objectaccusative

Objectaccusative, commonly called the object accusative, is the grammatical function and form used for the direct object of a transitive verb in languages that employ case marking. It marks the participant that is directly affected by the action, as in “I see the man,” where “the man” is in the accusative case in many languages.

In languages with accusative alignment, the subject of both intransitive and transitive clauses is typically in the nominative case, while the direct object takes the accusative. This contrasts with ergative-absolutive systems, where the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb often share a common case (absolutive), and the agent of a transitive verb is marked differently.

Morphology and syntax of the object accusative vary across languages. It may appear as a suffix, a separate article or pronoun form, or through word order in languages with little or no overt case marking. Examples include German, which marks accusative forms on articles and adjectives (den Mann), and Latin, which uses distinct accusative endings on nouns (amīcum, puellam). English largely lacks noun-specific case marking, relying on word order, though pronouns retain accusative forms (me, him, her).

Functionally, the object accusative encodes the patient or theme of the action and can interact with factors such as animacy, definiteness, or movement in certain languages. The term derives from the Latin grammatical tradition and remains a standard concept in the study of grammatical alignment and syntax.