How to identify a nominative case

The nominative case is the initial vocabulary form of nouns, opposed to all other forms of indirect cases: genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional. The word in the nominative case is never used with a preposition and in the sentence usually performs the syntactic function of the subject or nominal part of the compound predicate.

Instruction manual

one

Define the nominative case of a noun by the grammar questions "who?" or "what?". For example, in the sentence “His mother was kindness itself, ” the word “mother” answers the question “who?”, And the word “kindness” answers the question “what?”.

2

For the nominative case, the main ones are subjective and definitive meanings. In the first case, this form denotes the person performing the action, or the object to which it is directed. Compare: "Mother loves her son." The word "mother" refers to an agent. "Son is loved by mother." The word "son" refers to the animated object on which the action is directed.

3

Determine the subjective meaning of the nominative case form according to the syntactic role of the subject in the two-part sentence ("Son is a student, but he works at the same time") or the subject in the one-part callative ("Whisper, timid breathing, nightingale trills

").

4

The definitive meaning of the nominative case is expressed in a compound nominal predicate or in the syntactic structure of the application. "A new building is a factory." The word "factory" is the nominal part of the predicate that answers the question "what is the new building?". "A female doctor invited me to the office." The word "doctor", answering the question "who?", Is an application that performs the syntactic function of definition. Please note that the nominative case, used in the definitive meaning, gives a different name to the subject by its property, quality, attribute, and circumstances peculiar.

5

Additional values ​​of the nominative case of the noun are: - the estimated value expressed in the nominal part of the predicate ("He was kind"); - the expression of a temporary attribute related to the past ("At that time there was still her husband’s bridegroom"); - the value is informative the form used both in the proper name ("She was called Olya"), and the common noun ("He is listed as a watchman"). Most often, the nominative case is used in this meaning with geographical names ("Then the city began to be called Petrograd").

note

In addition to nouns, the declining parts of speech have the category of case: adjective, numeral, participle and pronoun. Define the nominative case of adjectives and participles on the questions “what? What? What? What?” Asked from the identified noun, “how much?” - for quantitative numerals, "which account?" - for ordinals. The pronouns depending on the category can answer in the nominative case to the questions "who? What?" (me, that one), "which? whose?" (some, his), "how much?" (so many).