nominative,genitive etc.

[Marco Moock]

Hello!

Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases" (directly
translated from German in languages in English, e.g. genitive, dative,
genitive etc.?

[Aidan Kehoe]

Post by Marco Moock
Hello!
Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases" (directly
translated from German in languages in English, e.g. genitive, dative,
genitive etc.?

“Grammatical case”, “case” (if it’s clear we’re talking about grammar),
“declension”, “accidence” (though the latter is rare)?

I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking, though the above may have
answered it.

[Marco Moock]

Post by Aidan Kehoe

Post by Marco Moock
Hello!
Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases" (directly
translated from German in languages in English, e.g. genitive,
dative, genitive etc.?

“Grammatical case”, “case” (if it’s clear we’re talking about
grammar), “declension”, “accidence” (though the latter is rare)?
I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking, though the above may
have answered it.

Thanks, it answered my question.

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Marco Moock

Post by Aidan Kehoe

Post by Marco Moock
Hello!
Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases" (directly
translated from German in languages in English, e.g. genitive,
dative, genitive etc.?

“Grammatical case”, “case” (if it’s clear we’re talking about
grammar), “declension”, “accidence” (though the latter is rare)?
I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking, though the above may
have answered it.

Thanks, it answered my question.

The above is for nouns, by the way. For verbs we say conjugation.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by Marco Moock

Post by Aidan Kehoe

Post by Marco Moock
Hello!
Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases" (directly
translated from German in languages in English, e.g. genitive,
dative, genitive etc.?

“Grammatical case”, “case” (if it’s clear we’re talking about
grammar), “declension”, “accidence” (though the latter is rare)?
I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking, though the above may
have answered it.

Thanks, it answered my question.

The above is for nouns, by the way. For verbs we say conjugation.

Yes, we do, but why?

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by Marco Moock

Post by Aidan Kehoe

Post by Marco Moock
Hello!
Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases"
(directly translated from German in languages in English,
e.g. genitive, dative, genitive etc.?

“Grammatical case”, “case” (if it’s clear we’re talking about
grammar), “declension”, “accidence” (though the latter is rare)?
I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking, though the
above may have answered it.

Thanks, it answered my question.

The above is for nouns, by the way. For verbs we say conjugation.

Yes, we do, but why?

We got the word from Latin, and apparently many other languages also
took it from Latin.

I see a conceptual difference between noun (and adjective) declension
and verb conjugation. For nouns the inflection depends on case and
number. For verbs it depends on person and number and tense; not the
same thing.

Inflected prepositions, a feature of Celtic languages, are a headache
for me in my study of Irish. The inflected forms are known as
prepositional pronouns, but I think of them as conjugated prepositions,
because they come in seven forms corresponding to
me/you/he/she/we/you/they. (Actually twice as many if you count the
emphatic forms. And they're all somewhat irregular.)

(On the positive side, Irish prepositions are not inflected for tense.)

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by Marco Moock

Post by Aidan Kehoe

Post by Marco Moock
Hello!
Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases"
(directly translated from German in languages in English,
e.g. genitive, dative, genitive etc.?

“Grammatical case”, “case” (if it’s clear we’re talking about
grammar), “declension”, “accidence” (though the latter is rare)?
I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking, though the
above may have answered it.

Thanks, it answered my question.

The above is for nouns, by the way. For verbs we say conjugation.

Yes, we do, but why?

We got the word from Latin, and apparently many other languages also
took it from Latin.
I see a conceptual difference between noun (and adjective) declension
and verb conjugation. For nouns the inflection depends on case and
number. For verbs it depends on person and number and tense; not the
same thing.
Inflected prepositions, a feature of Celtic languages, are a headache
for me in my study of Irish. The inflected forms are known as
prepositional pronouns, but I think of them as conjugated prepositions,
because they come in seven forms corresponding to
me/you/he/she/we/you/they. (Actually twice as many if you count the
emphatic forms. And they're all somewhat irregular.)
(On the positive side, Irish prepositions are not inflected for tense.)

