Nominative Accusative Dative Genitive

A

Alxmrphi

Senior Member
NW England
UK English
Ok, wikipedia is being a bit of a female dog when it comes to explaining grammar rules, I'm determined to understand all language terminology and these have always confused me.


Nominative Accusative Dative Genitive

In language terms, what are they, is there an easy way to explain it?
 
    • Nominative

    Nominative case is simply a fancy name for the subject of a sentence. Consider the sentence:

    The dog bit the boy.

    The subject of the sentence is the dog. It's the part of the sentence that is performing the action (verb). Therefore we say that "The dog" is in nominative case.

    Accusative

    Accusative is also a fancy name for the object of a sentence. The object receives the action from the verb. So in our sentence above, the boy is the object.

    Sorry, I can't remember the other two =\ haha
     
    Dative is generally used for indirect objects.
    Genitive shows possession.
    Both dative & genitive have a variety of uses, though, so those explanations are not exhaustive.
    Good luck! That's a heck of a task you've set for yourself (to understand all language terminology)!
     
    Alex, this essentially depends on the language. In different languages which have numerous cases, the use of the above can be different. For instance, in Russian, genitive is also used negatives, That is, if you are to say: there is no X, then X would have to be in its genitive form. The only way to convert it back to Nominative is to say : X is absent/ X is not here.

    And please, be nicer to female dogs, all this that is being said about them is not their fault really.
     
    Anne. said:
    Nominative

    Nominative case is simply a fancy name for the subject of a sentence. Consider the sentence:

    The dog bit the boy.

    The subject of the sentence is the dog. It's the part of the sentence that is performing the action (verb). Therefore we say that "The dog" is in nominative case.

    Accusative

    Accusative is also a fancy name for the object of a sentence. The object receives the action from the verb. So in our sentence above, the boy is the object.

    Sorry, I can't remember the other two =\ haha
    Click to expand...

    :) - Very helpful! I'll go try and see what I can find for the other two.
     
    Nominative = subject of a verb
    Accusative = direct object of a verb
    Dative = indirect object of a verb
    Genitive = possesive pronoun
    Vocative = Asking someone directly
    Ablative = a preposition

    That was so much easier than I imagined it to be, thanks panjandrum
     
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