Talk:Accusative case

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Japanese has the accusative case
Should this be mentioned?

The case is indicated with the particle を.
 * 私は煉瓦を見えます
 * ᴘɴ-1-sɢ-ᴛᴏᴘ brick-ᴀᴄᴄ see-ɪᴘғᴠ-ғᴏʀᴍ
 * I see the brick

(first time glossing, please be nice) JohnSmith13345 (talk) 23:31, 23 April 2019 (UTC)


 * This edit was by me, JohnSmith13345, but I forgot to log in. You can request a CheckUser to verify
 * JohnSmith13345 (talk) 23:33, 23 April 2019 (UTC)


 * #### it, I’m adding Japanese
 * JohnSmith13345 (talk) 10:40, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Should locative case be added as well?
Could someone add an example where the accusative form can be better seen in english? using whom for example, and whith both the accusative and the non-accusative (whatever it is) cases. An example in Early Modern English (some shakespearian-like text) where the cases are more obvious could also be useful --Lacrymology 18:59, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

The accusative case can be seen in the sentence where you would use "me", "him" "her" instead of "I" "he" "she" so for example in the sentence "I will give it to HIM" you woud not say "I will give it to HE"

Him, whom, her, etc.
These words descend from pronouns which were dative only, not accusative. The -m ending is characteristic of singular masculine datives across several Germanic languages, including modern Icelandic and German as well as Old English. According to the OED a true accusative masculine singular pronoun persisted in some dialects as late as a couple of centuries ago; this was "hine". Again, this follows a pattern seen in other Germanic languages that still have an accusative; in modern German, for example, it's "ihn". Pithecanthropus (talk) 22:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I have just changed the article accordingly.Pithecanthropus (talk) 01:14, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

german???
I'm not a linguist, but is a refrence to accusative case in german really relevant? I know latin probably is because it's a root of english, but I don't know what information a lay person could glean fr4om that particular paragraph... Ahudson 18:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

German etymology and grammar is far more relevant to English than Latin, English and German both being cousins to each other in the Germanic family of languages. It's certainly true that the greater part of the English vocabulary comes from Latin by way of Norman French, but it should be remembered that these words have become Germanicized over the centuries. For example, the word nation is pronounced in English with the stress on the first syllable, which is characteristic of the Germanic languages. In German itself, where such Romance language words do occur, they usually have the same meaning, but retain their French pronunciation. To put it briefly, vocabulary alone is not the determining factor.Pithecanthropus (talk) 01:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The page seems inconsistent on whether German nouns are affected. The Description section suggests yes, giving the example of der Riese becoming den Riesen, but the German section says "the actual noun never differs from the form of the nominative case". A dictionary I checked says that der Riese does indeed become der Riesen. Can someone confirm and fix the German section if this is indeed true. HamishMoffatt (talk) 02:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Look at German nouns to see which classes of nouns have different nominative and accusative singular forms. — Eru·tuon 07:40, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

"These include bis, durch, entlang, für, gegen, ohne, um, after which the accusative case is always used" - this is slightly misleading because it depends on sentence structure. E.g. "er ging den Fluß entlang" ("he walked along the river") but "entlang des Flusses wurden Bäume gepflanzt" ("trees were planted alongside the river"). So it's not true "entlang" is always paired with the accusative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.82.64.222 (talk) 11:00, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

