Oblique case
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| Grammatical cases |
|---|
| List of grammatical cases |
| Abessive case |
| Ablative case |
| Adessive case |
| Allative case |
| Causal case |
| Causal-final case |
| Comitative case |
| Dative case |
| Dedative case |
| Delative case |
| Disjunctive case |
| Distributive case |
| Distributive-temporal case |
| Elative case |
| Essive case |
| Essive-formal case |
| Essive-modal case |
| Final case |
| Formal case |
| Genitive case |
| Illative case |
| Inessive case |
| Locative case |
| Modal case |
| Oblique case |
| Objective case |
| Partitive case |
| Possessive case |
| Postpositional case |
| Prepositional case |
| Prolative case |
| Prosecutive case |
| Sociative case |
| Sublative case |
| Superessive case |
| Temporal case |
| Terminative case |
| Translative case |
| Vialis case |
| Vocative case |
| Morphosyntactic alignment |
| Absolutive case |
| Accusative case |
| Ergative case |
| Instrumental case |
| Instrumental-comitative case |
| Intransitive case |
| Nominative case |
| Declension |
| Declension in English |
| [ ] |
In linguistics, an oblique case is a noun case that is used generally when a noun is the predicate of a sentence or a preposition. An oblique case can appear in any case relationship except the nominative case of a sentence subject or the vocative case of direct address. It contrasts also with an ergative case, used in ergative languages for nouns that are direct actors; in ergative languages, the same case is used for a direct object, and for the subject of a sentence where the subject is being passively described, rather than performing an action.
In Indo-European languages, oblique cases often appear as the result of the simplification of the original, more complex system of noun cases shared by the historical Indo-European languages. Oblique cases appear in the English pronoun set; these peonouns are often called objective pronouns. Observe how the first person pronoun me serves a variety of grammatical functions:
- as an accusative case for a direct object:
- She bit me!
- as a dative case for an indirect object:
- Give me the rubber hose!
- as the instrumental object of a preposition:
- That stain wasn't made by me. . .
- and as a disjunctive topic marker:
- Me, I like French. . .
The pronoun me is not inflected differently in any of these uses; it is used for all grammatical relationships except the genitive case of possession and a non-disjunctive nominative case as the subject.
Oblique pronouns tend to become clitics; the English clitic found in Give 'em hell, Harry! is in fact a survival of Middle English hem rather than simply a clipped version of them. The Romance languages tend to have even larger varieties of clitics, as in the Spanish expression dámelo, "give it to me," which has two oblique clitics me and lo.
See also objective (grammar)
es:Caso oblicuo
