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Nouns in Latin have a series of different forms, called cases of the noun, which have different functions or meanings. For example, the word for "king" is rēx when it is the subject of a verb, but rēgem when it is the object: rēx videt "the king sees" (nominative case) rēgem videt "(he) sees the king" (accusative case)
Latin declension is the set of patterns according to which Latin words are declined—that is, have their endings altered to show grammatical case, number and gender. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are declined (verbs are conjugated ), and a given pattern is called a declension.
Latin word order is relatively free. The verb may be found at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a sentence; an adjective may precede or follow its noun (vir bonus or bonus vir both mean 'a good man'); [5] and a genitive may precede or follow its noun ('the enemies' camp' can be both hostium castra and castra hostium; the latter is more common). [6]
Nominative case (1) agent, experiencer; subject of a transitive or intransitive verb: he pushed the door and it opened nominative–accusative languages (including marked nominative languages) Nominative case (2) agent; voluntary experiencer: he pushed the door and it opened; she paused active languages: Objective case (1) direct or indirect ...
A special case is the word you: originally, ye was its nominative form and you the accusative, but over time, you has come to be used for the nominative as well. The term "nominative case" is most properly used in the discussion of nominative–accusative languages, such as Latin, Greek and most modern Western European languages.
In a language with morphological case marking, an S and an A may both be unmarked or marked with the nominative case while the O is marked with an accusative case (or sometimes an oblique case used for dative or instrumental case roles also), as occurs with nominative -us and accusative -um in Latin: Juli us venit "Julius came"; Juli us Brut um ...
An example of a Latin case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Latin term for "cook", which belongs to Latin's second declension class. coqu us ( nominative ) "[the] cook" [as a subject] (e.g. coquus ibī stat – the cook is standing there)
The declension of nouns in Latin that are borrowed from Greek varies significantly between different types of nouns, though certain patterns are common. Many nouns, particularly proper names , in particular, are fully Latinized and declined regularly according to their stem-characteristics.