Case

1. ELT Session on Case By Dr . Nicholas Correa Director , New Horizon Scholars School

2. Case Case is the grammatical function of a noun or pronoun . There are only three cases in modern English, they are subjective (he), objective (him) and possessive (his) . They may seem more familiar in their old English form - nominative , accusative and genitive. There is no dative case in modern English. Yippee!

3. The good news is that we, we got rid of most of our cases. As a result English is easier than many other languages because nouns and some indefinite pronouns ( anyone, someone, everyone, and so on) only have a distinctive case form for the possessive. There are a few remnants of old English though, and pronouns have distinctive forms in all three cases and should be used with a bit more care.

4. There are three pronoun cases: 1. Subjective case: pronouns used as subject. 2. Objective case: pronouns used as objects of verbs or prepositions. 3. Possessive case: pronouns which express ownership.

5. Personal Pronoun Subjective/Nominative Objective/Accusative Possessive/Genitive Referring to the subject in a sentence Referring to the object in a sentence The apostrophe form of the word ("Lynne's).       I Me Mine You You Yours He Him His She Her Hers It It Its We Us Ours They Them Theirs Who Whom Whose

6. The above pronouns, and who and its compounds, are the only words that are inflected in all three cases - subjective, objective, possessive The subjective and objective cases are indistinguishable, and are called the common case in nouns . One result of this simplicity is that, the sense of case being almost lost, the few mistakes that can be made are made often, even by native speakers, some of them so often that they are now almost right by prescription.

7. Subjective / Nominative Case Used especially to identify the subject of a finite verb. A noun or pronoun is in the subjective when it is used as the subject of the sentence or as a predicate noun. In the following examples, nouns and pronouns in the subjective case are italicized. A noun in the subjective case is often the subject of a verb. For example: " The tree fell on my car", "the tree" is in the nominative case because it's the subject of the verb "fell“.

8. Personal Pronoun Subjective/Nominative Referring to the subject in a sentence. I You He She It We They Who Pronouns are inflected to show the subjective case .

9. For example: Lynne owns this web site. I hope to finish my homework tomorrow. She enjoyed her English lessons. He is an idiot . (The word idiot is a predicate noun because it follows is; a form of the verb "be")

10. Objective / Accusative Case A noun or pronoun is in the objective case when it is used as a direct object, an indirect object, or an object. A noun which is directly affected by the action of a verb is put into the objective case. In English we call this noun the "direct object" which is a little more descriptive of its function. It's the direct object of some action. Robert fixed the car . In the example above, the "car" is in the objective case because it's the direct object of Robert's action of fixing.

11. Personal Pronoun Objective/Accusative Referring to the object in a sentence   Me You Him Her It Us Them Whom Pronouns are inflected to show the objective case .

12. For example: The web site gave Lynne a headache. Mum gave us the money. She gave him the book.

13. Possessive Case The possessive case is used to show ownership. (Lynne's website .) The good news is that the genetive case is used less and less in English today. Hooray! You may still hear someone say something like "The mother of the bride," but it could equally be; "The bride's mother." However, the possessive pattern ('s) is generally used when indicate a relation of ownership or association with a person, rather than a thing. For example:- Lynne's web site kept growing larger and larger.

14. There are, as ever, exceptions to this rule. When a group of people is involved or animals. For example:- The members' forum. The dogs' tails. Singular and irregular plural nouns that don't end in 's' take -'s . For example:- Lynne 's web site. The people 's court

15. Plural nouns that end in " s " take an apostrophe at the end ( ' ). For example:- The girls ' dresses . People's names that end in "s" you can write (') or ('s ). For example:- Charles' job was on the line. Or Charles's job was on the line.

16. Try to avoid sounding like hissing Sid though. When an added - s would lead to three closely bunched s or z sounds just use an apostrophe at the end . The map of Ulysses' journey . If you have to show joint ownership, give the possessive form to the final name only . Abbott and Costello's famous baseball sketch.

17. Personal Pronoun/Determiner Possessive Lynne's Lynne's My Mine Your Yours His His Her Hers Its Its Our Ours Their Theirs Whose Whose Pronouns and determiners are inflected to show the possessive case .

18. For example:- This is Lynne's web site. It's my website!. It's mine ! It's not Zozanga's web site. It's not his website. It's not his . Have you seen her book? It's her book. It's hers .

19. Genitive Case You should still use the genetive case when talking about things that belong to other things. For example:- The door of the car . The content of the website. The top of the page . !Tip - If you aren't sure what to use stick to (of the).