Editing Grammatical case (section)

== Declension paradigms ==
{{main|Declension}}

Declension is the process or result of altering nouns to the correct grammatical cases. Languages with rich nominal inflection (using grammatical cases for many purposes) typically have a number of identifiable declension classes, or groups of nouns with a similar pattern of case inflection or declension. Sanskrit has six declension classes, whereas Latin is traditionally considered to have [[Latin declension|five]], and Ancient Greek [[Ancient Greek grammar#Declensions|three]].<ref name="Beetham">Frank Beetham, ''Learning Greek with Plato'', Bristol Phoenix Press, 2007.</ref> For example, Slovak has [[Slovak declension|fifteen noun declension classes]], five for each gender (the number may vary depending on which paradigms are counted or omitted, this mainly concerns those that modify declension of foreign words; refer to article).

In Indo-European languages, declension patterns may depend on a variety of factors, such as [[grammatical gender|gender]], [[grammatical number|number]], phonological environment, and irregular historical factors. Pronouns sometimes have separate paradigms. In some languages, particularly [[Slavic languages]], a case may contain different groups of endings depending on whether the word is a [[noun]] or an [[adjective]]. A single case may contain many different endings, some of which may even be derived from different roots. For example, in Polish, the genitive case has ''-a, -u, -ów, -i/-y, -e-'' for nouns, and ''-ego, -ej, -ich/-ych'' for adjectives. To a lesser extent, a noun's [[Masculine personal|animacy or humanness]] may add another layer of complexity. For example, in Russian:

{{fs interlinear|lang=ru|indent=2
| Кот ловит мышей
| Kot-∅ lóvit myshéy.
| cat-NOM.AN. catches mice
| (The) cat catches mice.}}

{{fs interlinear|lang=ru|indent=2
| Столб держит крышу
| Stolb-∅ dérzhit krýshu.
| pillar-NOM.INAN holds roof
| (The) pillar holds a/the roof)}}

vs.

{{fs interlinear|lang=ru|indent=2
| Пётр гладит кота
| Pyotr gládit kot-á
| Peter strokes cat-ACC.AN
| Peter strokes a/the cat}}

and

{{fs interlinear|lang=ru|indent=2
| Пётр ломает столб
| Pyotr lomáyet stolb-∅
| Peter breaks pillar-ACC.INAN
| Peter breaks a/the pillar}}