| Case | Syntactic Function | Example |
| Nominative | Subject | A human lives. A table is made of wood. |
| Genitive | Attribute | There is a human (human’s) approach. There is a table lamp. |
| Accusative | Direct Object | He needed a human. He brought a table. |
| Dative | Indirect Object | He wrote to a human. I took a book from the table. |
The drawback of the approach.
The Case is a morphological Category. In the approach under critics, firstly, Morphological Form is not taken into consideration at all, secondly, Lexical Meaning is not paid attention at. Thus, the category from the morphological turns out to become syntactic, which brakes the basic principles of Grammar in general.
4). There are as many cases as many prepositions. The principle of analytics.
Theory of Analytical Cases
A case of a noun is stipulated by a peculiarity of the combination of a noun and a preposition.
For example:
To a man – the Dative Case (direction towards sb/sth is emphasized);
By a man – the Instrumental Case (an instrument is emphasized);
In a man – the Locative Case (a place is emphasized).
Critics by O.H.Jespersen.
The combinations under consideration are only prepositional combinations of a noun and preposition and can not be taken as the ground/principle for cases’ classification.
5). There are three cases. The principle of Substitution.
In the light of Structural Approach (Structural Grammar) there was the system of three cases distinguished. Each case was grounded by the principle of substitution of a noun by a proper personal pronoun (table 3.5).
Table 3.5