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Nominative:: Latin's Case System, by Latintutorial

This document provides a summary of the different noun cases in Latin: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, Vocative, and Locative. It explains the general uses and functions of each case, with examples. The Nominative case marks the subject of a sentence. The Genitive case indicates possession, parts of a whole, or description. The Dative case marks the indirect object or reference/benefaction. The Accusative case is used for direct objects or objects of certain prepositions involving motion. The Ablative case turns noun phrases into adverbial phrases or indicates means, accompaniment, source, or location/motion away from. The Vocative case is for direct

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22 views

Nominative:: Latin's Case System, by Latintutorial

This document provides a summary of the different noun cases in Latin: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, Vocative, and Locative. It explains the general uses and functions of each case, with examples. The Nominative case marks the subject of a sentence. The Genitive case indicates possession, parts of a whole, or description. The Dative case marks the indirect object or reference/benefaction. The Accusative case is used for direct objects or objects of certain prepositions involving motion. The Ablative case turns noun phrases into adverbial phrases or indicates means, accompaniment, source, or location/motion away from. The Vocative case is for direct

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D CH
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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If you're going to learn Latin, you need to know what the different noun cases are, because we're

just getting started. There are different declension patterns depending on what class the word is,
but I won't be getting into that here because I'm still learning that myself. This is just the basic stuff
here.

This write-up closely follows this video: Latin's Case System, by latintutorial. Please watch it later
for more details. I am writing this up strictly in English, and much of this terminology is universal,
but all of this is specifically how they are used in Latin.

NOMINATIVE:

1. The subject of the sentence. Generally who or what is doing or experiencing something.
a. The girl is sleeping.

2. The subject complement after a stative verb.


a. Mark is a young man.

GENITIVE:

1. Possessive.
a. The mother of the girl. (AKA The girl's mother.)

2. Part of a whole.
a. A section of the orange.

3. Description
a. A book of great renown.

4. Objective
a. A fear of zombies.

DATIVE:

1. The indirect object of a transitive verb.


a. Tom threw the ball to Sam.

2. Reference (such as the benefactive, "for the benefit of").


a. Dave cooked dinner for Olivia.

3. Possession (not the same as the possessive).


a. I have a horse. (Literally, "There is to me a horse." This is the method Irish uses: "A
horse is at me.")

ACCUSATIVE:

1. The direct object of a transitive verb.


a. Tom threw the ball.

2. The object of certain prepositions (generally motion toward).


a. Jen is coming to the house.
b. The bird flew into the cage.
c. The children are running around the tree.
d. The hole goes through the floor.
e. The flower is near the tree.
f. The ship will be sailing across the ocean.

3. Duration of time.
a. We sleep for eight hours.

ABLATIVE

This is a bit of a catch-all. My main source glossed over this, so I brought in other sources to round
it out:

1. Turns a noun phrase into an adverbial phrase.


a. The message was delivered by an owl.
b. She went for a walk with the dogs.
c. The Romance languages derive from Latin.
d. The apple is in the basket.
e. The painting is on the wall.

2. When something happens (not the same as duration).


a. I'm going on vacation in three days.

3. The object of certain prepositions (location or motion away from).


a. I live in the city.
b. He's coming from the office.

VOCATIVE:

1. Direct address.
a. Robert, how are you? (archaically: O Robert)

LOCATIVE:

1. Where someone or something is located. Only used with the names of cities, towns, and
small islands (proper nouns such as "Rome", not common nouns such as "city") plus the
three common nouns "humus (ground)", "rus (countryside/farm)", and "domus
(house/home)". These do not take any preposition. (There are also two more nouns that
take the locative, but they are more rarely used.)
a. All other locations take a preposition and the ablative case. See "ablative" above.

I don't know what you meant by "tenues". I assume that's a typo, but I don't know what you were
going for there. "Aspiration" and "plosive" are just ways to describe sounds. "Aspirated" means
with an extra puff of air, "plosives" are stop consonants (p, b, t, d, k, g).

[There is a weird glitch that's making the entry for "Locative" bump up against the entry for
"Vocative" without any space. I've triple-checked my formatting and there's nothing I can do to fix
it. It's on Duolingo's end, not mine. Hopefully it will resolve itself eventually.]

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