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Nominative-accusative language
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{{linguistic typology topics}}
A '''nominative-accusative
language''' (or simply '''accusative language''') is one that marks the
object (grammar) direct object of
transitive verbs distinguishing them from the
subject (grammar) subject of both transitive and
intransitive verbs.
If the language has
morphology (linguistics) morphological grammatical case case, then the direct object is marked with a case conventionally known as "accusative", while the subject is marked with another case called "nominative". If there's no case marking, the language can resort to word order (for example, the subject comes before the verb and the object comes after it, as in
English language English).
The nominative form is usually the most
markedness unmarked form of a word, and the form that is used as the
lemma (linguistics) lemma. However, this does not shield it from other sound changes than marking, e.g. Finnish lemma ''vete-'' with the regular nominative ''vesi''.
Examples
Germanic language Germanic and
Romance language Romance languages, as well as the majority of other languages in the world, are nominative-accusative.
English language English has no morphological case distinction between nominative and accusative, except for the pronouns, and it relies solely on word order to differentiate subject and object. The same applies to the Romance languages. German retains case marking, most notably applied to articles.
Consider
German language German:
:''Der Mann kam.'' "The man arrived."
:''Der Mann sah den Jungen.'' "The man saw the boy."
''Der'' and ''den'' both mean "the". The form of the definite article changes according to both the grammatical gender and quantity of the noun it applies to, and also according to the case (accusative or dative) prescribed by a transitive verb for its objects.
The subject of the sentence, ''Mann'', is placed in the
nominative case. ''Der'' is the nominative singular masculine article.
In the second example sentence, the verb ''sah'' (past form of ''sehen''), like the majority of German transitive verbs, prescribes the
accusative case for its object. Thus, the definite article is changed to ''den'', for a masculine singular word (''Jungen'') in the accusative case.
Old English language Old English had a similar system to German, which gradually disappeared from use. (''See
Declension in English''.)
Baltic-Finnic languages have two cases that are used for marking the morphosyntactic accusative. The Finnish
accusative case is always
telic; the object (and thus the action) is finished, a "total object", and may not be referenced again by the same action. The
partitive case may appear contrastively in the same position as the accusative, and indicates an atelic object, which may be referenced again for the same action. (The partitive, however, appears in other contexts.) For example, ''Kirjoitin artikkelin'' "I wrote an article (completely)" has the word ''artikkeli'' in the (telic) accusative, indicating that the article is complete; and ''Kirjoitin artikkelia'' has the word ''artikkeli'' in the partitive, indicating that the result is not known (may or may not be completed).
br:Nominativel-akuzativel
es:Lengua nominativo-acusativa
eo:Akuzativa lingvo
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