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Declension
In linguistics, declension is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in
the sentence, by way of some inflection. The inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.

Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and articles to indicate number (e.g. singular,
dual, plural), case (e.g. nominative case, accusative case, genitive case, dative case), gender (e.g. masculine,
neuter, feminine), and a number of other grammatical categories.

Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. Declension is an important aspect of language families
like American Indian (such as Quechuan), Indo-European (German, Russian, Romanian, Sanskrit, Latin),
Bantu (Zulu), Semitic (Modern Standard Arabic), Finno-Ugric (Hungarian, Finnish), Turkic (Turkish).

Old English was an inflectional language,In

butlinguistic
it has greatly abandoned
typology, inflectional
an analytic changes
language is as it evolved into
Modern English. Though traditionally classified as synthetic,
a language Modernconveys
that primarily Englishrelationships
has moved towards an analytic
language. between words in sentences by way of helper
words and word order, as opposed to utilizing
inflections. For example, the English-language

Contents phrase "The cat chases the ball" conveys the fact
that the cat is acting on the ball analytically
Modern English
Latin
Sanskrit
See also
Declension in specific languages
Latin and Greek
Related topics
References
External links

Modern English
In Modern English, the system of declensions is very simple compared to some other languages, so much so
that the term declension is rarely applied to English in practice. Most nouns in English have distinct singular
and plural forms and have distinct plain and possessive forms. Plurality is most commonly shown by the clitic
-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the clitic -'s (or by just the apostrophe for most plural
forms ending in s) attached to the noun. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl:

Singular Plural
Plain girl girls
Possessive girl's girls'

Most speakers pronounce all of the forms other than the singular plain form (girl) exactly the same (though
the elided possessive-indicating s of the plural possessive may be realised as [z] in some speakers'
pronunciations, being separated from the plural-indicating s normally by a central vowel such as [ɨ̞ ]). By

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contrast, a few nouns are slightly more complex in their forms. For example:

Singular Plural
Plain man men
Possessive man's men's

In that example, all four forms are pronounced in a distinct manner.

There can be other derivations from nouns that are not usually considered declensions. For example, the
proper noun Britain has the associated descriptive adjective British and the demonym Briton. Though these
words are clearly related and are generally considered cognates, they are not specifically treated as forms of
the same word and thus not declensions.

Pronouns in English have even more complex declensions. For example:

Singular Plural
Subjective I we
Objective me us
Dependent possessive my our
Independent possessive mine ours

Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the subjective (nominative) and objective (oblique) cases, some
pronouns do; 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 (although it is increasingly common to use who for both).

The one situation where gender is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third
person singular. Consider the following:

Neuter Neuter
Masculine Feminine
(non-person) (person)
Subjective he she it they
Objective him her it them
Dependent possessive his her its their
Independent possessive his hers its theirs

The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is somewhat peculiar to English. This has existed
since the 14th century.[2][3] However, the use of the so-called singular they is often restricted to specific
contexts, depending on the dialect or the speaker. It is most typically used to refer to a single person of
unknown gender (e.g., "someone left their jacket behind"). Its use has expanded in recent years due to
increasing social recognition of persons who do not identify themselves as male or female.[4] Note that the
singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins.

For nouns, in general, gender is not declined in Modern English, or at best one could argue there are isolated
situations certain nouns may be modified to reflect gender, though not in a systematic fashion. Loan words
from other languages, particularly Latin and the Romance languages, often preserve their gender-specific
forms in English, e.g. alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular). Similarly, names

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borrowed from other languages show comparable distinctions: Andrew and Andrea, Paul and Paula, etc.
Additionally, suffixes such as -ess, -ette, and -er are sometimes applied to create 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.

Most adjectives are not declined. However, when used as nouns rather than adjectives, they do decline (e.g.,
"I'll take the reds", meaning "I'll take the red ones" or as shorthand for "I'll take the red wines"). 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). 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 (sē m., þæt n., sēo f.) as it was declined in Old English.

Latin
Just as verbs in Latin are conjugated to indicate grammatical information, Latin nouns and adjectives that
modify them are declined to signal their roles in sentences. There are five important cases for Latin nouns:
nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. Since the vocative case usually takes the same form as
the nominative, it is seldom spelt out in grammar books. Yet another case, the locative, is limited to a small
number of words.

The usual basic functions of these cases are as follows:

Nominative case indicates the subject.

