Question

What is a nominative case?

Answer 1

Hint: This question is from the topic of nouns. Nouns are words that are used to give names to objects, places, people, ideas, concepts etc. These are the words that play the roles of the subject and the object in a general sentence. These nouns can either be Proper or Common. For e.g. a bat, a ball, etc. are common nouns. London, New Delhi, Tom Cruise, etc. are proper nouns.

Complete answer:
Depending on the roles that the nouns play in a sentence, they are classified into two main cases; (i) Nominative case and (ii) Objective Case.

The nominative case of the noun refers to that noun that plays the role of the subject in a sentence. For e.g. John threw a stone. In this sentence, there are two nouns, John and stone. There is one verb ‘threw’. The action of the verb is always done by the subject and on/to/with etc. the object. The action of throwing is done by ‘John’ in the given sentence. Therefore, ‘John’ is the subject. Now that we know that ‘John’ is the subject, we can also say that the noun ‘John’ is in the nominative case.

Let us consider the sentence again. In that sentence, the second noun is ‘stone’. It is the noun on which an action has been done. Therefore, it is the object in the sentence. Hence, we can say that the noun that plays the role of an object in a sentence is said to be in the objective case.

Note: An additional case of nouns is the possessive case. In this case, the noun has a relation with another noun in the same sentence. For e.g. This is John’s book. It shows that the second noun, ‘the book’ is possessed by the first noun ‘John’. Another way of writing the possessive case is; The wheels of my car are damaged. This also shows that the wheels belonging to the car are damaged.