CASE 



1213 



CASE 



up and packed tightly and usually kept a year 

 before being used. Merely an extract is used 

 in medicine, never the crude bark. Because 

 of the value of cascara as a laxative, many 

 patent medicines with names sounding like it 

 have been put on the market. 



CASE, a term which denotes the relation of 

 a noun or a pronoun to the other words in 

 the sentence. In Latin case is always indi- 

 cated by inflecting, or changing the ending of 

 words, but in English most case-endings have 

 been dropped and case is commonly indicated 

 by the order in which the words are used; that 

 is, the place which the word occupies in the 

 sentence. To illustrate: In the sentence, "Ar- 

 thur gave Ernest Mary's ball," all except one 

 of the words are nouns, each used in a different 

 way. Arthur is used as the subject of the sen- 

 tence, ball is the direct object of the verb gave, 

 Ernest is the indirect object, and Mary's is 

 used to modify ball and indicates ownership. 

 If such a sentence were written in Latin each 

 of these different uses would be indicated by 

 changing the endings of the words themselves. 

 In Old English, too, nouns were inflected to 

 show their case, but in modern English they are 

 inflected only in one case, the possessive. 



Order Determines Case. But, although the 

 inflected forms of nouns have disappeared, the 

 names of the different cases have been re- 

 tained and these are used, in sentence analysis, 

 for indicating the relationships of nouns to 

 other words. For example, the only way in 

 which the noun Arthur is inflected is by adding 

 's to form the possessive. Taking the sen- 

 tence used above, let us see how changing 

 the position of the various words will alter 

 their case and therefore the meaning of the 

 sentence. For example, in the sentence, "Ar- 

 thur gave Ernest Mary's ball," Arthur is the 

 subject of the sentence, therefore is said to be 

 in the nominative case. If the sentence is 

 changed to read, "Ernest gave Arthur Mary's 

 ball," Arthur, simply through its changed posi- 

 tion, becomes the indirect object of the verb 

 and is then said to be in the objective, or ac- 

 cusative, case. Or, the sentence might read, 

 "Ernest gave away Arthur's ball," in which 

 event Arthur's would be in the possessive, or 

 genitive, case. 



There are, then, three cases, in English: the 

 nominative, the possessive (or genitive), the 

 dative and the objective (or accusative). 



Uses of the Nominative. A noun is said to 

 be in the nominative case when it is used as 

 the subject of a verb, as, "Miriam called at the 



house one evening in midsummer"; when it is 

 used as the predicate complement of a verb, as, 

 "Edison is a great inventor"; when it is used 

 in apposition with another nominative word, 

 as, "That is Peary, the famous explorer" ; when 

 it is used as the person or thing addressed, as, 

 "Agatha, where have you been?" or when it 

 is used independently as the subject of a parti- 

 cipial clause, in what is called the nominative 

 absolute, as, "The moon having risen, we 

 started." 



Uses of the Objective. A noun is said to be 

 in the objective case when it is used as the 

 direct or indirect object of a verb, two uses 

 which can be illustrated in the same sentence: 

 "Max threw Peter the ball." Ball is the object 

 of the verb threw; Peter is the indirect object, 

 in reality the object of the preposition to, 

 understood. Both are said to be in the ob- 

 jective case. A noun is also in the objective 

 case when it is the object of a preposition, as, 

 "Max threw the ball against the wall." Here 

 wall is the object of the preposition against. 



The subject of an infinitive must also be in 

 the objective case. In Latin the infinitive 

 construction is used very freely and the subject 

 of the infinitive is always in the accusative 

 case, which corresponds to the English objec- 

 tive case. In English the infinitive construc- 

 tion with the subject expressed is possible only 

 in conjunction with a transitive verb. In the 

 sentence, "I believed him to be honest," him 

 is the subject of the infinitive to be honest, 

 and the entire phrase is the object of the verb 

 believed. Where the infinitive to be takes a 

 complement, the case of that complement must 

 be objective, to agree with the case of the 

 infinitive's subject, as in the sentence, "They 

 thought me to be him." 



A noun or a pronoun in apposition with an- 

 other noun or pronoun in the objective case 

 is also. put in the objective; as, "I have en- 

 gaged Johnson, the carpenter"; "I have en- 

 gaged Johnson, him whom you recommended"; 

 "They were amazed to see her again, her whom 

 they had thought dead." 



Forming the Possessive, or Genitive. A noun 

 is said to be in this case when it denotes own- 

 ership; as, Paul's umbrella; Stanley's skates. 

 Possession may also be indicated by means of 

 a prepositional phrase, as, the banks of the 

 river. 



Singular Possessives. The possessive case 

 is formed in the singular by adding to the 

 nominative form of the noun the letter s, pre- 

 ceded by an apostrophe ('). In old English 



