Polish Grammar - 7 Cases

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The grammar of the Polish language is characterized by a high degree of inflection, and has relatively freeword order, although the dominant arrangement is subjectverbobject (SVO). There are no articles, andthere is frequent dropping of subject pronouns. Distinctive features include the different treatment of masculine personal nouns in the plural, and the complex grammar of numerals and quantifiers.

1 Regular morphological alternation2 Nouns

2.1 Noun declension2.2 Noun syntax

3 Adjectives

3.1 Adjective inflection3.2 Adjective syntax4 Pronouns5 Numbers and quantifiers6 Verbs7 Prepositions8 Conjunctions9 Sentence structure

9.1 Subjectless sentences10 References

Certain regular or common alternations apply across the Polish inflectional system, affecting the morphologyof nouns, adjectives, verbs, and other parts of speech. Some of these result from the restricted distribution of the vowels i and y, and from the voicing rules for consonant in clusters and at the end of words. Otherwisethe main changes are:

vowel alternations, arising from the historical development of certain vowels, which cause vowelchanges in some words depending on whether the syllable is closed or open, or whether the followingconsonant is soft or hard;consonant changes caused by certain endings (such as the -ie of the locative case, and the -i of themasculine personal plural), which historically entailed palatization of the preceding consonant, andnow produce a number of different changes depending on which consonant is involved.

Details of these changes are given in the Regular alternation section of the article on Polish morphology.

Noun declension

Polish retains the Old Slavic system of cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. There are seven cases:nominative (mianownik) , genitive (dope niacz) , dative (celownik) , accusative (biernik) , instrumental(narz dnik) , locative (miejscownik) , and vocative (wo acz) .

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Polish has two number classes: singular and plural (the dual vanished around the 15th century, except in afew relicts).

There are three main genders: masculine , feminine and neuter . Masculine nouns are also divided intoanimate and inanimate (this distinction being relevant in the singular), and personal and non-personal (thisdistinction being relevant in the plural). All personal nouns are also animate; some nouns with inanimatemeaning (such as papieros "cigarette") are treated grammatically as animate.

Masculine nouns typically end in a consonant, although a few (mainly personal names and words for people)end in -a , or more rarely -o (those that end -y or -i in the singular follow the adjectival declension). Femininenouns end in -a , or less commonly in a consonant (always a soft or hardened consonant, at least in theinflected forms). Neuter nouns end in -o or -e, or in a few cases -.

Typical declensions are as follows:

klub ("club"; an inanimate masculine noun) N/A klub, G klubu , D klubowi , I klubem, L/V klubie .Plural: N/A/V kluby, G klubw, D klubom , I klubami , L klubach .mapa ("map"; a feminine noun) N mapa , G mapy , D/L mapie , A map , I map , V mapo . Plural:

N/A/V mapy , G map , D mapom , I mapami , L mapach .mi so ("meat'; a neuter noun) N/A/V mi so, G mi sa , D mi su, I mi sem, L mi sie . Plural: N/A/Vmi sa , G mi s, D mi som, I mi sami , L mi sach .

A common deviation from the above patterns is that many masculine nouns have genitive singular in -arather than -u. This includes all personal and animate masculines (ending in a consonant). Also masculineanimate nouns have accusative singular equal to the genitive singular (in -a ). Masculine personal nouns alsohave accusative plural equal to genitive plural, and often have nominative plural in -i.

For full details of noun inflection, see Nouns in the article on Polish morphology.

Noun syntax

The use of the cases of nouns is as follows:

The nominative (the dictionary form of a noun) is used for sentence subject and for certaincomplements (as in sentences of the form X to Y "X is Y", to jest Y "this is Y").

1.

The genitive is used for possessor and similar (equivalent to English "of X" or "X's"), for the directobject of negated verbs, as the object of some verbs and prepositions, as an object with partitivemeaning and in some fixed expressions, and for nouns governed by certain numbers and expressions of quantity (see Numbers and quantifiers below).

2.

The dative is used for indirect objects, to denote the party for whom something is done or the "partyconcerned" in certain expressions (such as wolno mu , "he is allowed", lit. "it is allowed to him"), and asthe object of some verbs and prepositions.

3.

The accusative is used for the direct object of verbs that are not negated, as the object of some prepositions, and in some time expressions.

4.

