Accusative and Dative
Table of contents
Case Uses: Accusative and Dative
We continue our discussion of noun cases by exploring the accusative and the dative next. In traditional paradigm charts, accusative tends to come after dative (as you can see in the noun paradigm charts), but beginning with the accusative gives us a reference point to discuss the dative.
Accusative
Like the genitive, the accusative has many uses, but we’ll focus on one for now:
- direct object. With an active or middle voice verb, a noun in the accusative case can indicate that that noun receives the action of the verb.
- In such instances, the verb in question is usually transitive, which means that it’s an action that can be performed upon an object (e.g., “say”, “kick”, “see”). Compare this against intransitive verbs, which cannot take objects (e.g., “is”, “stand”, “happen”).
Note the qualification: accusative direct objects receive the action of active or middle verbs. As a heads up, when we learn about passive verbs in the last third of the semester, the receiver of a passive verb’s action will be the nominative subject, rather than the accusative direct object.
- ἔβλεψαν τὸν κίνδυνον (masculine accusative singular). “They saw the danger.”
- The verb ἔβλεψαν (“they saw”) is 3rd pl. aorist active. “The danger” is a direct object of the active verb and thus is in the accusative case (τὸν κίνδυνον).
- ὁ κίνδυνος (masculine nominative singular) ἐβλέφθη. “The danger was seen.”
- The verb ἐβλέφθη is 3rd sg. aorist passive. “The danger” in this sentence is the subject of the passive verb and is thus in the nominative case. (Again, we’ll learn more about the passive voice in the last third of the semester.)
Dative
Like the accusative and the genitive, the dative has many uses, but we’ll focus for now on one:
- indirect object. An indirect object in the dative case indicates a noun that gets affected by the action of the verb without directly receiving its action. The clearest example of this in English involves verbs like “to give” (δίδωμι, about which we’ll learn after Exam 1) or “to say” (λέγω … εἶπον … – - to say, speak, tell). Note the following examples:
1. The man gave the gift to his friend.
In this example sentence, the action of “giving” is performed directly upon “the gift” – that is the noun that is being given, and thus “gift” is a direct object and in the accusative case. However, “his friend” benefits from the action of giving, but he himself is not the noun being given. So, “his friend” would be an indirect object and in the dative case.
ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἔδωκε τὸ δῶρον τῷ φίλῷ.
2. The boy said the words to the people.
In this sentence, there’s a similar relationship between the verb “said” and the indirect object “the people” – the people aren’t directly being spoken (that function belongs to “words”, which is the direct object and thus would be in the accusative case), but the people are indirectly affected by that action – hence, indirect object and dative case.
ὁ κόρος εἶπε τοὺς λόγους τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.
In such cases, it’s often best to translate the dative using the preposition “to” or “for.” These prepositions are essentially built into the core function of the dative – you do not need any explicit prepositions in Greek to get this idea across. In the Greek, the dative article-noun pair τοῖς ἀνθρώποις translates in English to “to the people” – we don’t need an explicit preposition in the Greek to indicate “to” in this instance. (We will need one to indicate physical direction, though – more on this later).
English can also place indirect objects before direct objects without the use of “to” or “for.” Note this rearrangement of the first example sentence above:
- The man gave his friend the gift. (original: The man gave the gift to his friend.)
“Friend” is still not directly receiving the action of “giving”; it’s the gift that’s being given. So, despite the sentence’s rearrangement, the same functions for each noun apply: “friend” is the indirect object (dative case), and “gift” is the direct object (accusative case).
Be wary of word order in English; to figure out what is a direct object and what is an indirect object, ask yourself the question “what receives the action of the verb?” Your answer to that question is the direct object and should be in the accusative case. You can also ask “who benefits from” or “who gets affected by the action of the verb without directly receiving the action?” Your answer to that question is the indirect object which should be in the dative case.
Dative and Accusative Endings
The following charts will indicate the dative and accusative endings by declension and subgroup, as the charts in the Nominative and Genitive did, but I will be including those endings here as well for the completeness of the paradigm. Bolded endings will indicate the new dative and accusative endings to add into your charts.
