Hi friends! This is our first article at Good Conlanging Ideas and we are so excited to have you here! Today we’re going to give a mini-introduction to case and agreement, linguistic features which English has, and with which other languages vary significantly.

For starters, let’s jump into an English example! English pronouns have, among others, two dedicated forms: a form like “I, we, they, he, she…” and a form like “me, us, them, him, her…”.

We use the first set of pronouns for subjects, or the ‘doers’ of the sentence, and the second for objects, or the things being done to within the sentence. Here are some examples:

We walk. (subject)

We help you. (subject)

You help us. (object)

We call the modifications to the pronouns cases, and they indicate the noun’s role in the sentence: is it doing something, or is something being done to it?

Specifically, we generally call the case of “I, we, they, he, she, etc.” the nominative (NOM for short) and the case of “me, us, them, him, her, etc” the accusative (ACC for short). Basically, nominative is for subject and accusative for object. Just making things sound fancier!

For an example where nouns that aren’t pronouns can also have case, here is an example from the Yuwan language of Japan (we’re linking the PDF so you can explore more if you’re interested: examples from p.59 and 76).

wan=ga aikjui

I=NOM will.walk

‘I will walk’

Akira hon=ba jumɨ

Akira book=ACC read!

‘Read Akira’s book!’

wan=ga an hon=ba tuta

I=NOM that book=ACC took

‘I took that book.’

Now that we’ve talked about case a bit, let’s move on to this thing called ‘agreement’. Again, let’s start with a familiar example. English present tense verbs have two forms: “have, walk, help” and “has, walks, helps”.

Notice also we use the second set of verbs only if noun in the nominative case (the subject) is 3rd person singular (3S for short): he, she, it, etc.

“She helps us” vs. “We help_ her”

We call this change in the verb agreement and say the verb agrees with the subject. They have to be in agreement about the identity of the nouns in the sentence.

Some languages, like Muna from Indonesia, have even more contrasts for agreement.

(if you want to follow along and explore more examples, we’re drawing our examples from p.51 in the linked PDF)

a-kala: I-go: 'I go.’

o-kala: you-go: 'You go.’

to-kala: you.polite-go: 'You (polite) go.’

no-kala: 3S-go: 'He/she/it/etc goes’.

do-kala: we-go: 'We two go.’

do-kala-amu: we-go-plural: 'We all go.’

ta-kala: we.but.not.you-go: 'We (but not you) go.’

o-kala-amu: you-go-plural: 'You all go.’

to-kala-amu: you.polite-go-plural: 'You all (polite) go.’

do-kala: they-go: 'They all go.’

Still other languages have verbs that agree with both the subject and the object in the sentence, or maybe even more nouns in the sentence. An extreme example can be found in Abaza (spoken in the Caucasus mountains of Russia), where up to four nouns can be indexed on the verb, as in: (adapted from example 289, Case and Agreement in Abaza by Brian O’Herin, 2002.)

yǝ-l-d-sǝ-rǝ-tat’

it-her-them-I-made-give

‘I made them give it to her’

We just scratched the surface of all the amazing and creative variation in case and agreement cross-linguistically. Hopefully we were able to spark new ideas in your conlangs! Stay tuned for our upcoming articles about tone and ergativity.

Thanks for reading and make sure to like and reblog!

-Matan (with help from Dendana and Kačev)

P.S. Conlang Checklist— questions to ask yourself:

-Does my conlang have any overt case or agreement?

-Does case get marked on all nouns? Just pronouns like in English? Some other system?

-What nouns does the verb agree with? The subject? (You went) The direct object? (You ate it) The indirect object? (You gave the ball to Mary) Locative phrases? (You found it at home)

-Where does the marking occur? A separate word? An addition to the noun or verb? An addition to an auxiliary or other type of word?

-Does one word per phrase get marked for case or do many words within a phrase get marked?

Example: Amharic (Ethiopia) ya-n ač’č’ɨr wɨšša: that-ACC short dog: 'that short dog (ACC)’ vs. Latin (Italy) illu-m aqua-m agile-m: that-ACC water-ACC quick-ACC: 'that quick water (ACC)’