Dear Sukhdev,

> Excuse me, but I am really raw in basic grammar. What
> do you mean by term "nominative"? not to mention
> "singular nominative"??

OK, I'll try and explain them for you.
So-called inflected languages show the relationship between words (nouns &
adjectives) by adding different endings to the basic word (the stem form).
The stem form is the way a word is listed in a dictionary. Roots are
similar except the expression is normally used on with reference to the
basic form of a verbs.
Most transitive sentences in any language contain a subject, a verb and an
object. For languages like English, the precise word order is very
important -- "the dog bit the man" and "the man bit the dog" have the same
words but different meanings because the word order has changed. In
inflected languages like Pali or Sanskrit, the word order is not so
important because the relationship between the words is shown by the
endings.
Thus, in the first sentence, the word "dog" would be marked with a
particular ending to show that it is the doer of the action. This is the
nominative. The man is the recipient of the action, and so the word "man"
would be marked as such. This is called the accusative. From the viewpoint
of syntax, the dog is the subject and the man is the object.

When there is only one dog, one man and so forth, the ending often has a
particular form to show that there is only one thing -- this is the singular
form. If we were talking about "dogs" or "men" (more than one), then a
different ending is used to show this.

Other terms are:
* genitive: this basically shows ownership as "man's" in "the man's
cat".
* dative: this shows the direction of some action towards something, as
"to you" in "I gave the book to you".
" ablative: this shows the direction of some action away from something,
as "from you" in "I took the book from you".
* instrumental: this shows the tool or means by which something is done,
as "by train" in "I came by train".
* locative: this shows the place / time where or when a action takes
places, as "in the oven" in "I put your dinner in the oven".

NB: In most inflected languages, like Pali or Sanskrit, these case endings
usually have idiomatic uses beyond the simple examples I have given. These
special uses will be explained in any primer.

The vocative has no special ending to mark it because it does not stand in
any relationship with the verb -- it is just an interjection.

Other terms you may need to know are:

* Transitive. This is used with reference to verbs that need an object
(whether explicit or implict). In other words, the action of such verbs
moves from the doer (the subject) to the recipient (the object). In my
example above, "bite", give", "take" are all transitive verbs.
* Intransitive: This is used with reference to verbs that do not have an
object. In English, "come", "go", "sleep" are all intransitive verbs --
there is no transference of action from the doer to something or somebody
else.
* Active: This is used with reference to the form a verb takes in the
normal pattern of a sentence where the verb describes an action moving from
the doer to the recipient as in "He drinks beer". One can also speak of
active sentences.
* Passive: This is used with reference to the form a verb takes where
the object is treated as the subject of the verb, as in "I was seen by him"
which is a transformation of "He saw me". There may be various reasons why
the passive form is used, partly stylistic and partly for emphasis. One can
also speak of passive sentences. Note that most languages do not have a
passive form of intransitive verbs.

I hope these brief and hurried explanations are of some help -- but please
ask if anything continues to puzzle you.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge