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Glite Dictionary
grammatical case

grammatical case

6.7
Different forms of nouns or pronouns that show their role in a sentence
  • noun
  • /ˈɡræmətɪkəl keɪs/
  • Specialized
translation icon : caso gramatical
  • Russian uses six different grammatical cases to convey meaning and indicate relationships between words.

Examples

  • Understanding grammatical case is essential for analyzing how nouns function within a sentence.

  • In English, the subject and object of a sentence are determined by their grammatical case.

  • Throughout this range of infinitival relatives, we can identify one common characteristic of the grammatical cases (la, c, e, f).

    Academic text (2006)

Synonyms

case
vsgrammatical case
  • Specialized
15 8.7

The form of a word that shows its job in a sentence

has identical meaning but is the standard English term
casus
vsgrammatical case
  • Specialized
9.9

A form of a noun or pronoun that shows its role in a sentence

has identical meaning but is a Latin or specialist label

Surface Forms

grammatical case singular
grammatical cases plural

Morphology

grammatical + case

The phrase is directly compositional: 'grammatical' (pertaining to grammar) simply specifies the type of 'case', so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to the inflectional category that marks relationships between words. This concept is cross-linguistically common and follows a straightforward adjective+noun pattern, making the expression transparent despite being somewhat technical.

Etymology

Grammatical case comes from old Latin where case meant a 'situation' or 'position'. So case names the different 'positions' or forms a noun can take to show its 'job' in a sentence.