Essentials of Latin Grammar: An Introduction to the Accusative Case

Don't let the Latin accusative case (casus accusativus) scare you off with its recriminatory name: It is all a misunderstanding-a mistranslation, to be precise. The term accusative (< accusativus < accusare) was modeled after the Greek term ptosis aitiatike, where aitiatike meant "the result of an action". Now, aitiatike derives from the Greek noun aitia, which meant "cause, occasion", but also "the occasion of something bad, an accusation". This double meaning of aitia led Roman grammarians to the mistranslation of what should have been casus causativus (i.e. the case that marks the result of the verb's action) as casus accusativus. So, the term "accusative" is a misnomer. Actually, for an oblique^† case, the accusative is pretty straightforward.

The Objective Case

The basic function of the accusative is to mark the noun that receives the (positive or negative) action of an active transitive verb. For instance, in the sentence Puer puellam amat (The boy loves the girl), the noun puellam is in the accusative case, which marks the recipient of the verbal action (amat): The girl is the goal and recipient of the boy's love. The noun in the accusative is called the direct object.

It is easy to spot the accusative as its endings are most often -m (in the singular) and -s or -a (in the plural). Remember that Latin is an inflected language, which means that it has special markers for its various grammatical categories and relations. This gives Latin a freedom that English, for example, does not have. Using our boy-loves-girl example, we could move the words around and still get the same meaning: Puer puellam amat means the same as Puer amat puellam or Puellam amat puer or Amat puellam puer, etc., etc. You get the idea. In Latin, in all the above versions, the boy is the subject and the girl is the object of the verb. (Any semantic differences among these renditions have to do with style and emphasis.) See what happens if we try the same with the English translation: The boy loves the girl is a whole different story from The girl loves the boy. When English shed its Old English inflections, it had to give up its freedom of word order.

The Case for English

Old English was highly inflected (like Latin) and had special endings for the accusative. Very few survive in Modern English. Pronouns such as him, her, us, whom are all remnants of the morphologically marked accusative of yore. Since the accusative survives in Modern English as a syntactic/semantic function rather than a distinct morphological category, it would make more sense to refer to the English accusative as the objective.

Grammatical Sleuthing

The accusative case in Latin has specific and fairly distinguishable functions. The following tips should get you off to a good start:

If your sentence has an active transitive verb, the accusative will be there, marking the direct object: Mater filiam amat. (The mother loves the daughter.)

Certain verbs that mean "to call", "to teach", "to elect", etc. take two accusatives: e.g. Te amicum appello (= I call you (= consider you my) friend.)

Certain prepositions govern (i.e. always take) the accusative: e.g. ante (= before) and post (= after). (Remember what the Latin abbreviations a.m. and p.m. stand for?)

The accusative case can also be used adverbially to express a) extent of time (e.g. Multos annos in Graecia eram. I was in Greece for many years.); b) extent of space (e.g. Quattuor milia ambulabam. I walked for four miles.); 3) direction towards a place (e.g. Romam venerunt. They came to Rome.)

Still having trouble figuring out the accusative case? You can always say me miserum! or me miseram! (= o wretched me!) and practice the accusative of exclamation while venting your frustration and distress.

^†In grammar, oblique is any case other than the nominative or vocative.

Quiz
Which Roman poet loved the exclamation me miserum! and used it a lot in his work?

Sources:
Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.m-w.com
Institutes of Latin Grammar by John Grant. London: Longman, 1808 (passim): http://alturl.com/x8re
Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry by Stephen Hinds. Cambridge: CUP, 1998 (pp 30 ff): http://alturl.com/te9m