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Nominative case

In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of English) a predicative nominal or adjective, as opposed to its object, or other verb arguments.

Version
v1 · 2026-09-28 · History
Domain-specific #
11003
Domain group
Humanities
Origin domain
Linguistics & Semiotics
Subdomains
Grammar, Morphosyntax → Linguistics & Semiotics

Core Idea

Nominative case is treated here as the recurring social sciences, humanities, and arts identity summarized by this source-grounded definition: In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of English) a predicative nominal or adjective, as opposed to its object, or other verb arguments.

Scope of Application

  • Characteristics. Moreover, in most languages with a nominative case, the nominative form is the lemma; that is, it is the reference form used to cite a word, to list it as a.

  • Characteristics. A special case is the word you: originally, ye was its nominative form and you the accusative, but over time, you has come to be used for the nominative as well.

  • Characteristics. The term "nominative case" is most properly used in the discussion of nominative–accusative languages, such as Latin, Greek and most modern Western European languages.

  • Subjective case. English is now often described as having a subjective case, instead of a nominative, to draw attention to the differences between the "standard" generic nominative and the way that it is.

  • Subjective case. The term objective case is then used for the oblique case, which covers the roles of accusative, dative and objects of a preposition.

Clarity

A clear use of Nominative case names the carrier, the operative relation, and the conditions under which the source treats the identity as present. The minimal definition is In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of.

Manages Complexity

Nominative case compresses multiple social sciences, humanities, and arts details into a stable diagnostic relation. The source shows both the central mechanism—in some languages, the nominative case is unmarked, and it may then be said to be marked by a null morpheme.—and the practical consequence—the parts of speech that are often declined and therefore may have a nominative case are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and (less frequently) numerals.

Abstract Reasoning

  1. Type the carrier. Identify the social sciences, humanities, and arts entities to which the claim applies.
  2. State the relation. Use the source-grounded identity: In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of English) a predicative nominal or adjective, as opposed to its object, or other verb arguments.
  3. Check operation and conditions.

Knowledge Transfer

Within the home domain. Knowledge about Nominative case transfers literally when a new case preserves the same carrier type, relation, and recognition test. Moreover, in most languages with a nominative case, the nominative form is the lemma; that is, it is the reference form used to cite a word, to list it as a dictionary entry etc. A special case is the word you: originally, ye was its nominative form and you.

Relationships to Other Abstractions

Local relationship map for Nominative caseParents appear above the current abstraction, mutual partners to the right, and children below. Node labels state whether each abstraction is prime or domain-specific; colors identify relation types.Nominative caseDOMAINDomain-specific abstraction: Grammatical case — is a kind ofGrammatical caseDOMAIN

Current abstraction Nominative case Domain-specific

Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on

  • Nominative case is a kind of Grammatical case Domain-specific

    Nominative case is a grammatical case whose differentia is its subject and predicative marking role.

Hierarchy path (1) — routes to 1 parentless root

Neighborhood in Abstraction Space

Nominative case sits in a sparse region of the domain-specific corpus (68th percentile for distinctiveness): few abstractions share its structure, so a faithful description tends to retrieve it precisely.

Family — Grammatical Case & Reference (10 abstractions)

Nearest neighbors

Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-10-08