Accusative case

The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions.

Related Topics:
Noun - Grammatical case - Verb - Prepositions

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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.

Related Topics:
Indo-European languages - Latin - Sanskrit - Greek - German - Russian - Finno-Ugric languages - Semitic languages - Arabic - Balto-Fennic languages - Partitive case - Telic

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Modern English, which 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).

Related Topics:
English - Declension - Old English - Proto-Indo-European - Dative case - Oblique case - Objective case - Declension in English

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