged. Later, these forms were levelled to two cases in present day English, the genitive case and the unmarked or common or oblique case. Now the levelling of cases brought about a tendency towards a more rigid word order. Why is this so? What has word order got to do with case systems? Well, let us illustrate the necessity of fixing the word order where you have fewer cases using an example from German. Here it is. The example is quite simple. Der Mann sieht den Hund, the man sees the dog. And der Mann is clearly marked as a subject by means of the presence of a nominative marked determiner der. And den Hund is clearly the object because we have an accusative marked determiner den. Well, and this means we can easily change the sentence to something like den Hund sieht der Mann. And the situation is the same. Irrespective of the word order, we can interpret this sentence as a sentence where der Mann is the subject and den Hund is the object. So word order does not play a role. But what about if we take names? Maria sieht Paul, Mary sees Paul. Now here we just have the noun. We don't have a determiner. Well, in this case, we have a problem. If we take Paul into the first position, then Paul clearly becomes the subject, whereas Maria becomes the object. So as soon as we drop the case marking possibilities, word order takes over. The first item becomes the subject and the item that follows the verb becomes the object. So without case marking, without case marked determiners in German, the only way of interpreting noun phrases as subjects or objects is word order. With case marking, word order is no longer necessary as the key factor. Let us summarize. In this e-lecture, we saw that all languages have to express syntactic as well as semantic relations. Some languages, like Finnish, use case to do all this. Others apply a combination of ad positions, that's the head term for prepositions and post positions, and word order. We also found out that case systems can be defined as direct or syntactic on the one hand and as oblique or semantic on the other. Yet as we saw, some of the direct cases can serve oblique functions as well. Thus the term syntactic and semantic case are misleading to some extent. As we saw, German, for example, marks prepositional phrases with the accusative, dative, or even the genitive case. I didn't give you an example with a genitive case here as one. Wegen meiner Kopfschmerzen, because of my headache. And so, all this depends on semantic factors. But all these cases are used as direct cases too. And finally, I hope to have briefly illustrated the effect of case syncretism. That is a mechanism that has affected the English language from its origins until the present day. The mechanisms that underlie case syncretism have not been mentioned in this e-lecture. To find out these mechanisms, I recommend you to consult our Language Typology e-lecture Types of Language Change Part 1.