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Case

Overview | Personal Pronoun/Determiner

Subjective/Nominative | Objective/Accusative

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!

First more good news. You cannot really go wrong here, we got rid of most of our cases and 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 casesand should be used

with a bit more care.

The pronoun cases are simple though. There are only three:-

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.

Personal Pronoun

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

These pronouns, and whoand its compounds, are the only words that are inflected in all three cases

(subjective, objective, possessive). In nouns the f irst two cases (subjective and objective) are

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indistinguishable, and are called the common case. 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.

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 treefell on my car", "the tree" is in the nominative

case because it's the subject of the verb "fell".

Pronouns are inflected to show the subjective case.

Personal Pronoun

Subjective/Nominative

Referring to the subject in a sentence.

I

You

He

She

It

We

They

Who

For example:

Lynneowns this web site.

Ihope to finish my homework tomorrow.

Sheenjoyed her English lessons.

Heis an idiot. (The word idiot is a predicate noun because

it follows is;a form of the verb "be")

Objective / Accusative Case

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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.

Pronouns are inflected to show the objective case.

Personal Pronoun

Objective/Accusative

Referring to the object in a sentence

Me

You

Him

Her

It

Us

Them

Whom

For example:

The web site gave Lynnea headache.

Mum gave usthe money.

She gave himthe book.

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 thebride," but it could equally be; "The

bride's mother."

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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.

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'sweb site.

The people's court.

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.

Try to avoid sounding like hissing Sid though. When an added - swould lead to three closely bunched sor

zsounds 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.

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Abbott and Costello'sfamous baseball sketch.

Pronouns and determiners are inflected to show the possessive case.

Personal Pronoun/Determiner

Possessive

Lynne's Lynne's

My Mine

Your Yours

His His

Her Hers

Its Its

Our Ours

Their Theirs

Whose Whose

For example:-

This isLynne'sweb site. It'smywebsite!. It'smine!

It's notZozanga'sweb site. It's nothiswebsite. It's not

his.

Have you seenherbook?It'sherbook. It'shers.

Genitive Case

You should still use the genetive case when talking about things that belong to other things.

For example:-

The doorof thecar.

The contentof thewebsite.

The topof thepage.

!Tip - If you aren't sure what to use stick to (of the).