DECLENSION (Er. (k•/inaison, Lat. declen tin, from (kr/inure, to bend, from dc, down ± *clinare, Gk. KX1vEle,klinein, to bend, Lith. to incline, Slat. to lean). A grammatical term applied to the system of modifications called cases, which nouns, pronouns, and adjec tives undergo in many languages. How the words declension (Lat. dcainatio, a declining, or leaning away) and ease (Lat. cases, a fall) came to be applied to this species of inflection, has never been made altogether clear. The rela tions in which one thing stands to other things may be expressed in either of two ways. Some languages make use of separate words, called prepositions; in others, the relations are ex pressed by changes in the termination of the name of the thing. Thus, in Latin, 'Ty being the root or crude formic of the word for 'king,' 7rgs, or rex, is the word in the nominative case, signifying 'a. king' as subject or agent: rcgis, in the genitive case, 'of a king;' regi, in the dative, 'to a king,' etc. An adjective joined to a noun usually takes a corresponding change. The number of cases is very different in different languages. The further we go back in the his tory of the Indo-European languages, the richer do we generally find them in these modifica tions. Sanskrit bad eight cases. Latin six, and Greek five. The names of the Latin cases, which are often used also in regard to the English language, are the nominative. which names the subject or actor; the genitive, expressing the source whence something proceeds, or to which it belongs—it is sometimes called the adjective ease: the dative, that to which something is given, or for which it is done: the accusative, the object toward which an action is directed— it completes the meaning of a transitive verb: the vocative, the person addressed or called; and the ablative, that from which something is taken. The Greek has no ablative case. The
Sanskrit, in addition to the Latin cases, has an instrumental and a locative ease. The gram mar of the inflective languages is compli cated by the eircumstance that all nouns do not form their eases in the same way. This makes it necessary to distribute nouns into various classes, called 'declensions.' In Latin, as many as five declensions are usually given. (See 'IN FLECTION.) As we descend. the ease-endings become rubbed off. as it were, and prepositions are used in their stead. The languages deseended from the Latin (French. Italian, etc.) have lost all the eases of nouns and adjectives. The Teu tonic languages in their early periods had cases almost as numerous and perplexing as those of the Latin. German is still to a great extent inemnhered with them. Modern English has only one case in nouns different from the nomina tive—namely, the genitive. or possessive. (See Notix.) The declension of pronouns (q.v.) has been more persistent than that of nouns and ad je•tive.:. Languages of the agglutinative order have. in general, a great almudance of eases. in Finnish. nouns have fifteen eases. if by ease is understood an inflectional form produced by join ing on a suffix which takes the place of a prepo sition. Thus, kurho, a bear; karhun, of a bear; kurliumt, as a bear; kurhutta, bear; karhussa, in the boar; kurhustu, out of the bear, etc. In the Magyar, twenty cases may be reck oned; and the languages of the North American Indians are richer still—perhaps we should say more What case endings and other inflectional terminations were in their origin. as well as the comparative merits of the highly in flected and the analytic languages. will he con sidered under IN ELECTION