Accusative case
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The accusative case (also called the fourth case) (abbreviated ACC) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions.
The accusative case exists (or existed once) in all the Indo-European languages (including Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, German, Russian), in the Finno-Ugric languages, and in Semitic languages (such as Arabic). It should be noted that Balto-Fennic languages such as Finnish and Estonian have two cases to mark objects, the accusative and the partitive case. In morphosyntactic alignment terms, both perform the accusative function, but the accusative object is telic, while the partitive is not.
Modern English, which almost entirely lacks declension in its nouns, still has an explicitly marked accusative case in a few pronouns as a remnant of Old English, an earlier declined form of the language. "Whom" is the accusative case of "who"; "him" is the accusative case of "he" (the final "m" of both of these words can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European accusative case suffix); and "her" is the accusative case of "she". These words also serve as the dative case pronouns in English and could arguably be classified in the oblique case instead. Most modern English grammarians feel that due to the lack of declension except in a few pronouns, where accusative and dative have been merged, that making case distinctions in English is no longer relevant, and frequently employ the term "objective case" instead (see Declension in English).
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[edit] Example
In the sentence I see the car, the noun phrase the car is the direct object of the verb "see". In English, which has mostly lost the case system, the definite article and noun — "the car" — remain in the same form regardless of the grammatical role played by the words. One can correctly use "the car" as the subject of a sentence also: "The car is parked here."
In a declined language, the morphology of the article and/or noun changes in some way according to the grammatical role played by the noun in a given sentence. For example, in German, one possible translation of "the car" is der Wagen. This is the form in nominative case, used for the subject of a sentence. If this article/noun pair is used as the object of a verb, it (usually) changes to the accusative case, which entails an article shift in German — Ich sehe den Wagen. In German, masculine nouns change their definite article from der to den in accusative case.
See also Morphosyntactic alignment.
[edit] The accusative case in Latin
Nouns in the accusative case (Accusativus) can be used
- as a direct object.
- to indicate duration of time. E.g. multos annos, "for many years"; ducentos annos, "for 200 years." This is known as the accusative of duration of time.
- to indicate direction towards which. E.g. domum, "homewards"; Romam, "to Rome" with no preposition needed. This is known as the accusative of place to which.
- in indirect statements.
For the accusative endings, see Latin declensions.
[edit] The accusative case in German
Some German prepositions are only used with their object in the accusative case. These are bis, durch, für, gegen, ohne, um. The accusative case is used for the direct object in a sentence. the masculine forms for 'the', 'a', 'my', etc. change in the accusative case: they always end in -en. The feminine, neuter and plural forms don't change.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
als:Akkusativ bs:Akuzativ bg:Винителен падеж ca:Cas acusatiu cs:Akuzativ da:Akkusativ de:Akkusativ el:Αιτιατική es:Caso acusativo eo:Akuzativo fr:Accusatif gl:Acusativo hr:Akuzativ is:Þolfall it:Accusativo la:Accusativus nl:Accusatief ja:対格 no:Akkusativ nn:Akkusativ pl:Biernik pt:Caso acusativo ro:Cazul acuzativ ru:Винительный падеж sr:Акузатив sh:Akuzativ fi:Akkusatiivi sv:Ackusativ zh:宾格
