German accusative? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

German accusative?
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Марк
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Message 9 of 22

01 May 2013 at 1:49pm | IP Logged

LanguageSponge wrote:

I had trouble with this when I learnt German too, and I imagine
it's a common problem for everyone. I think the accusative is one of the hardest
concepts of the case system to get right.

Firstly, it would be easier to understand this use of the accusative case in English
using the words "he" and "she", which are subjects, and their object (accusative)
equivalents which are "him" and "her" - because they *change*, whereas "you" doesn't.

The reason you're finding the accusative difficult to understand here, I think, is
because "you" is the same as both a subject *and* an object. Most other subject
pronouns (I, he, her, we, they) change when they're objects - "me, him, her, us, them".

Look at the following sentences:

My brother loves Jenny.
He (my brother) loves her (Jenny).

We hate our English teacher.
We hate him.

Just because a word doesn't change, doesn't mean that it isn't playing a different
grammatical role. For example:

You like Jenny.

In the above sentence, "you" is the subject. You are performing the "liking". Jenny is
the object - "You like *her*".

Jenny likes you.

In this sentence, "you" doesn't change. But here, it's an object. How do we know that?
Replace "you" with "he" or "she" and see if this makes sense - "Jenny likes he" - it
doesn't make sense now, does it? So there's your answer. Here, "you" is the direct
object.

Important note: This works in 95% of instances where you'd expect an object/the
accusative case, but there *are* differences between English and German grammar, as
pointed out by lichtrausch above. One of the most common, which confused the hell out
of me when I was learning because I thought I'd understood the above correctly, was
"sein".

In English we say "that is her" - "her" is a direct object in English. But this doesn't
make sense in German. You just have to remember that "sein", the equivalent of "to be",
always takes the nominative in German.

That's the teacher. That's him. Das ist der Lehrer. Das ist er.

Hope this serves to clear things up somewhat. Good luck!

Jack

English used to have the nom. pronouns in phrases like "It's I" too. This not acc. and
not a direct object. In modern English personal pronouns in the subject form stopped
being used independently. So, they are used only right before the verb. In all the
other positions the object forms are used. That's why you say "Me too", not "I too" or
"Who did that? Me". That's similar to French je/moi.
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patrickwilken
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Message 10 of 22

01 May 2013 at 1:56pm | IP Logged

Matthew12 wrote:

And in this sentence: "Blanca forgot her books in her car." If Blanca is the subject, and "her books" is the direct object,then what is "her car"???

'in her car' is the indirect object.
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Марк
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Message 11 of 22

01 May 2013 at 2:16pm | IP Logged

English makes a clear distinction between the subject and the direct object in a
sentence. The former is before the verb, while the latter is after.
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tarvos
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Message 12 of 22

01 May 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged

patrickwilken wrote:

Matthew12 wrote:

And in this sentence: "Blanca forgot her
books in her car." If Blanca is the subject, and "her books" is the direct object,then
what is "her car"???

'in her car' is the indirect object.

No, it's not. In her car is an adverbial of place and indicates where the books were
placed, it has no object relation towards the verb. Similarly you could say:

Blanca forgot her books on top of the mountain.

Still modifying place. "To forget" doesn't take an indirect object, only a direct one
[namely, the item you are forgetting].
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patrickwilken
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Message 13 of 22

01 May 2013 at 2:28pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

Thanks. Goes to show natives don't know their own grammar very well. At least explicitly. ;)

This is quite helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_object#Types_of_object s

Direct object: Entity acted upon
Sam fed the dogs.

Indirect object: Entity indirectly affected by the action
She sent him a present.

Prepositional object: Object introduced by a preposition
She is waiting for Tom.

Edited by patrickwilken on 01 May 2013 at 2:33pm
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tarvos
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Message 14 of 22

01 May 2013 at 2:40pm | IP Logged

The thing about prepositions is that they modify a noun to be in the same form as it
would be in the accusative/dative case, even though it's not actually being used in an
accusative position in the sentence.

Thus, я поеду в магазин has магазин in the accusative but it's not the object of the
sentence at all (because the verb doesn't take an object, it only optionally takes a
modifier of place (where I'm going to) or time (when I'm going). That those phrasings
use the accusative is convenient for memorization but they don't actually have to at
all (in Russian, German and Latin there is a distinction between movements towards/away
from a place and stationary location, and it requires a different case). That the two
forms coincide is purely incidental, but they don't have to coincide at all, you could
have a case specifically for movement. The accusative case is not the same as the
object.

In German dative is actually used for a shit-tonne of prepositions that have nothing to
do with the actual indirect object, the nouns/adjective just take a datival declension
because the associated preposition requires it (auf takes a dative, but you're not
giving an object to somebody else).
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beano
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Message 15 of 22

02 May 2013 at 1:04am | IP Logged

LanguageSponge wrote:

Important note: This works in 95% of instances where you'd expect an object/the accusative case, but there
*are* differences between English and German grammar, as pointed out by lichtrausch above. One of the
most common, which confused the hell out of me when I was learning because I thought I'd understood the
above correctly, was "sein".

In English we say "that is her" - "her" is a direct object in English. But this doesn't make sense in German.
You just have to remember that "sein", the equivalent of "to be", always takes the nominative in German.

That's the teacher. That's him. Das ist der Lehrer. Das ist er.

Hope this serves to clear things up somewhat. Good luck!

Jack

Yes, it can be difficult for English natives to grasp the fact that sein never takes the accusative case, because
our instincts try and force us down the path that English takes.

It must be him - Es muss er sein (literally, it must be he)

I am taller than him - Ich bin grösser als er (than he)

The man is here. I see the man - Der Mann ist hier. Ich sehe den Mann.

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LanguageSponge
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Message 16 of 22

02 May 2013 at 4:34am | IP Logged

beano wrote:

I am taller than him - Ich bin grösser als er (than he)

This second one is somewhat easier for English natives to understand, I think, because we can simply elongate the sentence to its fuller, somewhat less natural form "I am taller than he is" - that's how I used to remember it.

@Iversen: Thanks for your explanation. I wanted to keep my explanation as simple as I could, hence why I didn't go into copula verbs. If I thought at any point what I'd written was wrong, and I don't believe it is in terms of the end result, then I'd not have written it, of course.

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