Declension

You've likely heard of the term conjugation before — the inflection of verbs to show grammatical and syntactic function — but do you know about declension?

In simple terms, declension is the conjugation of other word classes (such as nouns, pronouns, and adjectives).

Although declension isn't as common in English as it is in other languages, such as Latin or German, it's still important to understand how we decline nouns and pronouns to show things like case and number.

Declension Meaning

Let's begin by looking at the meaning of the word declension.

The term declension refers to the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and articles (basically, every word class except verbs) to show the word's syntactic function within a sentence. When we say syntactic function, we're referring to the grammatical relationship between constituents (part of a sentence, e.g., words, phrases, and clauses) within a sentence.

The declension process can be seen when we discuss possessives. For example, when the subject of a sentence owns the object of a sentence, possession is shown by inflecting the subject (remember, the subject of a sentence is usually a noun or pronoun). The declension process typically involves adding an apostrophe and an s to the end of a noun or changing the spelling of the pronoun altogether.

Declension happens across many languages, and the process works differently in each. For example, adjectives in French and Spanish go through a declension process to show grammatical case, but adjectives in English do not. In fact, declension in English is no longer common. Whereas Old and Middle English contained a lot of declensions, in Modern English, declension only applies to nouns, pronouns, and descriptive adjectives.

Fig 1. That's Katy's cake.

Declension in English

As we mentioned, declensions in English aren't as common as in other languages, but that doesn't mean they aren't important.

In Modern English, declension typically happens to nouns and pronouns; however, we can also decline adjectives too.

Noun Declension

In English, the declension of nouns and pronouns can show three different syntactic and grammatical functions: case, number, and gender.

Case

There are three different grammatical cases in English, subjective (aka nominative), objective, and genitive (aka possessive).

In English, nouns only go through a declension process in the genitive case, whereas pronouns change in all three cases. Let's take a closer look at each of these cases.

Subjective Case

A noun or pronoun is in the subjective case when it is acting as the subject of the sentence. The subject of a sentence is the person or thing performing the action of a verb or who/what the sentence is about.

Let's now look at some examples of pronouns as the subject:

Here we can see that the subjective case pronouns are:

• He

• She

• They

• It

• I

• We

• You

Objective Case

A noun or pronoun is in the objective case when it's acting as, you guessed it, the object in a sentence. The object of a sentence is the person or thing that is being acted upon.

Here are some examples with a pronoun as the subject. Notice how the spelling and words change:

From the examples, we can see that the pronouns in the objective case are:

• Him

• Her

• Them

• It

• Us

• Me

• You

Genitive Case

The genitive case, also known as the possessive case, is used to show a noun or pronoun's belongings.

In the genitive case, both nouns and pronouns go through a declension process. Let's start with nouns.

To show a noun's possession in English, we simply add an apostrophe and an s to the end of the word.

Now for the pronouns. There are two different types of pronouns in the genitive case: attributive and predicative. Possessive attributive pronouns are typically followed by a noun, whereas possessive predicative pronouns replace the noun.

• The attributive pronouns are: my, his, her, its, our, your, and their

• The predicative pronouns are: mine, his, hers, ours, yours, and theirs

Number

Nouns are declined in terms of number into their singular and plural forms. Regular nouns are declined by simply adding an s to the end of the word, whereas irregular nouns go through a spelling change (or sometimes remain exactly as they are, e.g., sheep.)

Regular nouns:

Irregular nouns:

Fig 2. Fish, not Fishes.

Demonstrative pronouns also go through a declension process to show number. The singular demonstrative pronouns are this and that. On the other hand, the plural demonstrative pronouns are these and those.

Gender

Unlike other languages, like French or Spanish, English nouns typically are not declined in relation to gender. Sometimes suffixes are added to the end of a noun to highlight the female gender (e.g., stewardess); however, this is quickly becoming redundant in modern society.

Personal pronouns can decline to show gender. The masculine pronouns are he, him, and his, and the feminine pronouns are she, her, and hers. The pronouns they, them, their, and theirs can be used as plural or singular gender-neutral pronouns.

Adjective Declension

Descriptive adjectives (adjectives that modify nouns/pronouns by describing them) can go through a declension process to show degrees of comparison.

Descriptive adjectives typically have three forms: positive (base form), comparative, and superlative. For comparatives, we typically add the suffix "-er" to the end of the word. For superlatives, we add the suffix "-est."

Number:

Adjectives: