linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, case government is

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

of the

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...

of a noun, wherein a verb or

adposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

is said to 'govern' the

of its noun phrase complement, e.g. in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

the preposition 'for' governs the

accusative case The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...

: 'for me-accusative'. Case government may modify the meaning of the verb substantially, even to meanings that are unrelated. Case government is an important notion in languages with many case distinctions, such as

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

and

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

. It plays less of a role in English, because English does not rely on grammatical cases, except for distinguishing subject pronouns (''I, he, she, we, they'') from other pronouns (''me, him, her, us, them''). In English, true case government is absent, but if the aforementioned subject pronouns are understood as regular pronouns in the

, it occurs in sentences such as ''He found me'' (not for example *''He found I'').

Adpositions

Standard German Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (not to be confused with High German dialects, more precisely Upper German dialects) (german: Standardhochdeutsch, , or, in Switzerland, ), is the standardized variety ...

, there are

prepositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

which govern each of the three oblique cases:

Accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...

Dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...

, and

Genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

. Case marking in German is largely observed on elements which modify the noun (e.g. determiners, adjectives). In the following table, examples of ''Löffel'' 'spoon' (Masculine), ''Messer'' 'knife' (Neuter), and ''Gabel'' 'fork' (Feminine) are in definite noun phrases for each of the four cases. In the oblique cases (i.e. non-Nominative), the prepositions supplied dictate different cases: ''ohne'' 'without' governs the accusative, ''mit'' 'with' governs the dative, and ''wegen'' 'because of' governs the genitive: There are also two-way prepositions which govern the dative when the prepositional phrase denotes location (''where at?''), but the accusative when it denotes direction (''to/from where?'').

Verbs

In Finnish, certain verbs or groups of verbs require associated objects to employ particular cases or case-like suffixes regardless of the circumstances in which a case is normally used. For example, certain verbs expressing emotions such as (to love), (to hate), and (to fear) require the use of the

partitive In linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that indicates partialness. Nominal partitives are syntactic constructions, such as "some of the children", and may be classified semantically as either set partitives or entity partitives ba ...

case: thus, "Minä rakastan sinua" (I love you), in which "sinua" is partitive although a complete concrete entity as object would normally take the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

. A number of verbs associated with sensory perception such as (to taste) and (to sound) employ the

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. T ...

-like suffix -lta/-ltä: "Jäätelö maistuu hyvältä" (Ice cream tastes good). And certain verbs referring to interests or hobbies such as (to like) and (to enjoy) use the elative-like suffix -sta/-stä. In books on Finnish grammar writen in Finnish the phenomenon of case government is usually referred to as "", from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

(control or governance).

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Case Government Grammar