3.07 · Practice ready Accusative Plural 0 of 10 lessons complete
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Accusative Plural

Animacy selects between a known nominative form and a known genitive form

Animacy selects between a known nominative form and a known genitive form

Before you start

Prerequisites
Module 3.06
Estimated time
45 minutes
Lesson steps
10

Deliberately not taught here

  • Boundary: Plural gender is neutralised. The decisive new feature is grammatical animacy; lexical noun irregularities remain part of the noun system.
Small steps

What you will learn

  1. The two-way accusative plural rule All plural adjective phrases divide by animacy, regardless of the singular noun's gender.
  2. Inanimate: copy nominative plural Objects denoting ordinary things, places, events, and abstract notions use -ые/-ие.
  3. Animate: copy genitive plural People and most animals take -ых/-их with the genitive-plural noun form.
  4. Animacy belongs to the head noun Adjectives do not carry an independent real-world animacy judgment; they copy the grammatical animacy of the head.
  5. Irregular animate plurals Irregularity normally sits in the noun; the adjective still uses ordinary -ых/-их.
  6. Direct-object verbs and lexical case A transitive verb supplies accusative only when its construction actually takes a direct object.
  7. Plural destinations В and на with movement toward endpoints select accusative; destination nouns are normally inanimate and therefore retain nominative-plural adjective forms.
  8. Mixed phrases and coordination Each coordinated noun phrase receives the accusative form appropriate to its own head.
  9. Case analysis under syncretism Accusative plural may look nominative or genitive, so analysis must remain construction-based.
  10. Accusative plural assessment Select the construction first, then make animacy control the whole phrase.
Mastery

Ready means you can...

  • select accusative plural from a verb or destination construction
  • apply the plural animacy rule to every long adjective in the phrase
  • form animate objects with known genitive-plural adjective forms
  • distinguish direct objects, destinations, and look-alike cases
Next module 3.08 Prepositional Plural Regular plural agreement in locations, topics, settings, and motion contrasts