Talk:Grammatical case
The article is in dire need of rewriting. Now the text uses the term 'case' in two quite distinct meanings: a) morphological case and b) some kind of 'astract case' roughly equal to a grammatical or semantic role (which is something altogether different from morphological case). The latter use of the term 'case' is not unanimously accepted by linguists, and therefore it is incorrect to state e.g. that "all languages distinguish cases in some fashion", as now maintained in the second sentence of the article. For example, Hawaiian does not distinguish (morphological) case, even though it does of course distinguish e.g. between subject and object, or between various semantic roles.
English does not have morphological case either (except for pronouns); the genitive -'s is not a case form because it is a clitic. Therefore, it an extremely odd choice to illustrate "Cases in Indo-European languages" with English sentences, which in reality only illustrate the lack of case.--AAikio 10:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)