I get the impression from your comments that Irish and Gaelic are
vastly more difficult for the poor Saxon than Welsh. In Welsh, of which
I know much less than you know of Irish, if you read a word you know
how to pronounce it; if you hear it you know how to write it (more or
less, in both cases). The grammar is, on the whole, straightforward,
however weird it may look to English eyes. The main difficulty is
remembering the plurals of nouns, which seem to be totally arbitrary:
ffenestr, ffenestri; llyfr, llyfrau; ffordd, ffyrdd; afon, afonydd,
etc. These are just a few of the numerous ways of making a plural. I
imagine Cornish and Breton are similar, whereas Manx is similar to
Gaelic.

The simplest way of making a plural is that of Provençal, in the
Mistralian orthography, in which nouns are invariant for number, so the
plural of a Provençal noun is exactly the same as the singular. That
doesn't apply to the Classical norm, which forms plurals with -s, and
seems to be designed to make Provençal look as much like Catalan as
possible. Unfortunately the Classical norm is driving out the
Mistralian norm, and, for example, the Provençal page of La
Marseillaise that I see every Saturday follows the Classical norm, and
if you didn't know you would think it was Catalan. On the other hand,
the Provençal plaques one sees when walking up to Notre Dame de la
Garde are spelt according to Mistral (not too surpsing as they
celebrate Frédéric Mistral and the his association the Félibrige).

[Ross Clark]

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by Marco Moock

Post by Aidan Kehoe

Post by Marco Moock
Hello!
Is there an umbrella term for the "grammatical cases" (directly
translated from German in languages in English, e.g. genitive,
dative, genitive etc.?

“Grammatical case”, “case” (if it’s clear we’re talking about
grammar), “declension”, “accidence” (though the latter is rare)?
I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking, though the above may
have answered it.

Thanks, it answered my question.

The above is for nouns, by the way. For verbs we say conjugation.

Yes, we do, but why?

Why different terms for noun and verb inflection?
Actually we could call them both inflection (as I just did), so there's
a third term to consider.

I think "inflect" and "decline" have similar meanings (respectively
"bend" and "turn") which seem metaphorically obvious -- when you inflect
or decline, you are changing the word a little bit, but not entirely.

But "conjugate" looks as if it should mean "join together". I speculate
that it may be because of the category of person, which does not play a
part in noun inflection. Verb forms vary according to the person (and
number) of the subject with which the verb is associated (joined) amo,
amas, amat.

(Verb forms that have this relation to a subject are called "finite"
(finished, complete), which may point to the same metaphor.)

Now I'll see if I can find a scholarly source to back me up.

[Peter Moylan]

Why different terms for noun and verb inflection? Actually we could
call them both inflection (as I just did), so there's a third term
to consider.
I think "inflect" and "decline" have similar meanings (respectively
"bend" and "turn") which seem metaphorically obvious -- when you
inflect or decline, you are changing the word a little bit, but not
entirely.
But "conjugate" looks as if it should mean "join together". I
speculate that it may be because of the category of person, which
does not play a part in noun inflection. Verb forms vary according
to the person (and number) of the subject with which the verb is
associated (joined) amo, amas, amat.
(Verb forms that have this relation to a subject are called "finite"
(finished, complete), which may point to the same metaphor.)
Now I'll see if I can find a scholarly source to back me up.

Was there ever a time when amo (for example) was two separate words
am+o? If so, it must have been back before Indo-European split into
different dialects.

In French the "join together" connection is even more obvious if you go
beyond the present tense. In both the future tense and the passé simple
the verb forms look a lot like a stem plus the present tense of the verb
"avoir" (to have). Similarly for the conditional and imperfect forms,
except that now the endings look like the imperfect of avoir. I mention
French because it's the example I know best, but I believe that similar
comments apply to the other Romance languages, including Latin.

Now that I think of it, a distant memory tells me that the impression of
tacked-on endings is even stronger in Greek.

It's true that (in European languages) noun declension is most commonly
of the form stem+ending, but there the endings can't be interpreted as
the tacking on of an extra word. Instead, the inflected forms are just
modified versions of the word.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Ross Clark
Why different terms for noun and verb inflection?

In Danish the verb "bøje" ("bend") is used about verbs, nouns and
adjectives. In German you can also use "beugen" for all three word
classes. The verb I've seen the most about adjectives, however, is
"steigen" which I like a lot in this sense. It means "raise".