The Noun Case – Nominative, Objective and Possessive

The Noun Case : Consider the following sentence,

• Ahmed threw a ball.

In the above sentence, Ahmed is the subject and it is the answer to the question, ‘Who threw the ball?’ The rest of the sentence threw the ball is the predicate and the the answer to the question, what did Ahmed throw? is a ball.. Hence ball is the object.  In this article lets discuss the Noun Case in detail.

The Noun Case

There are three Noun Cases in English.

• Nominative Case
• Objective Case
• Possessive Case

Nominative Case 

• When a noun or a pronoun is used as the subject, it is said to be in the Nominative Case. To find the Nominative in the sentence, put who or what before the verb.

For example: In the sentence, the dog bit the boy, the dog is the subject and it is the answer to the question What bit the boy? Hence it is said to be in the Nominative Case.

Objective Case

• When a Noun or a Pronoun is used as the object of a verb it is said to be in the Objective Case.  To find the object in the sentence, put whom or what before the verb and the subject.

For example: In the sentence, the horse kicked the boy, the subject is the horse and the answer to the question whom did the horse kick is the boy. Hence in the above sentence the noun boy is the object and it is said to be in Objective Case.

• The noun which comes after a preposition in a sentence is also said to be in the objective case.

Possessive Case

• Consider the following sentence, this is Sita’s book.

Here, the form of the noun Sita is changed to Sita’s to show the ownership or possession. Hence ‘Sita’ is said to be in the Possessive Case. The possessive in a sentence answers the question, ‘Whose?’ Whose book is this? – Sita’s. 

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