Case

Case is the morphological category of the noun manifested in the forms of

noun declension and showing the relations of the nounal referent to other
objects and phenomena. Thus, the case form of the noun, or contractedly its
"case".
The category of case in English constitutes a great linguistic problem.
Linguists argue, first, whether the category of case really exists in modern
English, and, second, if it does exist, how many case forms of the noun can
be distinguished in English.

The first view may be called the “theory of positional cases”. This theory
is directly connected with the old grammatical tradition, and its traces can be
seen in many contemporary school textbooks in the English-speaking
countries. Linguistic formulations of this theory may be found in the works
of Nesfield, Deutschbein, Bryant and others.
In accord with the theory of positional cases, the unchangeable forms of the
noun are differentiated as different cases by virtue of the functional positions
occupied by the noun in the sentence. Thus, the English noun, on the
analogy of classical Latin grammar, would distinguish, besides the
inflectional possessive case, also the non-infiectional, i.e. purely positional
cases:
nominative, vocative, dative and accusative. The uninflectional cases of the
noun are taken to be supported by the parallel inflectional cases of the
personal pronouns:
Nominative (subject) Rain falls
Vocative (address) Will you be there, Ann?
Dative (indirect object) I gave John a penny.
Accusative (direct object) They killed a bear.
Or prepositional object They broke the window with a stone.
The blunder of this theory is that it substitutes the functional characteristics
of the part of the sentence for the morphological features of the word class,
whereas the case form, by definition, is a variable morphological form of the
noun. What this theory does prove is that the functional meanings rendered
by cases can be expressed in language by other grammatical means, in
particular, by word-order.
The second view may be called the “theory of prepositional cases”. It is
also connected with the old school grammar teaching, and was advanced as a
logical supplement to the positional view of the case.
In accord with the prepositional theory, combinations of nouns with
prepositions in certain object and attributive collocations should be
understood as morphological case forms. To these belong first of all the
“dative” case (to + N, for + N) and the possessive case (of + N). These
prepositions are inflectional prepositions, i.e. grammatical elements
equivalent to case forms. The would-be prepositional cases are generally
taken as coexisting with positional cases, together with the classical
inflectional genitive completing the case system of the English noun. The
prepositional theory, though somewhat better grounded than the positional
theory, nevertheless can hardly pass a serious linguistic trial.
Prepositions may have various meanings depending on the context, which
makes it possible for a preposition to correlate with several cases. For
example, in English the preposition by, formerly a purely local form (He
stood by the window) came to acquire a sense of means or instrument. The
Oxford English Dictionary suggests that this preposition acquired its
instrumental sense via expressions such as She read by candlelight where the
by-phrase, originally a locative (Where did she read?), was reinterpreted as
instrumental (How did she read it?). It is not hard to find situations that
allow a locative or instrumental interpretation and which could facilitate a
locative or instrumental form adopting both functions. Here are some
examples: wash the cloth in/with water, cook meat on/in/with fire, come
on/by horse.
The third view of the English noun case recognizes a limited inflectional
system of two cases in English, one of them featured and the other one un-
featured. This view may be called the “limited case theory”. This theory is at
present most broadly accepted among linguists both in this country and
abroad. It was formulated by such scholars as Sweet, Jespersen, and has
since been radically developed by Smirnitsky, Barkhudarov and others.
The limited case theory is based on the explicit oppositional approach to the
recognition of grammatical categories. In the system of the English case the
functional mark is defined, which differentiates the two case forms: the
possessive or genitive form as the strong member of the categorical
opposition and the common, or “non-genitive” form as the weak member of
the categorical opposition. The opposition is shown as being effected in full
with animate nouns, though a restricted use with inanimate nouns is also
taken into account.
In Arabic we have three cases and they are :
Nominative Case
The nominative case, also called the subjective, marks the subject of a
phrase. The subject is the noun (or pronoun) that performs the action of the
verb. For example, in the phrase "She helped him", the subject is "she", who
performs the action of helping.

Accusative Case
The accusative case deals with direct objects. In English for example, in the
sentence "I drink coffee", the direct object is "coffee", and thus it is in the
accusative case.

It is sometimes called the oblique case, especially when combined with the

dative case.
Genitive Case
Also called the possessive case, the genitive case marks objects as
pertaining or belonging to another object. For example, in the phrase "it is
mine", the pronoun "mine" is in the genitive case.
Some features of Grammatical Cases in Arabic
In Classical Arabic to express ‘X is Y’ one uses a nominal predicate that
shows concord with the subject. However, to express ‘X was Y’ one uses a
defective verb kaana, which takes an accusative complement.
Muh. ammad-u kabiir-un
‘Mohammed is old.’
kaana muh. ammad-u kabiir-an
‘Mohammed was old.’

In Arabic there is a type of head marking in which noun phrases indicates

the presence of a dependent. In other words, a noun with a noun dependent
is in what is called the construct state. In Arabic, for instance, ‘the book of
the king’ is kitabu lmaliki, where kitabu ‘book’ is in the construct state (a
nominative form lacking both the definite article and the -n that marks
indefiniteness) and lmaliki is genitive. (Kaye 1987)