use "the dog" as the subject of a sentence: "The dog sees the cat." In a declined language, the morphology of the article or noun changes with gender agreement. For example, in German, "the dog" is . This is the form in the nominative case, used for the subject of a sentence. If this article/noun pair is used as the object of a verb, it (usually) changes to the accusative case, which entails an article shift in German – (The man sees the dog). In German, masculine nouns change their definite article from to in the accusative case. Latin The accusative case in Latin has minor differences from the accusative case in Proto-Indo-European. Nouns in the accusative case () can be used: as a direct object; to qualify duration of time, e.g., , "for many years"; ducentos annos, "for 200 years"; this is known as the accusative of duration of time, to qualify direction towards which e.g., , "homewards"; , "to Rome" with no preposition needed; this is known as the accusative of place to which, and is equivalent to the lative case found in some other languages. as the subject of an indirect statement with the verb in the subjunctive mood, (e.g. , "He said that I had been cruel"; in later Latin works, such as the Vulgate, such a phrasing is replaced by quod and a regularly ordered sentence, having the subject in the nominative and the verb in the indicative mood, e.g., ). with case-specific prepositions such as (through), (to/toward), and (across); in exclamations, such as , "wretched me" (spoken by Circe to Ulysses in Ovid's ); to qualify purpose, e.g., ad proficiscendum, "for the purpose of departing"; ad effēminandōs animōs, "for the purpose of weakening [or, effeminating] the spirit". For the accusative endings, see Latin declensions. German The accusative case is used for the direct object in a sentence. The masculine forms for German articles, e.g., 'the', 'a/an', 'my', etc., change in the accusative case: they always end in -en. The feminine, neutral and plural forms do not change. For example, (dog) is a masculine () word, so the article changes when used in the accusative case: . (lit., I have a dog.) In the sentence "a dog" is in the accusative case as it is the second idea (the object) of the sentence. Some German pronouns also change in the accusative case. The accusative case