In
linguistics,
declension is the occurrence of
inflection in
nouns,
pronouns and
adjectives, indicating such features as
number (typically singular vs. plural),
case (
subject,
object, and so on),
gender, and
possession. Declension occurs in a great many of the world's languages, and features very prominently in many
European languages, but is much less prominent in
English. English nouns decline only to distinguish singular from plural (e.g.,
book vs.
books); only very few English adjectives decline (the French loan-word
blond(e) being a rare exception), and only a few English pronouns show vestiges of case-triggered declension (e.g.,
nominative case he,
dative case or
accusative case him,
genitive case (
possessive case)
his). As detailed below, English was once a highly inflected language, as befitting its
Indo-European and especially its
Germanic linguistic ancestry, but it became greatly simplified as it evolved.
English
In
Modern English, nouns have distinct singular and plural forms; that is, they
decline to reflect their grammatical number. (Consider the difference between
book and
books.) In addition, a small number of English pronouns have distinct nominative and objective forms; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a
verb or
preposition. (Consider the difference between
he (
nominative) and
him (
dative or
accusative), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him.") Further, these pronouns and a few others have distinct
possessive forms, such as
his. (By contrast, nouns do not have distinct possessive forms; rather, the
clitic -'s attaches to a noun phrase to indicate that it serves as a possessor.)
English once had a much richer system of declension. First, there were a few more grammatical cases; Modern English's objective case results from a merging of
Old English's
accusative,
dative, and instrumental cases (like
a message,
him, and
post in "I sent a message to him via post," respectively). Second, the distinction between these cases was visible in all nouns, not just certain pronouns (indeed, the modern clitic
-'s descends from an affix used to mark Old English's genitive case, the ancestor of Modern English's
possessive pronoun forms). Third, adjectives were declined to reflect the number and case of the nouns they modified; this is called
agreement, and is analogous to
conjugation of verbs in Modern English (consider the difference between "I read" and "He reads"; here,
read has changed form to agree with its subject). Fourth, every noun had a
gender, either masculine, feminine, or neuter, which was reflected (via agreement) in adjectives that modified it and pronouns that had it as antecedent (there were some further complications as well; for example, adjectives had both
weak declensions and
strong declensions. For more information,
see Old English morphology).
Latin
An example of a
Latin noun declension is given below, using the singular forms of the word
homo (
man), which belongs to
Latin's third declension.
- (nominative) "[the] man" [as a subject] (e.g., the man is standing there)
- (genitive) "of [the] man" [as a possessor](e.g., the man's name is Claudius)
- (dative) "to [the] man" [as an indirect object] (e.g., I gave a present to the man; Man is a wolf to man.)
- (accusative) "[the] man" [as a direct object] (e.g., toward the man, in the sense of argument directed personally; I saw the man)
- (ablative) "[the] man" [in various uses not covered by the above] (e.g., I am taller than the man).
There are two further noun declensions in Latin, namely the vocative and the locative.
The vocative is widely used in Latin and refers to addressing someone or something (e.g.,
O Tite, cur ancillam pugnas? O Titus, why do you fight the slave girl?)
The locative case is only rarely used in Latin, but refers to the location of a person or an object.
Sanskrit
Declension has been analyzed extensively in
Sanskrit, where it is known as
karaka. Seven varieties are defined by
Pāṇini, largely in terms of their semantic
roles, but with detailed rules specifying the corresponding morphosyntactic derivations:
- agent (, often in subject position, performing independently)
- patient (, often in objective position)
- recipient (, similar to dative)
- source (, similar, but not the same, as ablative)
For example, consider the following sentence:
Here
leaf is the agent,
tree is the source, and
ground is the locus, the corresponding declensions are reflected in the morphemes and , respectively.
In addition, another declension exists, known as the vocative. It is used to indicate the object being addressed. For example: , "O Rama".
Languages with rich nominal inflection typically have a number of identifiable
declension classes, or groups of nouns that share a similar pattern of declension. Whereas Sanskrit has six classes, Latin is traditionally said to have 5 declension classes (see article on
Latin declension). Such languages often exhibit
free word order, since thematic roles are not dependent on position.
Though English
pronouns can have subject and object forms (he/him, she/her),
nouns show only a singular/plural and a possessive/non-possessive distinction (e.g.,
chair,
chairs,
chair's,
chairs'). Note that
chair does not change form between "the chair is here" (subject) and "I saw the chair" (direct object). The
n-declension is restricted to a few words like ox-oxen, brother-brethren, and child-children, though in Medieval English the s-declension and the n-declension were in stronger competition.
See also
Declension in specific languages
Latin and Greek
Related topics
