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Noun Usage

Below is a summary of the different cases and their uses. In the parentheses are explanations, examples, or both. If an example is given, the use is italicized.

Nominative
- Subject of a verb


Genitive

- Possessive

- Genitive of material (what something is made of)

- Partitive genitive (part of sometheing; one out of a million)

- Objective genitive (noun to express a verbal idea; love of praise = he loves praise

- Genitive of charge (He was guilty of stealing)

- Gentive of description (A person of courage)


Dative

- Dative of purpose (expresses a thing's function or purpose, often seen with a dative of reference)

- Dative of possession (the book is to me = I have a book)

- Dative of agent (used with the passive paraphrastic; the book will have to be read by me)

- Dative of reference (Indicates a person or thing that a statement refers to; to many he is helpful)

- Dative of Seperaion (Follows compound verbs with AB, DE, EX, AD. Movement away from; He moved away from the village)

- Indirect object


Accusative

- Object of a verb

- Limit of motion/place to which (I went to the mountain)

- Duration of time (I read for an hour)

- Accusative of exclamation

- Accusative predicate (They thought him an adventurer)

- Accusative with prepositions (With ad or post)

- Subject of an indirect statement (I thought Bob ran fast)



Ablative

- Ablative of seperation (He is without sense)

- Ablative with prepositions (ab, de, cum, ex, in)

- Ablative of attendant circumstnace (With enough courage, I can do anything)

- Ablative of agent (Used with passive verbs; He was run over by a truck)

- Ablative of comparison (That light is brighter than that one)

- Ablative of description (Implied preposition "with" to describe someone; The man with the golden gun)

- Ablative place from which

- Ablative of specification (specifies a description; he is superior to him only in speed)

- Ablative absolute (A participial phrase with the modifying participle in the ablative; Remus having been killed = When Remus was killed)

- Ablative of cause (The people had been freed from the ruler)

- Ablative degree of difference (the soldiers arrived a few hours late)

- Ablative of time within which (specifies a broad time; the soldiers will come in a few hours)