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I really thought it funny how English has so few cases and so I decided to give a brief explanation about this. The three cases in English are [NOM] or nominative, [GEN] or genitive and [ACC] or accusative. Generally, grammar books explain in great detail when to use them, but I found that it is easier with fewer rules. So, generative grammar helps here. Nominative is used for the subjects of finite clauses - I am here. We love biscuits. He spoke to me. Genitive is used for possessors - That's my hat. She's his mother. Accusative is the default case and is used everywh

Hello all, New to the forum here, hope you don't think my question is stupid so I'll try to explain. In England we don't actually learn English grammar, so I've always felt it's more difficult to learn foreign languages. Especially in my own experience of learning German where the grammar system is so much more complex. Four cases and 16 situation dependent versions of the word 'the'... I want to know: Are German speakers actually aware whether a sentence is accusative, nominative, genitive or dative as they say it? Do they know instinctively if something is the subject, object,