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"Dative" comes from Latin cāsus datīvus ("case for giving"), a translation of Greek δοτικὴ πτῶσις, dotikē ptôsis ("inflection for giving"). [2] Dionysius Thrax in his Art of Grammar also refers to it as epistaltikḗ "for sending (a letter)", [3] from the verb epistéllō "send to", a word from the same root as epistle.
The preposition determines the case that is used, with some prepositions allowing different cases depending on the meaning. For example, Latin in takes the accusative case when it indicates motion (English "into") and the ablative case when it indicates position (English "on" or "inside"): in urbem = "into the city" (accusative)
The dative, however, contrasts with the accusative case, which is used to indicate motion toward a place (it has an allative meaning). The difference in meaning between dative and accusative exists in all of the old Germanic languages and survives in all Germanic languages that retain a distinction between the two cases.
Latin word order is relatively free. The verb may be found at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a sentence; an adjective may precede or follow its noun (vir bonus or bonus vir both mean 'a good man'); [5] and a genitive may precede or follow its noun ('the enemies' camp' can be both hostium castra and castra hostium; the latter is more common). [6]
direct or indirect object of verb or object of preposition; a catch-all case for any situation except nominative or genitive: I saw her; I gave her the book; with her. English | Swedish | Danish | Norwegian | Bulgarian: Oblique case: all-round case; any situation except nominative or vocative: concerning the house
A complete Latin noun declension consists of up to seven grammatical cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative.However, the locative is limited to a few nouns: generally names of cities, small islands and a few other words.
The English word case used in this sense comes from the Latin casus, which is derived from the verb cadere, "to fall", from the Proto-Indo-European root ḱh₂d-. [8] The Latin word is a calque of the Greek πτῶσις, ptôsis, lit. "falling, fall". [9] The sense is that all other cases are considered to have "fallen" away from the nominative.
The latter prepositions take the accusative when motion or action is specified (being done into/onto the space), but take the dative when location is specified (being done in/on that space). These prepositions are also used in conjunction with certain verbs, in which case it is the verb in question which governs whether the accusative or dative ...