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The nominative case is a grammatical case used for nouns that are the subjects of sentences. It is the most basic of all cases and is used to indicate which noun is the subject. Many languages feature gendered nouns, and the nominative case typically includes different forms for singular and plural nouns. In English, the nominative case has all but vanished, but vestigial traces of an older and more complicated grammar remain. Reference works usually use the nominative case of nouns.
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases common to many different languages. It is mostly used for nouns that are the subjects of sentences. Nouns in this case may have properties of gender or number in some languages. Typically, the nominative case is also used as the default form of reference for nouns, which are usually listed in this case in reference works.
Grammatical cases convey meaning about the structure of a sentence through the form taken by the words in that sentence. Many languages, such as English, have evolved from this style of communication and instead rely on word order to convey meaning. The nominative case is the most basic of all cases, as it is used to indicate which noun is the grammatical subject of a sentence. Other cases may indicate which nouns are the direct or indirect objects of a sentence or indicate other nouns and pronouns with specific grammatical roles to play in a sentence.
Many languages feature gendered nouns, which leads to variations in the form of words listed in the nominative case. In such languages, the form of a word may have a telltale ending to indicate gender, as in Russian. Other languages, such as German, lack clear grammatical gender markers in word structure, but make a convention of using a gender article with all nouns.
The nominative case typically includes different forms for singular and plural nouns. The specific means used to denote plural nouns vary widely from language to language and can include the addition of prefixes and suffixes or even larger changes to a word’s structure. To further complicate matters, some languages retain a third grammatical form, used for items that appear in pairs. This form is archaic and vestigial in most languages, but in many cases it still modifies the form of words to the nominative plural. Older names and names that naturally occur in pairs, like “eyes” in Russian, are more prone to take this special form.
In English and some other languages, the nominative case has all but vanished. However, vestigial traces of an older and more complicated grammar remain. Pronouns in English still take different forms to reflect subject or object status, for example. “I saw them” and “They saw me” are brief examples of this. “John saw the doctor” and “The doctor saw John” show the most typical behavior of English nouns.
Reference works usually use the nominative case of nouns. Dictionaries for languages such as German, where gender is important but marked with an article, will generally include that article in addition to a noun in the nominative case. This practice is also common in languages, such as Russian, where it makes less sense at first glance. Russian words are most often built on word stems, to which each case, including the nominative case, thus applies an ending. The presence of anomalous borrowings and special cases tilts the balance in favor of using the nominative as a standard, since these words lack proper roots.
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