Def. of Case WAS: Cases, again

This leaves me somewhat confused as to the definition of "case".  In
English, we have words that take semantic roles based on word order, such
as direct and indirect objects and subjects.  Other, more inflectional
languages mark these semantic roles with actual changes to the words
taking these roles.  Which is the case, this specific set of marked words,
or the semantic role?  That is, were I to have the sentence, "I hit the
man", could "man" be considered to be accusative, or is it merely the
direct object of the verb?  (Obviously, in the sentence "I hit him", "him"
is in the accusative as well as being the direct object.  Or maybe not:
in American schools at least, this is called the "objective" form of the
pronoun, as it is also used for indirect objects and "objects of
prepositions".)
-M

Marecon ayan:
> It depends.  In the English, "man's" is in the genitive, but you can't
> say anything about "house" because English nouns don't have any case
> other than the genitive.
[snip]
> The above assumes we're talking about an accusative language, of course,
> and not ergative, etc.

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