Genitive case indicates possession and can be translated with ʻofʼ.
Dative case marks the indirect object and can be translated with ʻtoʼ or ʻforʼ.
Accusative case marks the direct object.
Ablative case is used to modify verbs and can be translated as ʻbyʼ, ʻwithʼ, ʻfromʼ, etc.
Vocative case is used to address a person or thing.
The genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative also have important functions to indicate the object of a
preposition.

Given below is the declension paradigm of Latin puer ‘boy’ and puella ‘girl’:

Case Singular Plural Singular Plural

Nominative puer puerī puella puellae
Genitive puerī puerōrum puellae puellārum
Dative puerō puerīs puellae puellīs
Accusative puerum puerōs puellam puellās
Ablative puerō puerīs puellā puellīs

From the provided examples we can see how cases work:

liber puerī → the book of the boy (puerī boy=genitive)

puer puellae rosam dat → the boy gives the girl a rose (puer boy=nominative; puellae girl=dative; rosam
rose=accusative; dat give=third person singular present)

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Sanskrit
Sanskrit, another Indo-European language, has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative,
ablative, locative and instrumental.[5] Some do not count vocative as a separate case, despite it having a
distinctive ending in the singular, but consider it as a different use of the nominative.[6]

Sanskrit grammatical cases have been analyzed extensively. The grammarian Pāṇini identified seven semantic
roles or karaka, which correspond closely to the eight cases:[7]

agent (kartṛ, related to the nominative)

patient (karman, related to the accusative)
means (karaṇa, related to the instrumental)
recipient (sampradāna, related to the dative)
source (apādāna, related to the ablative)
locus (adhikaraṇa, related to the locative)
address (sambodhana, related to the vocative)
For example, consider the following sentence:

vṛkṣ-āt parṇ-aṁ bhūm-au 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

Arabic ʾIʿrab
Basque declension
Czech declension
Dutch declension system
Finnish language noun cases
German declension
Greek declension
Icelandic declension
Irish declension
Latin declension
Latvian declension
Lithuanian declension
Middle English declension
Polish declension
Russian declension
Slovak declension
Slovene declension
Ukrainian declension

Latin and Greek

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First declension
Second declension
Third declension

Related topics
Grammatical conjugation
Grammatical case
Strong inflection
Weak inflection

References
1. "Grammatical Features – Associativity" (http://www.grammaticalfeatures.net/features/associativity.html).
www.grammaticalfeatures.net.
2. Fowler, H.W. (2015). Butterfield, Jeremy, ed. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford
University Press. p. 814. ISBN 978-0-19-966135-0.
3. Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 494. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
4. Andrews, Travis M. (March 28, 2017). "The singular, gender-neutral 'they' added to the Associated Press
Stylebook" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/28/the-singular-gender-
neutral-they-added-to-the-associated-press-stylebook/). Washington Post.
5. James Clackson (2007) Indo-European linguistics: an introduction (https://books.google.com
/books?id=DJDjNp6wODoC&pg=PA90), p.90
6. 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 (https://books.google.com/books?id=t2f1hneiV08C&pg=PA68),
Volume 5402 of Lecture notes in artificial intelligence, Springer, 2009, ISBN 3-642-00154-8, pp. 64–68.
7. Pieter Cornelis Verhagen, Handbook of oriental studies: India. A history of Sanskrit grammatical literature
in Tibet, Volume 2 (https://books.google.com/books?id=5vmaX_JQzc4C&pg=PA281), BRILL, 2001,
ISBN 90-04-11882-9, p. 281.

External links
The Status of Morphological Case in the Icelandic Lexicon (http://www.hi.is/~eirikur/cases.pdf) by Eiríkur
Rögnvaldsson. Discussion of whether cases convey any inherent syntactic or semantic meaning.
Optimal Case: The Distribution of Case in German and Icelandic (http://web.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de
/~wdl/OptCase.pdf) by Dieter Wunderlich
Lexicon of Linguistics: Declension (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Declension)
Lexicon of Linguistics: Base (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Base), Stem
(http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Stem), Root (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS
/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Root)
Lexicon of Linguistics: Defective Paradigm (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon
/zoek.pl?lemma=Defective+paradigm)
Lexicon of Linguistics: Strong Verb (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Strong+verb)
Lexicon of Linguistics: Inflection Phrase (IP) (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=IP),
INFL (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=INFL), AGR (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS
/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=AGR), Tense (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=tense)
Lexicon of Linguistics: Lexicalist Hypothesis (http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon
/zoek.pl?lemma=Lexicalist+Hypothesis)
classical Greek declension (http://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/classics/nugreek/app1.htm)

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