In Nouns^x, Genitives^x, Nominative^x

It's all to do with gender. Cactus and fungus are masculine nouns of which the proper plural ends in -i. Corpus is actually a neuter noun. Hence, the proper plural (nominative case) ends in -a. It's 'corpora' rather than 'corpa' because the genitive singular case defines...

for name in Old English e g how English was spoken 1000 years ago was nama In the accusative it was naman

None of these names for cases applies much to Modern English; we have neither an accusative nor a dative case and many linguists might argue we do not even have a true genitive (just a "clitic s"). Nouns have an all-purpose "base case" and a possessive form. My dog is big/I see a dog ....

Hi, Here are a few comments, drawn mostly from recollections of my Latin studies many years ago. My apologies if you know this stuff already. To understand cases, you need to look not only at Old English but, further back, at Latin and then Greek. Latin Cases are: Nominative, Vocative...

Hello Mara I myself want to know why it is so. My guess is that this tendency has its origin in the grammar of Old English that was spoken by English people a millennium ago. The Old English was a language very similar to the present day German. One of its features was that nouns and...

"It won't be he who gets fired" is correct. In English we have only three cases: nominative, objective, and genitive (possessive). All subjects and subject complements are in the nominative case and all objects are in the objective case. (The genetive case doesn't enter into this discussion.)...

Deepa, I totally agree with you! As examples always enlighten a lot, I'll give you some impressions of my mother tongue German: I have to say that English in many cases is simpler than my native language. You mentioned e.g. the gender of a noun which is usually expressed by the article. In...