Exactly what is a declension?

1. What does declension mean?
2. What is declension example?
3. Do declensions exist in English?
4. What is the point of declensions?

What does declension mean?

declension. noun. de·​clen·​sion di-ˈklen-chən. : the giving of noun, adjective, or pronoun inflections especially in a specified order. : a class of nouns or adjectives having the same type of inflectional forms.

What is declension example?

For example, in a sentence saying that a ball belongs to a male person, with the ball in subject position, there is declension for case (possessive) and gender.

Do declensions exist in English?

In English, the only words that are marked formally are pronouns and the "declension" of pronouns shows three cases: The subject case, the object case, and the possessive case. Examples: "I, me, my/mine" and "he, him, his." Other words distinguish their syntactic usage within a sentence by their word position.

What is the point of declensions?

In Latin, not only is word order used to indicate what role a noun plays in a sentence or clause, but also what is called a declension and case. A case tells the speaker or reader what the noun does or is doing, and the declension of the noun decides how the case will look.