Russian case question (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Russian case question
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15 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Chung
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Message 9 of 15

03 August 2013 at 2:53am | IP Logged

Josquin wrote:

Well, thanks for your insight, Chung, but I think Finnish as a Finno-Ugric language plays in an entirely different league than Russian as an Indo-European language. Obviously, Finnish cases contain some information about the aspect of an action that Russian would convey by using verbal aspect. Equating IE with FU cases might be misleading, but this obviously doesn't apply to the Russian accusative.

I would be willing to say that the Russian accusative is a very weird case as it doesn't even have its own question (its either кто? or кого?, relying on nominative and genitive here as well), however: the fact that there are special accusative endings (-у/-ю) in the fem. sg. justify the claim that there is an accusative case in Russian.

As I said: If we set up a grammatical rule, we have to check it for consistency. It would be possible to say there is no accusative in Russian, instead verbs take their direct objects either in the nominative case if they're inanimated and in the genitive if they're animated. BUT! This whole theory doesn't work out because of the accusative endings in the fem. sg. In order to create a consistent rule, we have to say the accusative case exists and its endings are the same as in the nominative or genitive for most nouns.

In general though, I've never really had a problem with Slavonic cases (or at least their treatment when studying BCMS/SC, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian and Ukrainian). As it relates to accusative in thise Slavonic languages that I'm familiar with, I agree fully that an endings-based approach for all of the declension is weird and in a similar way, I think of the dative and locative as separate despite there being many regular/codified instances of the relevant endings being identical.

However the endings-based approach for declining the direct object has been much less weird for Estonian and Finnish.

Josquin wrote:

For feminine adjectives, however, it's absolutely clear that only their forms are the same in the genitive, dative, instrumental, and prepositional as masculine and neuter adjectives have clearly distinguishable endings for all the mentioned cases. By the way, the instrumental ending used to be -ою/-ею, which was assimilated to -ой/-ей. It still exists in poetry and so on.

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Wulfgar
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Message 10 of 15

03 August 2013 at 7:43am | IP Logged

Josquin wrote:

I don't quite understand what you mean by "female singular adjectives in the dative are just
prepositional".

Seriously? Or did you just mean that you disagree with that statement?

Josquin wrote:

the Russian accusative is a very weird case as it doesn't even have its own question (its either кто?
or кого?

Can кто be accusative, or did you mean что?
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Josquin
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Message 11 of 15

03 August 2013 at 12:36pm | IP Logged

Wulfgar wrote:

Josquin wrote:

I don't quite understand what you mean by "female singular adjectives in the dative are just
prepositional".

Seriously? Or did you just mean that you disagree with that statement?

To me it doesn't make any sense saying the dative case is the same as the prepositional case. I think I know what you mean, but your terminology is somewhat unclear.

Wulfgar wrote:

Josquin wrote:

the Russian accusative is a very weird case as it doesn't even have its own question (its either кто?
or кого?

Can кто be accusative, or did you mean что?

I meant что?, sorry for the confusion!
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Марк
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Message 12 of 15

03 August 2013 at 3:19pm | IP Logged

In Russian the distinction between the dat. and the prep. (loc.) is very clear.
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Cabaire
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Message 13 of 15

03 August 2013 at 10:50pm | IP Logged

What I find difficult in creating a systematic case system in Russian: Are there 6 or 8 cases?

I mean, is the partitive a case? (contrasting the genitive)

Свари супу. (Cook some soup.)
Снегу намело! (What an amount of snow the wind has brought!)

And is the locative a case? (contrasting the prepositive)

я в лесу (I am in in the forest.), but you say: я говорю о лесе (I speak about the forest.)
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vonPeterhof
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Message 14 of 15

04 August 2013 at 11:26am | IP Logged

Cabaire wrote:

Here is an interesting post about the "unofficial" cases of Russian. The author comes to the conclusion that the locative case is a real case (along with one he refers to as "Превратительный падеж (он же включительный)" that I'm not sure even has an official name in Indo-European linguistics) while partitive isn't (along with both old and new vocative and a few other suspected cases). Personally I'm afraid I'm not interested in Russian grammar enough to have an opinion on either this question or the one that started this thread.
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tarvos
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Message 15 of 15

04 August 2013 at 2:12pm | IP Logged

My two cents is that the accusative is a
description which holds for a particular
language. If we talked Pilipino or Malagasy we
would be describing the function differently.

Accusative case is just a case used because it
governs direct objects de facto. But the form
also occurs after certain prepositions. It is
then just useful to describe them as such.
Grammar describes how a language works. It is
a tool not an end in itself.

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