III The case system
16 The cases
Although English retains a few examples of its earlier case system an English word’s
grammatical role is usually determined by its position in the sentence. Thus, the
meaning of the sentence ‘The dog bit the man’ is changed entirely by swapping the
position of the two nouns to give: ‘The man bit the dog’.In German, the case system is more fully developed and allows a slightly more flexible
approach to subject–object word order. Thus, the first of the above sentences could be
quite accurately translated as: Den Mann biss der Hund; and the second as: Den Hund
biss der Mann. This use of case endings on articles, and also on nouns, pronouns and
adjectives to indicate the role these words play in a sentence, depends on a system of
four distinct grammatical cases (the nominative, accusative, dative and genitive). Each
of these has a number of clearly defined functions. For an overview of the various case endings see 22.2–3 (pp. 36–7) on the article,^28
(pp. 48–50) on noun declensions, 30–2 (pp. 54–8) on pronouns and 44–7 (pp. 118–25) on
adjectives.17 The nominative
This is the form in which nouns are presented in reference books and in which they
need to be learnt. The nominative is used:17.1 For the subject of the finite verb (see 5.1 on finite verbs):
Der Bundespräsident ist nach Washington geflogen.
The German president has flown to Washington.
Heute Morgen hat dein japanischer Freund angerufen.
Your Japanese friend phoned this morning.17.2 Following the verbs bleiben, heißen, scheinen, sein, werden and, in the passive
(see 40 ), nennen:
For relevant functions see 61.5 (p. 168).
Mein Nachbar ist ein bekannter Schriftsteller.
My neighbour is a well-known writer.
Er wurde bald ein verlässlicher Kollege.
He soon became a reliable colleague.