Basic Grammar – Noun Cases

So you’re probably wondering what all those noun forms were earlier – you know, Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, and Ablative. Some are easy to understand, some need a long explanation. I’ll try my best to explain.

Stems

Before I begin, you have to know about stems. I explained in the previous post, but I’ll do it again. The stem of a noun is the part that appears when it is declined. Like for ager, the stem is agr-, because when ager is declined, every form of the noun except for the nominative singular features agr-.

hihihihihihihihihiSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       ager                  agrī
Genitive:            agrī                  agrorum
Dative:               agrō                 agrīs
Accusative:        agrum              agrōs
Ablative:            agrō                 agrīs

Since the nominative singular often does not feature the stem of a noun, it is common practice to also list the genitive of a noun when defining it so that you know what the stem looks like. So if I were defining ager, I would write:
ager, agrī, m., field (the m. stands for masculine, because Latin nouns have gender. More on that in a later post).

Okay, enough with stems. Here are the different noun cases.

Noun Cases

• Nominative – kind of like the “default” noun case. This form is used when the noun is the subject of a sentence or the predicate nominative of a sentence. Hopefully you haven’t forgotten your basic English grammar and remember what subjects and predicate nominatives are. If you don’t, a subject is the noun in the sentence that is doing an action (the dog bit the boy), and a predicative nominative is a noun used with a linking verb. Huh?
  Here are some examples – that cat is brown; this porridge tastes bland; an ox is a male cow; Robert seems sad; the Biology book is a beast; et cetera.
  The nominative form is also used when the noun is a subject or predicative nominative of a prepositional phrase (in most cases) like “Marcus ambulat ad agrōs quod Aurelius est” (Marcus walks to the fields because Aurelius is there) – notice that Aurelius is nominative.
  The nominative form of a noun often does not include its stem.

• Genitive – the possessive form of a noun. Whereas the nominative does not always feature the stem of a noun (as I discussed before), the genitive always does. The genitive form of each noun declension is unique, so if you want to identify what declension a noun is in, looking at the genitive form is a sure way of finding out. That’s why I will list the genitive form of each noun along the nominative when I give a definition.

• Dative – now it gets tricky. The dative form is used in several different situations – but there IS a somewhat common theme here. Dative is always used when a noun is an indirect object – I hope you know what that means. If you don’t, an example – I gave Edgar a toy. Do you see? I did not give Edgar – I gave a toy to Edgar. So Edgar is an indirect object. Another example – I mailed Billy a letter. I hope you see the pattern. So dative case is used in those situations (Do puerō baculum – I give a staff to a boy). Dative is also used as “for” and “to” (when the “to” is being used where a “for” could also be used) -
  if you wanted to say “The boy’s name is Gaius,” you could say “Puerī nomen Gaius est.” However, the Romans liked more to say “The name to/for the boy is Gaius” – which requires the dative case. That would be “Nomen puerō Gaius est.”
  In later grammar posts, I will explain more usages of the dative.

• Accusative – ah, a bit easier. Kind of. Accusative is mainly used for direct objects – hopefully you know what that is. If you don’t, a direct object is a noun that is having something done to it.
  Examples – Bob ate an apple. Marcus wrote Latin. Odoacer destroyed the Roman empire.
  Okay, hopefully you get that.
  Unfortunately, accusative is used for a bit more – it is also used in most prepositions. So if you want to say, “Marcus walks to the fields” it would be “Marcus ambulat ad agrōs” – ad is a VERY important preposition that means “towards” or “to.” Ad is only used in the sense that you are moving towards something – if you are giving something to someone, that would be just dative with no preposition (“Do puerō baculum”).
  If you see a preposition, just take it for granted that it takes the accusative. However, there is a set of very commonly used preposions that take the ablative. But more on that below…

• Ablative – the most complicated form. I’ll just say it now. Ablative is evil. There is no English equivalent of the ablative whatsoever – you just have to take this form on a case-by-case basis. There are certain prepositions that only take the ablative – here they are, and remember them (very, very, very) well, because they are very common:

  Sub – under
  In – in, on
  Dē – about, down from, concerning
  
  Sine – without
  Prō – for (as in “in support of”), in front of, on behalf of
  Ā, ab – from, away
  Cum – with
  Ēx – out of, from

  Yes, they spell SID SPACE. If you can think of anything better, please tell me.
  There are many, many, many other uses for the ablative. I will not mention them in “Basic Grammar,” however, because that would be cruel and useless. And too long.

Well, I hope that these explanations help you understand the language. This stuff is pretty confusing, so if you have questions, please ask. And once I explain first declension and once I get through how verbs work, all of the pieces should begin to fit together.

Tags: ablative, accusative, cases, dative, declension, genitive, grammar, latin, nominative, noun, sid space, stems