Latin/Lesson 5-Accusative

Grammar: The Accusative
As you learned in the last lesson, the verb 'esse' (to be) usually takes the nominative case, because then the word after it is a complement. Most other verbs take the 'accusative' case.

In a sentence, the accusative is the "what" - in English grammar, this is known as the direct object.

For example: The girl sells the box.

What did the girl sell? The box. Thus, box is the direct object, and when we translate it into Latin:

Cistam, then, is in the accusative, because it is the direct object.

Again, when an adjective describes a noun in the accusative case, the adjective must agree in number, case, and gender.

Because Latin uses cases to mark the subject and the object of a sentence, word order does not matter. Consider:

Examples of Adjectives Agreeing with the Nominative and Accusative Case
Bonus, a first and second declension adjective, is masculine, nominative, and singular to agree with puer, the word it is describing.

Ferocem, a third declension adjective, is masculine, accusative, and singular to agree with canem. Canem is accusative because it is the object of amat.

Here is an example of plural adjectives:

The words bonus and ferocem become boni and feroces to agree with the plurals pueri and canes.

However, if a girl (puella) happened to love that boy:

Bonus must become bona in order to modify puella, which is feminine.

Finally, if the girl isn't good, but rather wild:

Even though puella is first declension, ferox remains third declension. In the same way, a good lion would be bonus leo.

Exercise 2
Determine whether the adjective agrees with the substantive in all three categories: case, gender, number.


 * * Nota bene: Poeta (meaning poet) is a masculine noun, even though it ends in -a.

Grammar: The Use of the Accusative
The newly introduced verbs, ama-t, curri-t, and porta-t take the accusative as the 'object'. Unless specified, any verb you look up in the dictionary will take the accusative, not the nominative. This means that they are transitive verbs, verbs that happen to someone or something, e.g.:

I heal you. (acc.) You make my day. (acc.) She hit your arm. (acc.)

In the examples above, the bold words are the subject of the sentence clause. Because something happens "to" them, they can't be in nominative.