case

case (kasus): a category of nouns and pronouns. Nouns do not have case in present-day English, but some personal and relative pronouns have two forms which are used according to their syntactic functions. The unmarked (subject) forms are used in with subject functions, and the object forms are used in other functions. The English genitive may also be referred to as case, though it differs from that of languages such as German where the genitive case may be triggered by other factors than possession/ownership.