In English grammar, you don’t talk about case particularly often. Unlike some languages such as German, which inflects nouns, articles, adjectives, and pronouns into four distinct cases, English grammar has only three cases, all three of which are inflected in personal pronouns and one of which is inflected in all nouns.
Grammatical Case
In modern English grammar, there are just three main cases, so here's a short explanation of them and how they're inflected in nouns and pronouns.
| Pronouns | Nouns |
Nominative (subjective) case | I (first-person singular) You (second-person singular) He/ she/ they (third-person singular) | No inflection |
Accusative (objective) case | Me (first-person singular) You (second-person singular) Him/ he/ them (third-person singular) | No inflection |
Genitive case | Mine (first-person singular) Yours (second-person singular) His/ hers/ theirs (third-person singular) | -’s, -s’ |
As you can see, there are only four broad areas for case in English (three areas in pronouns and one in nouns). Now, you probably want to know more about inflection and case conceptually.
Case Grammar
In grammar, case is a kind of inflection.
Inflection is how a word changes to suit a particular grammatical function.
Case is one such grammatical function. Other inflections include gender (not present in English nouns as a class), number (present in English), and more.
The case of a word changes based on its role in the sentence (e.g., whether it acts, is acted upon, or possesses something).
For example, if a noun is the subject of the sentence, it might change case. In English, this would happen if you use the personal pronoun for yourself (I/me/mine).
❌ You wouldn’t say:
Mine is having a nice day.
✅ You would say:
I am having a nice day.
This is because you use the personal pronoun “I” when you are the subject of the sentence. In English grammar, there are three cases for personal pronouns, which correspond to personal pronouns as the subject, personal pronouns as the object, and personal pronouns as possessing.
Additionally, there is one case for any noun if it possesses something.
Fig. 1 - Although there are limited uses of grammatical case in English, it remains an important concept to understand.
Case Types
There aren't that many types of cases in English grammar, so it shouldn't be too taxing to review them all more in-depth.
Case in Modern English Personal Pronouns
Here is a more complete chart of cases in modern English personal pronouns.
| | Singular | Plural |
Nominative | First-person | I | We |
| Second-person | You | You |
| Third-person | He, She, It, They | They |
Accusative | First-person | Me | Us |
| Second-person | You | You |
| Third-person | Him, Her, It, Them | Them |
Genitive | First-person | My/Mine | Our/Ours |
| Second-person | Your/Yours | Your/Yours |
| Third-person | His, Her/Hers, Its, Their/Theirs | Their/Theirs |
In the chart, you’ll notice that the genetive pronouns often split. This distinction is between the independent genetive and the dependent genetive.
The independent genitive can stand on its. “That is mine.”
The dependent genitive requires an object. “That is my friend.”
An independent genitive is independent because it can be independent of other words. A dependent genitive is dependent because it depends on other words.
You might have noticed that English lacks a robust system of cases for second-person pronouns. While first-person and third-person pronouns have appropriately different plural cases, second-person pronouns use “you” repeatedly. In English, you might remedy this by saying “you all,” the contracted "y'all," or “you folks” in the plural nominative or plural accusative. However, to further clarify the genitive for a plural second-person pronoun turns up odd constructions like, “You all’s" or "Y'all's." Hmm!
The Case of “Who”
There is one notable instance where case changes with generic pronouns.
Generic pronouns refer to non-specific things.
“Who” is a personal generic pronoun while “what” and “which” are non-personal generic pronouns.
While “what” and “which” do not change in the nominative or accusative (and do not have genitives), “who” changes.
| Case | "Who" | In a sentence... |
Nominative | Who | Who goes there? |
Accusative | Whom | I'm speaking to whom? |
Genetive | Whose | Whose mittens are these? |
This just about covers case in pronouns.
You might be wondering: what about myself, yourself, herself, and those other “self” pronouns? These are called reflexive pronouns. Reflexive pronouns indicate that the subject has acted upon itself.
“She hit herself with a branch.”
However, whether “reflexive” is a case unto itself is debatable. One argument against “reflexive” as a case in English is that reflexive pronouns are more for emphasis or clarity rather than being strictly necessary. As a fact, “She hit her” is perfectly grammatical, even if “her” refers to “she.” It’s just unclear.
Case in Modern English Nouns
If you remember the initial chart, there is only one use of case in the Modern English noun, and that is the genitive -’s and -s’.
Genitive means possessive!
Let's say the noun is “women.” To put “women” in the genitive case, you’d simply add a -’s.
-s’ is used if the word already ends in an s. This happens often for plural nouns. For example, say you want to put the plural of “friend” in the genitive case.
That is our friends’ backyard.
Whether you put an -’s or a -s’ at the end of a proper noun depends on the style you are using. For instance, the Chicago Manual of Style favors -'s. However, both are correct:
Sometimes, a style has you look at what follows the -s! For instance, the Chicago Manual of Style wants you to avoid three successive s. It would have you write "Silas's horse" but "Silas' saddle."
Fun fact: Other languages include prominent instrumental and vocative cases. These cases indicate what someone uses to complete an action and who is being addressed, respectively. Even more of a fun fact, English has something like the vocative case, although it uses a comma called the vocative comma ("Hello, friend").
Case Examples
If you want some practice, write a few example sentences based on the cases in these prompts.
Write a sentence using a third-person plural dependent genitive.
Write a sentence using the second-person plural accusative.
Write a sentence using the first-person singular nominative.
Here are three sample responses. The specified case is highlighted.
We grabbed their scarves.
They like you folks.
I know that.
Fig. 2 - In English, a plural dependent genitive (their) must pair with a plural noun (scarves).
Case Explanation
You might want an explanation of how English can only have three cases — and in such a limited capacity — while other languages require a complex inflective system. This is because English is an analytic language.
An analytic language uses word order, auxiliary verbs, and prepositions to indicate what is happening in a sentence.
In other words, English has its own complexities unrelated to case. Languages with many cases are called synthetic languages.
Synthetic languages use a large number of inflections to indicate what is happening in a sentence.
For instance, in Latin, word order doesn’t matter. Case tells you all you need to know. On the other hand, English requires word order for a sentence like:
Here, because Bill appears first, we know that Bill did the hitting and Paul was hit. Prepositions can also help explain things in English.
Here, the word “at” helps us know that Bill did the smiling and Paul was smiled at.
Interestingly, English was not always this way. While Modern English is an analytic language, Old English was a synthetic language.
Linguistic Analysis of Case
Without going too deep into linguistic analysis, it’s worth going back in time and taking a peek at how Old English differs from Modern English in terms of case.
Old English had four cases for its nouns: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. You’ll recognize three of them from Modern English pronouns. The last one is dative.
The dative case is used for an indirect object.
In the following sentence, the man would be written in the dative case, if Modern English had such a case.
John gave a cup of coffee to the man.
This is because John (the subject) gives the cup of coffee (the direct object) to the man (indirect object).
Additionally, Old English had gender as well as strong and weak adjective declensions. Old English bears much in common with German, actually! Hopefully, though, this insight into Old English also gives you some context for Modern English case.
Case - Key Takeaways
- In grammar, case is a kind of inflection.
- Modern English grammar only has three cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive.
- Nominative is for subjects, accusative for objects, and genitive for possession.
- Modern English pronouns use all three of these cases.
- Modern English nouns as a whole only have one special case — genitive — for possession (e.g., Chris's or the boy's).
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