106 On the Connection of the Dative and Accusative cases. [No. 2. 



in the accusative, whilst nouns denoting inanimate objects are not in- 

 flected in the accusative. 



He also remarks that in conversational and poetical phraseology- 

 there is a different termination for the accusative, which is also com- 

 mon to the dative (thus we may say ^t^tC<T G*f^, as well as ^WC^ 



The Hindustani grammars give the following form for the declen- 

 sion of nouns. 



Bat. J (sb Ace. (sb\ 



r Lsbj 



s 



Forbes' s Grammar, after stating that the accusative case is in Hin- 

 dustani, as in English, generally like the nominative, adds, " but when 

 it is desirable to render the object of an active verb very definite or spe- 

 cific, then the termination ko (of the dative) is added to the object." 



II. Inferences. 



(1) The parallelism of the above facts, as well as the similarity of 

 the forms C<$ andy, naturally suggests that the Bengali and Hindus- 

 tani suffixes have a common origin ; and therefore that whatever 

 explanation is given, in the one language, of the circumstance that the 

 same termination is employed to denote both dative and accusative, 

 will apply also to the other. 



(2) As the suffix j> is never absent from the dative, though it is 

 frequently from the accusative ; we seem warranted in concluding that 

 the dative has the prior claim to it. To suppose the reverse would 

 imply the entire want of a dative in the original language. 



(3) Unless then we are prepared to show that the ^ of the dative 

 and accusative were originally different and have only converged acciden- 

 tally into their present identical form, (of which no evidence, however, 

 exists) we must conclude that the accusative proper is the same in 

 form with the nominative. 



So indeed it has been (in varying degrees), in many languages. 

 Thus in the Greek, Latin, and German, the nominative and accu- 

 sative of all neuter nouns are the same.* 



* A fact ingeniously interpreted by Coleridge to mean that strictly speaking | 

 such nouns have no nominative. " The reason is, a thing has no subjectivity, or | 

 nominative case; it exists only as an object, in the accusative case." 