The instrumental is used for the means (instrument) by which something is done, for example poci giem (instrumental of poci g "train") means "by train". It is also used for a noun complement of by ("to be"), and for the complements and objects of some other verbs and some prepositions.

5.

The locative is used only as the object of certain prepositions (particularly w "in" and na "on", whenthey have static meaning).

6.

The vocative is used to indicate who or what is being addressed. However with personal names, incolloquial speech, the nominative is usually used instead.

7.

Like most Slavic languages, with the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, Polish uses no definite or indefinite articles. A noun such as kot may mean either "the cat" or "a cat".


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Polish does not regularly place nouns together to form compound noun expressions. Equivalents to suchexpressions are formed using noun-derived adjectives (as in sok pomara czowy, "orange juice", where

omara czowy is an adjective derived from pomara cza "orange"), or using prepositional phrases or (equivalently) a noun in the genitive or other case.

A group of nouns connected by a word for "and" is treated as plural. It is masculine personal plural if itcontains any male person (in fact, if it contains any person and any masculine noun).

Adjective inflection

Adjectives agree with the noun they modify in terms of gender, number and case. They are declinedaccording to the following pattern ( dumny means "proud"):

masculine singular: N/V dumny , G dumnego , D dumnemu , A dumny (for inanimate nouns)/ dumnego(animate), I/L dumnymfeminine singular: N/V dumna , G/D/L dumnej , A/I dumn neuter singular: N/V/A dumne , G/D/I/L as masculine

plural: N/V/A dumne (but for masculine personal nouns N/V dumni A dumnych ), G/L dumnych , Ddumnym, I dumnymi

Most short adjectives have a comparative form in -szy or -iejszy, and a superlative obtained by prefixing naj-to the comparative. For adjectives that do not have these forms, the words bardziej ("more") and najbardziej("most") are used before the adjective to make comparative and superlative phrases.

Adverbs are formed from adjectives with the ending ie, or in some cases -o. Comparatives of adverbs areformed (where they exist) with the ending -iej . Superlatives have the prefix naj- as for adjectives.

For more details on the formation of the above forms, see Adjectives in the article on Polish morphology. For demonstrative adjectives, interrogative adjectives, etc., see also the Pronouns section below.

Adjective syntax

Adjectives generally precede the noun they modify, although in some fixed expressions and official namesand phrases they can follow the noun (as in j zyk polski "Polish language"; also dzie dobry "good day,hello").

Attributive adjectives agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify. Predicate adjectivesagree with the relevant noun in gender and number, and are in the nominative case, unless the subject isunspecified (as in some infinitive phrases), in which case the adjective takes the (masculine/neuter)instrumental form (for example, by mdrym, "to be wise", although the nominative is used if the logicalsubject is specified). The instrumental is also used for adjectival complements of some other verbs, as inczyni go mdrym ("make him wise").

With pronouns such as co ("something") (but not kto "someone"), if the pronoun is nominative or accusative, the adjective takes the genitive form ( co dobrego "something good").

Adjectives are sometimes used as nouns; for example, zielony ("green") may mean "the/a green one" etc.

Compound adjectives can be formed by replacing the ending of the first adjective with -o, as in formalno-rawny ("formal (and) legal").

Polish differs from English in using adverbs, rather than adjectives, in expressions like "look nice", "smell


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awful", etc.

The personal pronouns of Polish (nominative forms) are ja ("I"), ty ("you", singular, familiar), on ("he", or "it" corresponding to masculine nouns), ona ("she", or "it" corresponding to feminine nouns), ono ("it"corresponding to neuter nouns), my ("we"), wy ("you", plural, familiar), oni ("they", corresponding to amasculine personal group see Noun syntax above), one ("they" in other cases).

The polite second-person pronouns are the same as the nouns pan ("gentleman, Mr"), pani ("lady, Mrs") andtheir plurals panowie, panie . The mixed-sex plural is pa stwo. All second-person pronouns are oftencapitalized for politeness, in letters etc.

For the full declension of these pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polish morphology. Subject pronouns can be dropped if the meaning is clear and they are not emphasized. Sometimes there arealternative forms available for a given personal pronoun in a given case:

there may be a form beginning with n-, used after prepositions (for example, the accusative of ona isni after a preposition rather than j );there may be a clitic form, used when unstressed, but not after prepositions (such as mi as the dative of

ja , an alternative to mnie ).