First Declension
| Long Feminine | Short Feminine | Masculine | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom. sg. | -ᾱ, -η | -α | -ᾱς, -ης |
| Gen. sg. | -ᾱς, -ης | -ης | -ου |
| Dat. sg. | -ᾳ, -ῃ* | -ῃ* | -ᾳ, -ῃ* |
| Acc. sg. | -αν, -ην | -αν | -αν, -ην |
| Nom. pl. | -αι | -αι | -αι |
| Gen. pl. | -ῶν | -ῶν | -ῶν |
| Dat. pl. | -αις | -αις | -αις |
| Acc. pl. | -ας | -ας | -ας |
Second Declension
| Masculine/Feminine | Neuter | |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. sg. | -ος | -ον |
| Gen. sg. | -ου | -ου |
| Dat. sg. | -ῳ* | -ῳ* |
| Acc. sg. | -ον | -ον** |
| Nom. pl. | -οι | -α |
| Gen. pl. | -ων | -ων |
| Dat. pl. | -οις | -οις |
| Acc. pl. | -ους | -α** |
* Note the presence of the iota subscript in these endings. This iota subscript is a letter in and of its own right, and it is necessary when declining a noun into the dative singular in the first or second declension. It is particularly important in the first declension, since the presence or absence of an iota subscript can make the difference between the nominative and the dative case.
** Note that any neuter noun, pronoun, or adjective will have the same form/ending in the nominative and accusative within the same number. This means that a neuter noun will have the same form for nominative singular and accusative singular, and then the same form for nominative plural and accusative plural.
So, take for example the noun δῶρον (δῶρον, δώρου, n. - gift). Its neuter nominative singular form, which we can tell from the first part of the dictionary entry, is δῶρον, which means that its accusative singular form will also be δῶρον – we do not decline the noun into the accusative singular by chopping -ου off the genitive form and adding an ending. Similarly, the nominative and accusative plural form of the noun is δῶρα. This will become extremely important to note when we learn about the third declension in the last third of the semester, in which the nominative singular does not have any one normal ending.
Context will often help guide you towards figuring out whether a neuter noun is nominative or accusative. Take, for example, this sentence:
- ὁ κόρος τὰ ἔργα ἐποίησεν.
τὰ ἔργα is neuter plural and can be either nominative or accusative. Indeed, because τὰ ἔργα is neuter, the verb ἐποίησεν does not actually help us decide here whether τὰ ἔργα is a nominative subject or accusative direct object, because recall that neuter plural subjects take singular verbs. So, we need another clue that can help us figure out whether τὰ ἔργα is nominative or accusative.
Note the presence of an explicit nominative noun that cannot be any other case in the sentence: ὁ κόρος. κόρος is a second declension masculine noun, and the ending -ος occurs only in the masculine nominative singular. Moreover, the definite article ὁ has to be masculine nominative singular as well. Thus, by process of elimination, we can rule out nominative for τὰ ἔργα and parse the noun as an accusative direct object:
- The boy did the deeds.
Noun Accents
Recall from the unit on alphabets and accents that the accent on nouns is persistent. This means that the accent wants to occupy the same syllable in the noun (antepenult, penult, or ultima), regardless of its inflection.
The accent’s position is most clearly seen in the genitive singular form of the noun. Wherever the accent falls in that form is where it tends to stay in the noun’s other inflections, but the accent is still subject to the same rules of length, movement, and transformation described in the accents unit.
For example, let’s take the noun γνώμη, γνώμης, f. - opinion, thought. The accent falls on the penult in the genitive singular form, so throughout the noun’s inflections, that’s where it will want to stay:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | γνώμη | γνῶμαι |
| Gen. | γνώμης | γνωμῶν |
| Dat. | γνώμῃ | γνώμαις |
| Acc. | γνώμην | γνώμας |
Note the nominative plural form, where the accent changes from an acute to a circumflex; this is because the long ω in the penult is followed by a short ultima (the ending -αι, though a diphthong, counts as short for the purposes of accentuation). Therefore, the accent changes from an acute to a circumflex. (For the accentuation of the genitive plural form, see below.)
The concept of looking to the genitive singular for a noun’s accent position is crucial, particularly when we learn about 3rd declension nouns, in which the nominative and genitive singular forms don’t always have the same number of syllables. For example, note γυνή, γυναικός, f. - “woman, wife.” The nom. sg. form has only two syllables while the genitive has three, and without the latter form, we wouldn’t know that the noun’s accent persists on the last syllable:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | γυνή | γυναικές |
| Gen. | γυναικός | γυναικῶν |
| Dat. | γυναικί | γυναιξί(ν) |
| Acc. | γυναικά | γυναικάς |
There are some general rules about where accents fall and how they change based on the declension of the noun:
- In first declension nouns, the genitive plural will always be accented with a circumflex over the ending: -ῶν.
- This is because the original form of the ending was -άων; the α and the ω contracted over time, and the circumflex reflects this contraction.
- If a first or second declension noun is accented on the ultima (i.e., the accent falls on the noun’s ending), that accent is a circumflex over the genitive singular, dative singular, genitive plural and dative plural endings; it is an acute elsewhere (or grave according to the regular rules).