List of grammatical cases
This is a list of grammatical cases as they are used by various inflectional languages that have declension.
Place and time
Note: Most cases used for location and motion can be used for time as well.Location
Motion from
Motion to
Motion via
Time
Chart for review for the basic cases
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 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 | Armenian | Azeri | Bosnian | Croatian | Czech | Erzya | Esperanto | Faroese | Finnish | German | Greek | Hungarian | Icelandic | Inari Sami | Japanese | Latin | Latvian | Lithuanian | Northern Sami | Polish | Romanian | Russian | Sanskrit | Serbian | Skolt Sami | Slovak | Slovene | Ukrainian | Georgian |
| 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 |
| Ergative case | agent; subject of a transitive verb | he pushed the door and it opened | Basque | Chechen | Dyirbal | Georgian | 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 which thing? | with the house | Armenian | Armenian | Belarusian | Bosnian | Croatian | Czech | Evenki | Georgian | Japanese | Latvian | Lithuanian | Manchu | Polish | Russian | Sanskrit | Serbian | Slovak | Slovene | Tsez | Ukrainian | Yukaghir |
| Instrumental-comitative case | instrument, in company of something | 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 |