BobY, thank you. Your whole post was beautifully clear. I especially liked the one doing the hitting would be in the nominative case, the thing hit would be in the accusative, and the one to whom it was hit in the dative case and the cases would be indicated by the endings of the nouns. That's the first time I've ever seen a good explanation of how (part of) Latin works. I have often been puzzled by the many ref.'s to these kinds of terms here. Oh--I liked your "graven", too, Sweetie. Love!