List of grammatical cases
This is a list of grammatical cases as they are used by various inflectional languages that have declension.
This list will mark the case, when it is used, an example of it, and then finally what language the case is used in.
Location and movement
Note: Most cases used for location and motion can be used for time as well.Morphosyntactic alignment
For meanings of the terms agent, patient, experiencer, and instrument, see thematic relation.| Case | Usage | Example | Found in |
| Absolutive case | patient, experiencer; subject of an intransitive verb and direct object of a transitive verb | he pushed the door and it opened | Basque Tibetan |
| Absolutive case | patient, involuntary experiencer | he pushed the door and it opened; he slipped | active-stative languages |
| Absolutive case | patient; experiencer; instrument | he pushed the door with his hand and it opened | Inuktitut |
| Accusative case | patient | he pushed the door and it opened | Akkadian Albanian Arabic Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Azeri Bosnian Croatian Czech Erzya Esperanto Faroese Finnish German Greek Hungarian Icelandic Inari Sámi Japanese Latin Latvian Lithuanian Northern Sámi Polish Romanian Russian Sanskrit Serbian Skolt Sámi Slovak Slovene Ukrainian Georgian Yiddish |
| Accusative case | direct object of a transitive verb; made from; about; for a time | I see her | Inuktitut Persian Turkish Serbo-Croatian |
| Agentive case | agent, specifies or asks about who or what; specific agent that is subset of a general topic or subject | it was she who committed the crime; as for him, his head hurts | Japanese, Mongsen Ao |
| Direct case | direct subject or object of a transitive or intransitive verb | I saw her; I gave her the book. | Scottish Gaelic many languages with Austronesian Alignment. |
| Ergative case | agent; subject of a transitive verb | he pushed the door and it opened | Basque Chechen Dyirbal Georgian Kashmiri Samoan Tibetan Tlingit Tsez |
| Ergative-genitive case | agent, possession | he pushed the door and it opened; her dog | Classic Maya Inuktitut |
| Instructive | means, answers question how? | by means of the house | Estonian Finnish |
| Instrumental | instrument, answers question using what? | with the house | Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Belarusian Bosnian Croatian Czech Evenki Georgian Japanese Kashmiri Latvian Lithuanian Polish Russian Sanskrit Serbian Slovak Slovene Tsez Ukrainian Yukaghir |
| Instrumental-comitative case | instrument, in company | with the house | Chuvash Hungarian Tlingit |
| Nominative case | agent, experiencer; subject of a transitive or intransitive verb | he pushed the door and it opened | nominative–accusative languages |
| Nominative case | agent; voluntary experiencer | he pushed the door and it opened; she paused | active languages |
| Objective case | direct or indirect object of verb | I saw her; I gave her the book. | Bengali Chuvash |
| Objective/Oblique | direct or indirect object of verb or object of preposition; a catch-all case for any situation except nominative or genitive | I saw her; I gave her the book; with her. | English Swedish Danish Norwegian Bulgarian |
| Oblique case | all-round case; any situation except nominative or vocative | concerning the house | Anglo-Norman Hindi Old French Old Provençal Telugu Tibetan |
| Intransitive case | the subject of an intransitive verb or the logical complement of a transitive verb | The door opened | languages of the Caucasus Ainu |
| Pegative case | agent in a clause with a dative argument | he gave the book to him | Azoyú Tlapanec |