The characteristics of the accusative case in the Russian and Japanese languages

In this article, we have studied the characteristics of the accusative case in the Russian and Japanese languages. The material for this study consisted of example sentences taken from Russian and Japanese corpora. In the Russian language, we have discovered a great variety of prepositions, that the accusative case could be used with, as well as a great variety of the meanings the accusative case could convey. In the Japanese language, we have found a smaller variety of grammatical structures that included the accusative case, of particles with which the accusative case could be indicated and a smaller variety of meanings. The only meaning that could be conveyed in both languages completely was that of a topic. The semantics of the place to be traversed, the place one leaves, and the examples of sentences with “despite” could also be conveyed using the accusative case in both languages, albeit in a limited number of cases for either of the languages. The semantics of the source of an emotion and the instrument of an action could be conveyed using the accusative case only in the Japanese language. The semantics of limit, elapsed time, and of becoming something could be conveyed with the accusative case only in the Russian language. This study can be furthered by including other cases or languages with other morphosyntactic structures.

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