Nominative case

Ingrammar,thenominative case(abbreviatedNOM),subjective case,straight case,orupright caseis one of thegrammatical casesof anounor other part of speech, which generally marks thesubjectof averb,or (in Latin and formal variants of English) apredicative nominal or adjective,as opposed to itsobject,or otherverb arguments.Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in dictionaries.

Etymology

The English wordnominativecomes fromLatincāsus nominātīvus"case for naming",which was translated fromAncient Greekὀνομαστικὴ πτῶσις,onomastikḗ ptôsis"inflection for naming",fromonomázō"call by name",fromónoma"name".Dionysius Thraxin hisThe Art of Grammarrefers to it asorthḗoreutheîa"straight",in contrast to theobliqueor "bent" cases.

Characteristics

The reference form (more technically, theleastmarked) of certain parts of speech is normally in the nominative case, but that is often not a complete specification of the reference form, as the number and the gender may need to be specified. Thus, the reference or least marked form of an adjective might be the nominative masculine singular.

The parts of speech that are oftendeclinedand therefore may have a nominative case are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and (less frequently) numerals and participles. The nominative case often indicates the subject of a verb but sometimes does not indicate any particular relationship with the other parts of a sentence. In some languages, the nominative case is unmarked, and it may then be said to be marked by anull morpheme.Moreover, in most languages with a nominative case, the nominative form is thelemma;that is, it is the reference form used to cite a word, to list it as a dictionary entry etc.

Nominative cases are found inAlbanian,Arabic,Estonian,Sanskrit,Slovak,Ukrainian,Hungarian,Lithuanian,Georgian,German,Latin,Greek,Icelandic,Old English,Old French,Polish,Serbian,Czech,Romanian,RussianandPashto,among other languages. English still retains some nominativepronouns,which are contrasted with theaccusative(comparable to theobliqueordisjunctivein some other languages):I(accusativeme),we(accusativeus),he(accusativehim),she(accusativeher),they(accusativethem) andwho(accusativewhom). A usage that isarchaicin most current English dialects is the singular second-person pronounthou(accusativethee). A special case is the wordyou:originally,yewas its nominative form andyouthe accusative, but over time,youhas come to be used for the nominative as well.

The term "nominative case" is most properly used in the discussion ofnominative–accusative languages,such as Latin, Greek and most modern Western European languages.

Inactive–stative languages,there is a case, sometimes called nominative, that is themostmarked case and is used for the subject of atransitive verbor a voluntary subject of anintransitive verbbut not for an involuntary subject of an intransitive verb. Since such languages are a relatively new field of study, there is no standard name for this case.

Subjective case

English is now often described as having asubjective case,instead of a nominative, to draw attention to the differences between the "standard" generic nominative and the way that it is used in English.The termobjective caseis then used for theoblique case,which covers the roles of accusative, dative and objects of a preposition. Thegenitive caseis then usually called thepossessiveform, rather than a noun caseper se.English is then said to have two cases: the subjective and the objective.

Examples

Subject

The nominative case marks the subject of a verb. When the verb is active, the nominative is the person or thing doing the action (agent); when the verb is passive, the nominative is the person or thing receiving the action.

• The boysaw her.
• Shewas seen by the boy.

Predicate noun or adjective

Incopular sentences,the nominative is used for both subject and predicate.

• Socrateswasa wise man.
• Socrateswaswise.