The reflexive pronoun for all persons and numbers is si.

The possessive adjectives (also used as possessive pronouns) derived from the personal pronouns are mj,twj , jego (m., n.)/ jej (f.); nasz , wasz , ich . There is also a reflexive possessive swj . The polite second-person

pronouns have possessives identical to the genitives of the corresponding nouns, although there is a possessive adjective pa ski corresponding to pan .

The demonstrative pronoun, also used as a demonstrative adjective, is ten (feminine ta , neuter to, masculine personal plural ci , other plural te). The prefix tam- can be added to emphasize a more distant referent ("that"as opposed to "this").

Interrogative pronouns are kto ("who") and co ("what"); these also provide the pronouns kto /co ("someone/something"), ktokolwiek/cokolwiek ("anyone/anything"), nikt/nic ("noone/nothing").

The usual relative pronoun is ktry (declined like an adjective). However, when the antecedent is also a pronoun, the relative pronoun used is kto or co (as in ten kto "he who" and to co "that which"). The wordktry also means "which" as an interrogative pronoun and adjective.

The pronoun and adjective wszystek means "all". It is used most commonly in the plural ( wszyscy means"everyone"), and in the neuter singular (wszystko) to mean "everything". The pronoun and adjective ka dymeans "each, every", while aden means "no, none".

For full information on the declension of the above pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polishmorphology.

When the referent of a pronoun is a person of unspecified sex, the masculine form of the pronoun isgenerally used. When the referent is a thing or idea that does not correspond to any specific noun, it istreated as neuter.

Polish has a complex system of numerals and related quantifiers, with special rules for their inflection, for the


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case of the governed noun, and for verb agreement with the resulting noun phrase.

The basic numerals are 1 jeden , 2 dwa, 3 trzy, 4 cztery , 5 pi , 6 sze , 7 siedem , 8 osiem , 9 dziewi , 10dziesi , 11 jedena cie , 12 dwana cie , 13 trzyna cie , 14 czterna cie , 15 pitna cie (pronounced -et- ), 16

szesna cie , 17 siedemna cie , 18 osiemna cie , 19 dziewi tna cie (pronounced -et- ), 20 dwadzie cia , 30trzydzie ci , 40 czterdzie ci , 50 pidziesi t (pronounced pie d -), 60 sze dziesi t (pron. sze(s)d -), 70

siedemdziesi t , 80 osiemdziesi t , 90 dziewi dziesi t (pronounced -wied -), 100 sto , 200 dwie cie , 300trzysta , 400 czterysta , 500 pi set (usually pronounced pie set ), 600 sze set (usually pronounced szejset ),700 siedemset , 800 osiemset , 900 dziewi set (usually pronounced -wie set- ).

These numerals are inflected for case, and also to some extent for gender. For details of their inflection, seeumbers and quantifiers in the article on Polish morphology.

Thousand is tysic, treated as a noun (so 2000 is dwa tysi ce , etc.) Million is milion , billion (meaning athousand million) is miliard , a million million is bilion , a thousand million million is biliard , and so on (i.e.the long scale is used).

Compound numbers are constructed similarly as in English (for example, 91 234 is dziewi dziesi t jeden

tysicy dwie cie trzydzie ci cztery ).When a numeral modifies a noun, the numeral takes the expected case, but the noun may not; also thegender and number of the resulting noun phrase may not correspond to that of the noun. The following rulesapply:

The numeral jeden (1) behaves as an ordinary adjective, and no special rules apply. It can even be usedin the plural, for example to mean "some" (and not others), or to mean "one" with pluralia tantum, e.g.

jedne drzwi "one door" ( drzwi has no singular).After the numerals dwa (dwie) , trzy, cztery (2, 3, 4), and compound numbers ending with them (22, 23,24, etc.), the noun is plural and takes the same case as the numeral, and the resulting noun phrase is

plural (e.g. 104 koty sta y, "104 cats stood").With other numbers (5, 6, etc., 20, 21, 25 etc.), if the numeral is nominative or accusative, the nountakes the genitive plural form, and the resulting noun phrase is neuter singular (e.g. 5 kotw sta o, "5cats stood").With the masculine personal plural forms of numbers (as given in the morphology article section), therule given above that if the numeral is nominative or accusative the noun is genitive plural, and theresulting phrase is neuter singular applies to all numbers other than 1 (as in trzech m czyzn przysz o,"three men came"), unless the alternative nominative forms dwaj , trzej , czterej (for 2, 3, 4) are used(these take nominative nouns and form a masculine plural phrase).If the numeral is in the genitive, dative, instrumental or locative, the noun takes the same case as thenumeral (except sometimes in the case of numbers that end with the nouns for 1000 and higher quantities, which often take a genitive noun regardless).

