Nutting exercise 38, English to Latin. “Three boys came to school today. Tomorrow the others will be punished.” The key translates the second sentence "Cras ceteri poenas dabunt. Ceteri I suppose is masc., pl.
nominative referring to “boys”. But why wouldn’t “others” be considered the direct object of “punished” and therefore in the accusative?
You must be confused because the key freely translates with the passive. A more literal translation would be
Tomorrow the others will give satisfaction.
Hey there,
Great question. We’re dealing with a couple issues here: one of voice, and the other of idiomatic phrases.
The answer given in the key is in the passive voice, so the “others” is the subject, even though they are receiving the action of the verb (like you would expect a direct object to do). But since this is a passive sentence (in the English translation), the subject actually receives the action of the verb. The Latin verb dabunt is active, so ceteri is certainly the plural subject of the verb.
Another thing to be aware of is that the Latin poenas dabunt is an idiom - literally it means “they will give the penalties,” but idiomatically it means either “they will pay the penalty” which can be understood as “they will be punished.”
So, another acceptable translation for this sentence would be “The boys will pay the penalty tomorrow.” This keeps everything neat and tidy - the nominative is the subject, the accusative is the direct object, and the active verb is translated with an active verb.
“The others will be punished.” Regardless of how “will be punished” is translated—whether passive as in the English, or active as in the Latin—, “the others” are the subject, therefore nominative.
I guess I thought of this as active since the phrase is from exercise 38 and Nutting doesn’t begin mentioning the passive voice until exercise 54; also as was noted the Latin is active. So you see even a foolish question can have a certain methodology to it. I understand that the subject of
“punished” is “others”, but as the receiver of the action isn’t it also the direct object? Does this mean that if a word is both, you translate with the nominative?
“Poenas dare” is given in the vocabulary of lesson XII and is explained in a note. It’s the only way given by Nutting to say “to be punished”, and the only option available to use in the key.
I had another question from Exercise 38. “I will give you beautiful flowers to put in your school bags.”;
beautiful flowers is translated as flores pulchras–since flores is masculine why does pulchras have a feminine
ending? Also, to put in your school bag is translated as ut eas in capsis collocetis–why is there no possessive
adjective “your” flowers? Maybe I shouldn’t ask so many questions, many of them probably foolish, but if I don’t ask I’ll never get this stuff clear.
Don’t feel bad about asking questions: answering makes us feel smart! 
It should be pulchros flores.
Errare humanum est! 
If there is no possessive it means that the (indirect) object belongs to the subject. If you had translated
ut eas in vestris capsis collocetis it would have been emphatic (i.e, in your own bags).
Ego sum qui erravi, humanus enim sum. Ignoscite, amici.