"The accusative case is used for the direct object in a sentence." - this is completely wrong. In German there are no "direct" (or "indirect") objects at all, only Akkusativobjekte, Dativobjekte and Genitivobjekte. The "rule" that "direct objects" are "in Akkusativ" (and "indirect objects" are in "Dativ") has more exceptions than regular cases and native English speakers who learned that when learning German struggle more with this "rule" and its application than by learning the cases correctly. --Bakunin (talk) 20:39, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Dose Estonian have accusatives?
This article indicates that Estonian has both an accusative and a partitive case, but a couple references I've found indicate a partitive but not an accusative case. Is this an error? Thanks. Deco 07:30, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 * No, the problem is rather simple: the genitive case in Estonian is produced identically. Since the two cases are homophonic, they are listed as one, even if they have different etymologies. The radically different meanings of the genitive and the accusative justify classifying them as separate cases. --Vuo 14:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, I don't think they justify this. In fact, the claim that Estonian (or Finnish) has a distinct accusative case for nouns seems to be the last remnant of imposing Latin models in the grammatical description of other languages; because Latin (and many other Indo-European languages) have an accusative case, it is just assumed that Estonian also ought to have one.
 * One can, though, falsify this idea reductio ad absurdum. E.g., the Finnish adessive expresses several radically different meanings such as "location on the upper surface", "instrument", "agent" (to mention just some), so it could also be analyzed as representing three separate cases, though formally identical - and so on.
 * Another thing is that traditional grammars usually maintain that languages such as Finnish and Estonian do have an accusative case; and because of this, it should be documented in Wikipedia as well. But as this analysis has been frequently challenged in the linguistic literature, this also ought to be documented.--AAikio 17:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I doubt you can just ignore etymology. Claiming that all languages with vowel harmony descend from a common ancestor is similar. If this was done in every branch of science, imagine the results. From chemical processes, I could think of using oil-derived technical-grade additives in food. --Vuo 22:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't really understand this argument. Normal ("naive") speakers of any natural language ignore etymology because they don't know anything about it. A synchronic description is, in principle, independent from a diachronic explanation. Claiming that "all languages with vowel harmony descend from a common ancestor" is not in any way analogous because it is not a synchronic description. --AAikio 22:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * "Your" and "you're" are identical in pronunciation in English. Yet standard orthography differentiates these. Why would that be? In Finnish and Estonian, the history doesn't allow for differentiation of ancient -m and -n, but this doesn't mean the two cases are the same any more than "your" and "you're". As for the adessive, I doubt it has two or three etymological ancestors of different pronunciation. --Vuo 23:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I already pointed out why etymology is irrelevant in a synchronic description. But consider the following example: Northern Sami has one case, the locative, corresponding to two local cases in Finnish, the inessive and the elative (e.g. Sami dálus "in the house / from the house" vs. Finnish talossa "in the house", talosta "from the house). Etymologically the locative derives from two originally distinctive cases, inessive and elative. Yet it is considered a single case in all grammatical descriptions. By your reasoning this should be wrong because the to different functions have different etymologies. Similar examples could be given from many other languages of the world as well. There is no reason to treat the Finnish genitive-accusative conflation as somehow principally different from these cases. --AAikio 00:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Hungarian
I'm no linguist either so I won't attempt to update the article, but I do know from having spent a year in Hungary and learned the language that Hungarian has a distinct accusative case for nouns which always ends in -t. Maybe someone could add that if it's relevant.
 * Done. Some details and exceptions are still missing, but I am not a linguist, either, only Hungarian :-) --Providus (talk) 22:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Latin examples
Why does the Latin section give a Spanish example for the accusative of duration of time? That confuses me a bit. --Insolectual (talk) 17:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Or existed once?
In case someone happens to check this page again, I'm confused about the part at the top of the page which says "The accusative case exists (or existed once) in all the Indo-European languages." Did one or more of the languages quit using this case? Are you referring to dead languages? Thanks for your help. 12.207.120.160 (talk) 19:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Should include Korean and Japanese example
ACC takes very important part in Asian agglutinative languages. This article should include Korean "eul/reul" and Japanese "wo". -202.136.135.165 (talk) 03:57, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Ditto. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.242.93 (talk) 05:21, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I second this. 2600:387:5:805:0:0:0:56 (talk) 23:15, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Italic emphasis and the accusative case
In Engish, when a noun is written in italics it emphasizes this noun and no other. Is this the same as accusative? Consider the sentence "I gave it to him" and compare the meaning of the sentence with the word "him" written in italics compared to the word "I" written in italics. They are too entirely different sentences really.

Comments please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.53.54.121 (talk) 21:27, December 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that “I gave it to him” is a different sentence from “I gave it to him”. The italics show additional stress in pronouncing the words. The first sentence emphasizes that the speaker gave it, and not someone else. The second sentence emphasizes that it was given to the male person (or animal) mentioned in the immediately preceding discussion, and not someone else.


 * Nevertheless, in both sentences “I” (the subject of the verb) is in the subjective case (it would have been the nominative case in Old English). In both sentences “him” (the direct object) is in the objective case (in Old English, the accusative case). Italics and emphasis have nothing to do with case.


 * In modern English, aside from five pronouns “me”, “him”, “her”, “them”, and “whom”, the direct object is determined by word order, not by inflections. This is one reason we must distinguish “direct object” (a relationship that a word or phrase can have to the verb) from “accusative case” (an inflected form of a word which marks the direct object, and may have other uses as well). Every transitive verb has a direct object, but many (most?) languages do not have an accusative case. — Solo Owl (talk) 04:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Difficult to follow.
In the definition, please include examples that use contrast. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.243.193.248 (talk) 05:47, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

German not clear?
plz elaborate on german — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.177.211.27 (talk) 16:34, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect Data and Examples with Armenian. Needs Correcting
Modern Standard Eastern Armenian has historically merged the nominative and the accusative (NOM/ ACC zero case marker), the genitive and the dative (special GEN/ DAT case marker(s)).

However, it uses the genitive/ dative case to denote an animate direct object (used definitely or indefinitely), but the nominative/ accusative case for an animate direct object used generically, and for an inanimate direct object.

In the examples from the article Արամը վերցրեց գիրքը: [Aramë verchrech girkhë] Aram took the book and Արամը սիրում է իր ուսուցչին: [Aramë sirum ē ir usuchčhin] Aram loves his teacher the direct objects (գիրքը and ուսուցչին) aren't in the accusative case and the endings -ը and -ին aren't the accusative markers. The inanimate գիրքը is the nominative/ accusative form (zero ending) + the definite article (ը) and the animate ուսուցչին (ի genitive/ dative ending) is the genitive/ dative form + the definite article (ն). (The Armenian definite article is allomorphic: ն or ը depending on the following sound.)

77.120.164.200 (talk) 11:06, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Slovenian?
The accusative case existed in Proto-Indo-European and is present in some Indo-European languages (including Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, German, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian), in the Uralic languages, in Altaic languages, and in Semitic languages (such as Hebrew and Classical Arabic).

Slovenian (Slovene), being a Slavic language, is completely missed out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.142.242.0 (talk • contribs) 12:35, August 23, 2014

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"The accusative case is typical of early Indo-European languages and still exists in some of them"
Doesn't it still exist in all of them? The accusative case exists in all languages with nominative-accusative morphosyntax which includes all of Indo-European. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 06:35, 20 April 2022 (UTC)