Polish also has a series of numerals called collective numerals (liczebniki zbiorowe) , namely dwoje (for 2),troje (for 3), czworo (for 4), picioro (for 5), and so on. These are used with the following types of nouns:

dzieci ("children"), and words for the young of animals such as kocita ("kittens"); pluralia tantum, i.e., nouns that lack a singular form (like drzwi "door(s)", urodziny "birthday(s)") plural nouns referring to a group containing both sexes (for example, czworo studentw refers to amixed-sex group of four students).

For the declination of collective numerals by case, see the morphology article section. They all follow the

rule that when the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun becomes genitive plural, and the resultingnoun phrase is neuter singular. In this case the genitive noun is also used after the instrumental of thenumeral.


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Certain quantifiers behave similarly to numerals. These include kilka ("several"), par ("a few") and wiele("much, many"), which behave like numbers above 5 in terms of the noun cases and verb forms taken. Thereare also indefinite numerals kilkana cie, kilkadziesi t, kilkaset (and similar forms with par -), meaning"several-teen", several tens and several hundred.

Quantifiers that always take the genitive of nouns include du o ("much, many"), ma o ("few, little"), wicej("more"), mniej ("less") (also najwi cej/najmniej "most/least"), troch ("a bit"), pe no ("plenty, a lot").

The words oba and obydwa (meaning "both"), and their derived forms behave like dwa etc. However thecollective forms oboje, obydwoje (in the nominative/vocative), when referring to a married couple or similar,take the nominative form of the noun rather than the genitive, and form a masculine plural noun phrase(oboje rodzice byli , "both parents were", cf. dwoje rodzicw by o).

For the declination of all the above quantifiers, see the morphology article section.

Polish verbs have the grammatical category of aspect. Each verb is either imperfective , meaning that itdenotes continuous or habitual events, or perfective , meaning that it denotes single completed events (in

particular, perfective verbs have no present tense). Verbs often occur in imperfective and perfective pairs for example, je and zje both mean "to eat", but the first has imperfective aspect, the second perfective.

Imperfective verbs have three tenses: present, past and future, the last being a compound tense (except in thecase of by "to be"). Perfective verbs have a past tense and a simple future tense, the latter formed on thesame pattern as the present tense of imperfective verbs. Both types also have imperative and conditionalforms. The dictionary form of a verb is the infinitive, which usually ends with - (occasionally with -c). The

present-day past tense derives from the old Slavic "perfect" tense; several other old tenses (the aorist,imperfect, and past perfect) have been dropped.

The present tense of imperfective verbs (and future tense of perfective verbs) has six forms, for the three persons and two numbers. For example, the present tense of je is jem, jesz , je ; jemy, jecie , jedz (meaning"(I) eat" etc. subject pronouns may be dropped), while the future tense of the corresponding perfectiveverb zje is zjem, zjesz etc. (meaning "(I) shall eat" etc.)

The verb by has the irregular present tense jestem, jeste , jest, jeste my, jeste cie, s . It also has a simplefuture tense (see below).

The past tense agrees with the subject in gender as well as person and number. The basic past stem is in - ; tothis are added endings for gender and number, and then personal endings are further added for the first and

second person forms. Thus, on the example of by, the past tense forms are by em/by am ("I was",masc/fem.), by e /by a , by /by a/by o; byli my/by y my ("we were" masc. personal/all other),byli cie/by y cie , byli/by y.

The conditional (also used as a subjunctive) is formed from the past tense plus by, the personal endings (if any) coming after the by. For example: by bym/by abym ("I would be", masc/fem.), by by /by aby ,by by/by aby/by oby; byliby my/by yby my, byliby cie/by yby cie , byliby/by yby.

