The accusative case is used in inflected languages when a noun, pronoun or adjective is the direct object of a transitive verb. In languages like Latin and Greek, the accusative case has different forms for subjects and direct objects. English doesn’t have a true accusative case, but some pronouns have an objective or oblique case.
In grammar, the accusative case is the form that a noun, pronoun or adjective takes in an inflected language when it is the direct object of a transitive verb. To put it mildly, sometimes words are spelled differently depending on their role in the sentence. These systematic spelling variations are referred to as cases of a word. The subject – usually the person or thing acting in the sentence – takes the nominative form, while the direct object – the person or thing doing something to it – takes the accusative form. In some languages, the accusative case may have other uses as well, but these vary greatly from language to language.
In many languages, including Esperanto, Greek, Latin, Polish, and Sanskrit, subjects and direct objects have different forms or spellings. These languages are known as inflected languages. For example, Latin first declension nouns in the accusative case end in -am in the singular and end in -as in the plural. Regardless of where the word occurs in the sentence, those endings warn the reader or listener that that word is likely the direct object. Adjectives or articles that modify the direct object and all pronouns that function as direct objects in these languages usually must also be in the accusative case.
Most inflected languages have more than just the nominative and accusative cases. Often, several cases, including the accusative, can be used as the subject of certain prepositions or to express various other relationships. For example, German uses the accusative case in some temporal clauses. In Greek, there may not be an easily apparent reason why an object of a particular preposition takes the accusative case rather than the genitive or dative case. When learning a new language, these usages often need to simply be memorized or acquired through repeated exposure.
Modern English, on the other hand, doesn’t have a fully formed case system, so it doesn’t have a true accusative case. The spelling, or morphological form, of an English noun does not usually change depending on whether it is a subject or a direct object. For example, both nouns in the sentence “Maria likes giraffes” are spelled the same as the nouns in the sentence “Giraffes like Maria”.
Some English pronouns will change their form when used as objects; for example, “he” becomes “he” and “she” becomes “she”, depending on their function in the sentence. These pronouns are sometimes said to have objective case or oblique case, which is similar to the accusative case of other languages. Labeling the case of a pronoun in English is helpful when discussing the difference between “who” and “who” or other potentially confusing grammatical situations.
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