Old Norse: An Introduction to Case
One of the biggest obstacles some have about learning Germanic and Slavic languages is the prevalence of cases and declensions in pronouns, nouns, and adjectives. It can all seem like a right mess to those of us who are only used to verb conjugations and the like, but as with any great task, breaking down the steps into manageable bits can make the process of understanding cased languages much simpler. As such, let’s begin with a basic introduction of cases.
Cases have the purpose of designating the rule of a word or a series of words in a sentence. I’m languages like English, we no longer use cases on account of the fact that we have a set sentence structure, and the position of a word in that structure clarifies it’s purpose (i.e. you would expect the subject to be at the front of the verb and the d.o. to immediately follow the verb). By languages using cases, they lessen the need for a set sentence structure, as the declension of the word clarifies its purpose instead, and they can therefore occur in any part of the sentence and in any order without affecting the meaning.
The four cases are nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. Let’s try to parse these terms into layman’s speech:
Abbreviated as Nom, the nominative case is the grammatical form of a noun or other part of speech that marks it as being the subject of the verb, or as being a predicate noun or adjective.
Generally, the nominative form will be used when the word is in the subject position. It is widely considered “the word that’s doing something” in a sentence.
In the English sentence “Mark ate my homework”, if English were cased, then Mark would be in the nominative.
Abbreviated as Acc, the accusative case is, in short, the grammatical case that marks the object. Specifically, the direct object of a verb or a preposition. It is the grammatical marker of a word that is being acted upon by another word, either as the receiver of the action of a verb or as the object of a preposition.
“Mark ate the candy at school.”
If English were cased, both words in bold above would be in the accusative case.
Abbreviated as Gen, the genitive case is the grammatical marker of a noun that modifies another noun. This may seem a tougher than the others, as it is a bit more abstract, but let’s break it down further.
A very common way to see the genitive case is with possessives. A possessive noun is a noun that modifies another noun by means of ownership. A word that possesses another word will use the genitive case.
“The farmer’s pig is very fat.”
In this case, “farmer” would be in the genitive case, and would be possessive without needing the (‘s) to tell us so.
Another way you can find the genitive case is in abstract possession, which is a method of defining a noun by another noun when direct ownership isn’t feasible, such as “Japan’s climate” and “the doorhandle’s temperature”. In this method, the words in bold above would be in the genitive.
Abbreviated as Dat, the dative case is… complicated. At its most simple, it is used to mark the indirect object of a verb (i.e. who the action that acts upon the d.o. is directed at).
In “I gave a kiss to Janine”, Janine would be declined in the dative case, as she is accepting the action.
In other cases, the dative changes some based on the language. In some languages, though it might seem to conflict with the accusative, the object at the other end of the preposition “to” is declined in the dative, even in a locative sense. It is used with “to” specifically though, and other prepositions with D.O’s would take the accusative.
In “I went to Japan”, Japan might be declined in the dative. This “dative to” rule is especially true in the case of Old Norse. The ON preposition “til” is similar to “to” and will ALWAYS take the dative case.
The four cases are nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative.
Nominative (nom): the subject of a verb
Accusative (acc): the direct object of a verb or a preposition.
Genitive (gen): a noun that modifies another noun.
Dative (dat): the indirect object
Any questions? Head over to my ask box and I would be happy to answer them. Happy studying!
