Colloque

Approach to a Theory of the Latin Declension

John-R. Gallup

Membre a labase

John-R. Gallup

Résumé du colloque

When speaking of the inflections of nouns, Latin grammarians used the word casus. Common usage has transliterated this term into English as case; but it has caused us to lose sight of the everyday meaning of the Latin term - that of 'falling' or 'a fall'. This paper will suggest an explanation for the choice of this word as a proper grammatical term. An analysis of how a noun can fall grammatically will bring out the remarkable symmetry of the six Latin cases.