accusativeben

Accusativeben is a term that appears in linguistic discussions and conlang communities to describe a hypothetical feature of case systems. In its most common usage, accusativeben refers to a pattern in which the accusative case is extended beyond marking direct objects to encode additional grammatical information, such as definiteness, specificity, or auxiliary functions, depending on the analysis. The idea is used as a thought experiment to explore how case marking could interact with word order, agreement, and functional categories in a language.

The name is a blend: "accusative" signals the primary morphosyntactic role, while "Ben" functions as a stand-in name used in examples and discussions. There is no widely attested natural-language counterpart to accusativeben; it is primarily found in theoretical discussions, online forums, and constructed-language grammars as an illustrative device rather than an established typological pattern.

Proposed implementations of accusativeben vary. Some schemas imagine a single marker or clitic that serves as the accusative object marker and also marks definite or specific objects in certain contexts. Others treat "ben" as a separate layer of information that co-occurs with accusative marking, creating layered morphology. The exact semantics and triggering conditions differ among authors, and there is no consensus.

In practice, accusativeben is used to illustrate how morphosyntax could reorganize information across case systems and to test the limits of typological generalizations. It is not reported as a stable, cross-linguistic feature, but rather as a conceptual tool for teaching, thought experiments, or conlang design. See also: accusative case, ditransitive marking, conlangs.