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Most German verbs take accusative object (e.g.: etw. Akk. schreiben). Some take dative object (e.g.: etw. Dat. entsprechen). A small number of verbs require genitive object (e.g.: etw. Gen. bedürfen, etw. Gen. gedenken, etw. Gen. harren). But I can think of only one verb, sein (etw. Nom. sein), that takes the nominative case.

Are there any other German verbs that take this form: etw. Nom. verb?

Is there a reason why only one verb in the entire German language—or so few of them, if there are any other—takes the nominative case?

Jan
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Eugene Str.
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    What is direct object in German? The question seems otherwise not well-defined. To my ears er ist der Papst has no DO. – c.p. Dec 18 '16 at 09:16
  • As a native English speaker, I echo @c.p. 's comment -- the A ist B construction has no object. Is this taught in German grammars as having an object? – Eiríkr Útlendi Dec 18 '16 at 09:22
  • @c.p. Made changes to the question. Hope it looks better now. – Eugene Str. Dec 18 '16 at 09:44
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    @EiríkrÚtlendi Some people (and Grammars) refer to the predicative nominative as "Nominativobjekt" - I think this is highly disputable, even if the substantive in nominative actually has most of the features of an object. – tofro Dec 18 '16 at 12:31
  • @tofro, how interesting, and odd. That leads me to ask: how then is "Objekt" defined in these grammars? I learned in my studies of English as a native, and Japanese as a learner, that an "object" is either direct or indirect, and that it involves some sort of active action: verbs like sein that describe qualities thus do not take objects. I bought that's what my German teachers also explained, though it's been a while and memory may be faulty. Also, I was taught German via English, which was likely a factor. – Eiríkr Útlendi Dec 18 '16 at 17:09
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    @EiríkrÚtlendi Better not talk of direct and indirect objects in German. This tends to lead you to a number of wrong tracks. Be precise, and talk of accusative and dative objects. Then, simply add a nominative one - The object is typically the substantive that is affected by the subject's predicate - "Ich entpuppe mich als dein Vater" (see Star Wars) can easily be accepted as a nominative object, then. – tofro Dec 18 '16 at 22:31
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    To rephrase: you mention above, "the substantive in nominative actually has most of the features of an object." I don't agree, but I think we might be talking about slightly different things. Could you clarify? – Eiríkr Útlendi Dec 18 '16 at 22:50
  • @Ei The mere existence of der/die/das shows that the German language is not a subset of English, but contains -more-, and as such one shouldn't expect there to be a one-to-one ratio of functionality, usage, word-placement, etc. in most cases. This is fairly anecdotal but - arguing about how German isn't English should be discarded and instead German should be accepted (you are learning German in a read-only manner; not updating it closer to English for your own ease) – Jordan Stefanelli Sep 02 '19 at 15:05

1 Answers1

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This construction is usually called "predicative nominative" ("prädikativer Nominativ", "Gleichsetzungsnominativ"), rather than "nominative object". There are a couple of verbs that have it, in particular "sein", "werden", "heißen", and "bleiben", and some more verbs where the predicative nominative is connected by "als", such as "gelten", "sich fühlen", "sich erweisen", "sich entpuppen" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominativ).

Uwe
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