The category of cases in English and in Russian languages

Grammarians seem to be divided in their opinion as to the case-system of English nouns. Open to thought and questioning, this problem has always been much debated. The most common view on the subject is that nouns have only two cases: a common case and a genitive or possessive case. [21, p 69] The common case is characterised by a zero suffix (child, boy, girl, student), the possessive case by the inflection [-z] and its phonetic variants [-s], [- iz ] , in spelling -'s. The uses of the genitive are known to be specific, those of the common case general. In terms of modern linguistics, we can therefore say that both formally and functionally, ( he common case is unmarked and the genitive marked.