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In linguistics, 'declension' (or 'declination') is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. plural), case (subject, object, and so on), or gender. Declension occurs in a great many of the world's languages, and features very prominently in many Indo-European languages, but is much less prominent in English; English nouns only decline to distinguish singular from plural (e.g. ''book'' vs. ''books''), English adjectives do not decline at all, and only a few English pronouns show vestiges of case-triggered declension (e.g. subjective ''he'' vs. objective ''him'').

Contents

Declension in English

Latin and Sanskrit

See also

Declension in specific languages

Related topics

External links

Declension in English

Main articles: Declension in 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''.) Additionally, a small number of English pronouns have distinct subjective and objective forms; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb or preposition. (Consider the difference between ''he'' and ''him'', 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.)
Historically, English had a much richer system of declension. Firstly, 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). Secondly, 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.) Thirdly, adjectives were declined to reflect the number and case of the nouns they modified; this is called ''agreement'', and is analogous to agreement of certain verb forms in Modern English. (Consider the difference between "I read" and "He reads"; here, ''read'' has changed form to agree with its subject.) Fourthly, 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 and Sanskrit

An example of a Latin noun declension is given below, using the singular forms of the word ''homo'' (''man''), which belongs to .

★ ''homo'' (nominative) "[the] man" [as a subject] (e.g. ''homo ibi stat'' the man is standing there)

★ ''hominis'' (genitive) "of [the] man" (e.g. ''nomen hominis est Claudius'' the man's name is Claudius)

★ ''homini'' (dative) "to [the] man" [as an indirect object] (e.g. ''homini donum dedi'' I gave a present to the man; ''homo homini lupus'' Man is a wolf to man.)

★ ''hominem'' (accusative) "[the] man" [as a direct object] (e.g. ''ad hominem'' toward the man, in the sense of argument directed personally; ''hominem vidi'' I saw the man)

★ ''homine'' (ablative) "[the] man" [in various uses not covered by the above] (e.g. ''sum altior homine'' I am taller than the man).
Declension has been analyzed extensively in Sanskrit, where it is known as karaka. Six varieties are defined by Pāṇini, largely in terms of their semantic roles, but with detailed rules specifying the corresponding morphosyntactic derivations:

★ agent (''kartri'', often in the subject position, performing independently)

★ patient (''karman'', often in object position)

★ means (''karaṇa'', instrument)

★ recipient (''sampradāna'', similar to dative)

★ source (''apādāna'', similar, but not the same, as ablative)

★ locus (''adhikaraṇa'', location or goal)
For example, consider the following sentence:

''vrikśh[at]''	''parṇ[am] ''	''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 corresponding declensions are reflected in the morphemes ''-am'' ''-at'' and ''-au'' respectively.
Languages with rich nominal inflection typically have a number of identifiable 'declension classes', or groups of nouns that share a similar pattern of declension. While 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

★ Czech declension

★ English declension

★ Finnish language noun cases

★ German declension

★ Icelandic declension

★ Latin declension

★ Slovak declension

★ Slovenian declension

Related topics

★ Grammatical case

★ Grammatical conjugation

★ Inflection

External links

★ The Status of Morphological Case in the Icelandic Lexicon by Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson. Discussion of whether cases convey any inherent syntactic or semantic meaning.

★ Optimal Case: The Distribution of Case in German and Icelandic by Dieter Wunderlich

★ Lexicon of Linguistics: Declension

★ Lexicon of Linguistics: Base, Stem, Root

★ Lexicon of Linguistics: Defective Paradigm

★ Lexicon of Linguistics: Strong Verb

★ Lexicon of Linguistics: Inflection Phrase (IP), INFL, AGR, Tense

★ Lexicon of Linguistics: Lexicalist Hypothesis