Accusative equals nominative for neuter words – how universal is this and why?

Question

The first mnemonic for Latin case ending I learnt was that for neuter words, the accusative form is always identical to the nominative form. This applies even to exotic word endings like animal or id, and so far I am not aware of any counterexample to this.

This always struck me to be an odd rule. Thus, I am curious:

• Do we have any idea why this is the case?
• And related: How strong is this rule? Are there any known exceptions?

Related question on Linguistics SE: Why do neuter nominative and accusative always agree in IE languages?

Answer 1

I believe there are no exceptions to this rule. That's what I have always read, and I have never encountered any, neither in Greek nor in Latin, nor even in German.

There is an hypothesis about the cause of this phenomenon. Neuter words were historically limited to inanimate objects or things that cannot act. In a basic sentence, it was rarely or never the neuter thing that acted, and therefore you didn't need case to distinguish between agent and patient/theme (between "acting" and "being acted upon"). So, if you just have a transitive verb and a neuter word, there is only one possibility: the neuter thing is acted upon. With an intransitive verb, there is no object, so it is even less necessary. So semantics make case redundant for neuter words.

This hypothesis is inspired by our knowledge of ergative–absolutive languages, in which the 'subject' of an 'intransitive' verb and the 'object' of a 'transitive' verb take the same case (the absolutive case), as opposed to the 'subject' of a 'transitive' verb (ergative case, from ergon "work, deed, action", related to work). In other words, the primary complement of a verb is the thing that does not act; and only some verbs have a secondary complement, which is a thing that acts.

(This contrasts with nominative–accusative languages, such as the main European languages, in which the subject of an intransitive verb takes the nominative, but the object of a transitive verb takes the accusative case. Our primary complement is the subject, which often acts; and only some verbs have a secondary complement, the direct object.)

Of course this is an hypothesis, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's the only one I've ever heard.

Answer 2

To answer your second question, this rule is completely exceptionless, not only in Latin but in all Indo-European languages (that is, those that have a neuter gender at all).

neuter gender always had identical nominative, accusative and vocative forms in all three numbers

Wiki link

Archaic Syntax in Indo-European

Answer 3

For the sake of completeness, it seems worth noting that there's one odd exception.

The gerund is a noun derived from a verb, representing an action (for example, volāndum "flying"). For the most part it acts as a regular second-declension neuter.

However, the gerund lacks a regular nominative, and instead uses the regular present active infinitive of the verb (volāre, "to fly").

So in this one particular case, volāre is nominative, and volāndum accusative.

Answer 4

This rule applies to Russian, Germanic languages, Latin and ancient Greek as far as I know. So I suspect that it's a feature of the proto-IE language.

Answer 5

Feels a little cheap as an answer here, but the auto-generated Related Links suggests to me the excellent Was “Pascha” ever used as a neuter first-declension noun? which provides a possible example of an exception here. Absolutely none of this answer is original research, I am merely reporting what I see in that question and its answers.

Notably, the question notes the issue of neuter nominative/accusative agreement, and quotes Richard Haynes as citing Pascha as possibly the only exception to this rule. The querent, on the other hand, seems to feel the existence of Pascham instead suggests that the word is actually feminine and not neuter in the first place.

As Pascha means “Passover,” it is of course Ecclesiastic Latin and not Classical Latin. The question there goes into a lot of detail about its history and etymology, and the word seems to simultaneously exist as a 1st-declension neuter word, a 1st-declension feminine word, and a 3rd-declension neuter word (Pascha, Paschatis).

The answers to that question provide a number of examples showing its use as a first-declension neuter word, in agreement with neuter adjectives (e.g. sancti Paschae in the genitive). It also includes examples of the Pascham accusative form being used—but in agreement with feminine adjectives (e.g. totam Pascham). None of the examples show Pascham being in agreement with a neuter adjective in the accusative.

Finally, at least one source (in the question) states that the accusative form of Pascha is, in fact, Pascha, despite otherwise describing first-declension inflection. This would, of course, be an excellent example in the reverse—even in this exceptional case of a first-declension neuter noun, at least some authors still felt the need to maintain this rule over the need to maintain the usual declension of first-declension nouns, and so an otherwise-unused “first-declension neuter” inflection was invented.

Since none of the examples there show Pascham being used as a clearly-neuter word, however, additional research on this topic would be appropriate. Unfortunately, I’m completely unequipped to do so.