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In linguistics, declension (or declination) is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as number (typically singular vs. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" plural), case (subject, object, and so on), or gender. In Grammar, the case of a Noun or Pronoun indicates its Grammatical function in a greater Phrase or Clause; such as the According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the An object in Grammar is a Sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. In Linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called Noun classes are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words every noun must belong 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 only decline to distinguish singular from plural (e. Most of the many Languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European Language family. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States 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

English

Further information: Old English declension and Old English pronouns

In Modern English, nouns have distinct singular and plural forms; that is, they decline to reflect their grammatical number. Old English nouns were declined – that is the ending of the noun changed to reflect its function in the sentence Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550 (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. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. (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. Possession, in the context of Linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents the Referent of one of which (the possessor) possesses (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. In Linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonologically dependent Word. )

Historically, English 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. In Languages agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase In Linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a Verb, Noun or Adjective from its Principal parts by Inflection (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. In Linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called Noun classes are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words every noun must belong (There were some further complications as well; for example, adjectives had both weak declensions and strong declensions. For more information, see Old English morphology. The morphology of the Old English language is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more highly inflected. )

Latin

Further information: Latin declension

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. Latin is an inflected language and as such its nouns pronouns and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome.

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 servam 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. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Six varieties are defined by Pāṇini, largely in terms of their semantic roles, but with detailed rules specifying the corresponding morphosyntactic derivations:

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. Pāṇini ( IAST: Pāṇini Dēvanāgarī: sa पाणिनि a Patronymic meaning "descendant of {{IAST|Paṇi}} " was an ancient In Linguistics, ablative case ( abbreviated ABL) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic

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). Latin is an inflected language and as such its nouns pronouns and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function Such languages often exhibit free word order, since thematic roles are not dependent on position. In Linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the different ways in which languages arrange the constituents of their sentences relative to each other and the systematic

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

Related topics

External links

Dictionary

declension

-noun

  1. (grammar): A way of categorizing nouns, pronouns, or adjectives according to the inflections they receive.
  2. (grammar): The act of declining a word; the act of listing the inflections of a noun, pronoun or adjective in order.
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