Product Code Database
In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", "us", "whom", and "them". For example, the pronoun she, as the subject of a clause, is in the nominative case ("She wrote a book"); but if the pronoun is instead the object of the verb, it is in the accusative case and she becomes her ("Fred greeted her").Huddleston, Rodney. Pullum, Geoffrey. A Student's Introduction to English Grammar. Cambridge University Press. 2015. P. 106. For compound direct objects, it would be, e.g., "Fred invited her and me to the party".
The accusative case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is usually combined with the nominative case (for example in Latin).
The English term, "accusative", derives from the Latin , which, in turn, is a translation of the Greek . The word can also mean "causative", and that might have derived from the Greeks, but the sense of the Roman translation has endured and is used in some other modern languages as the grammatical term for this case, for example in Russian ().
The accusative case is typical of early Indo-European languages and still exists in some of them (including Albanian, Armenian, Latin, Sanskrit, Greek language, German language, Nepali language, Polish language, Romanian, Russian language, Serbian language, and Ukrainian), in the Finno-Ugric languages (such as Finnish and Hungarian), in all Turkic languages, in Dravidian languages like Malayalam and Tamil language, and in Semitic languages (such as Arabic). Some Balto-Finnic languages, such as Finnish, have two cases for objects, the accusative and the partitive case. In morphosyntactic alignment terms, both do the accusative function, but the accusative object is Telicity, while the partitive is not.
Modern English almost entirely lacks declension in its nouns; pronouns, however, have an understood case usage, as in them, her, him and whom, which merges the accusative and dative case functions, and originates in old Germanic dative forms (see Declension in English).
In a declined language, the morphology of the article or noun changes with gender agreement. For example, in German language, "the dog" is der Hund. This is the form in the 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 – Der Mann sieht den Hund (The man sees the dog). In German, masculine nouns change their definite article from der to den in the accusative case. In Nepali language, "Rama sees Shyama" would be translated as रामले श्यामलाई देख्छ। The same sentence in Sanskrit would be रामः पश्यति श्यामम्। .
For the accusative endings, see .
| Definite article (the) | den | die | das | die |
| Indefinite article (a/an) | einen | eine | ein |
For example, Hund (dog) is a masculine (der) word, so the article changes when used in the accusative case:
Some German pronouns also change in the accusative case.
The accusative case is also used after particular German prepositions. These include bis, durch, für, gegen, ohne, um, after which the accusative case is always used, and an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen which can govern either the accusative or the dative. The latter prepositions take the accusative when motion or action is specified (being done into/onto the space), but take the dative when location is specified (being done in/on that space). These prepositions are also used in conjunction with certain verbs, in which case it is the verb in question which governs whether the accusative or dative should be used.
Adjective endings also change in the accusative case. Another factor that determines the endings of adjectives is whether the adjective is being used after a definite article (the), after an indefinite article (a/an) or without any article before the adjective ( many green apples).
| Definite article | -en | -e | -e | -en |
| Indefinite article | -es | |||
| No article | -e |
In German, the accusative case is also used for some adverbial expressions, mostly temporal ones, as in Diesen Abend bleibe ich daheim (This evening I'm staying at home), where diesen Abend is marked as accusative, although not a direct object.
In the masculine, Russian also distinguishes between animacy nouns with regard to the accusative; only the animates carry a marker in this case.
The PIE accusative case has nearly eroded in Russian, merging with the genitive or the nominative in most declensions. Only singular first-declension nouns (ending in 'а', 'я', or 'ия') have a distinct accusative ('у', 'ю', or 'ию').
The major new Finnish grammar, Iso suomen kielioppi, deviates from the traditional classification to limit the accusative case to the special case of personal pronouns and kuka/ken. This grammar considers other total objects as being in the nominative or genitive case.
Every personal pronoun has an accusative form.
| + !colspan=2 rowspan=2 | !colspan=2English !colspan=2 | Hungarian |
Accusative in Akkadian
Accusative in Arabic
The accusative case is called in Arabic النصب () and it has many other uses in addition to marking the object of a verb.
Accusative in Hebrew
In Hebrew, if the object of the sentence is a pronoun (e.g., I, you, s/he) and the transitive verb requires a direct object, the word אֵת is combined with the pronoun into an object pronoun. The combined words are:
The accusative is only used if the direct object of a sentence is Definiteness. If it is indefinite, the nominative case is used. For example:
| (nominative case) |
| (nominative case, indefinite direct object) |
| (accusative case, definite direct object) |
|
|