The personal past tense suffixes, which are reduced forms of the present tense of by, are clitics and can bedetached from the verb to attach to another accented word earlier in the sentence, such as a question word(as in kogo cie zobaczyli as an alternative to kogo zobaczyli cie "whom did you see"), or (mostly in informalspeech) an emphatic particle e (co e cie zrobili? "what did you do"). The same applies to the conditionalendings ( kiedy by cie przyszli as an alternative to kiedy przyszliby cie "when would you come").

A special case of the above is found in subjunctive-like clauses, where the by(-) of the conditional is


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detached and used to introduce the clause, either alone or attached to the conjunction a or e. For example,"that he (I) sing" might be aby(m) piewa , eby(m) piewa or by(m) piewa . Such clauses may express "inorder that", or be used with verbs meaning "want", "expect", etc.

The future tense of by ("be") follows the pattern of a typical present tense: bd , bdziesz, b dzie, b dziemy,bdziecie, b d . The future tense of other imperfective verbs is formed using the future of by together withthe infinitive, or the past form (inflected for gender and number, but without any personal suffixes), of theverb in question. For example, the future of robi ("do, make") has such forms as bd robi /robi /robi a,bdziecie robi /robili/robi y. The choice between infinitive and past form is usually a free one, but withmodals governing another infinitive, the past form is used: bdzie musia odej (not bdzie musie ...) "hewill have to leave".

The second personal singular imperative is formed from the present tense by dropping the ending (e.g. bra :2/3S present bierze(sz) , imperative bierz ), sometimes adding -ij or -aj . Add -my and -cie for the 1P and 2Pforms. To make third-person imperative sentences (including with the polite second-person pronouns panetc.) the particle niech is used at the start of the sentence (or at least before the verb), with the verb in thefuture tense (if by or perfective) or present tense (otherwise). There is a tendency to prefer imperfectiveverbs in imperative sentences for politeness; negative imperatives quite rarely use perfectives.

Other forms of the verb are:

present adverbial participle (imperfective verbs only), also called gerund, as piewaj c (meaning"(when) singing", "by singing", etc.)

present adjectival participle (imperfective verbs only), formed from the gerund by adding adjectivalendings, as piewaj cy etc., meaning "singing" (as an attributive adjective), although such participlescan be used to form extended adjectival phrases, which (usually unlike in English) can precede thenoun.

passive participle (all transitive verbs), in -ny or -ty (conjugated as an adjective). This oftencorresponds to the English past participle, both in fully adjectival use and in passive voice.

subjectless past tense, formed as the past participle but with the ending -o (e.g. piewano "there wassung").

past active participle (perfective verbs only), like zabiwszy "having killed" (from zabi "kill"); this formis invariant.verbal noun, formed from the past participle with the ending -ie , e.g. piewanie . This is a neuter noun.

Polish uses prepositions, which form phrases by preceding a noun or noun phrase. Different prepositions takedifferent cases (all cases are possible except nominative and vocative); some prepositions can take different

cases depending on meaning.

The prepositions z and w are pronounced together with the following word, obeying the usual rules for consonant cluster voicing (so z tob "with you" is pronounced "stob " ). Before some consonant clusters,

particularly clusters beginning with a sibilant (in the case of z ) or with f/w (in the case of w), the prepositionstake the form ze and we (e.g. we Wroc awiu "in Wroc aw"). These forms are also used before the first-personsingular pronouns in mn-; several other prepositions also have longer forms before these pronouns ( przezemnie, pode mn etc.), and these phrases are pronounced as single words, with the stress on the penultimatesyllable (the -e).

Common prepositions include:

na , with the locative with basic meaning "on", and with the accusative with basic meaning "onto" (alsometaphorical meanings)w, with the locative with basic meaning "in", and with the accusative with basic meaning "into" (also


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metaphorical meanings) z , with the instrumental meaning "with"; with the genitive meaning "from, out of"do/od , with genitive, meaning "to, into/from"dla , with genitive, meaning "for"o, with locative meaning "about", also with the accusative in some constructions

przed/za/nad/pod with instrumental meaning "before, in front of/behind/over/under", also with theaccusative in some meanings (and genitive in the case of za); there are also compound prepositions

sprzed/zza/znad/spod ("from in front of" etc.) taking the genitive przez with the accusative, meaning "through" etc. przeciw(ko) with dative, meaning "against" (but naprzeciw(ko) "opposite" takes genitive) po , with locative meaning "after", also with the accusative in some meanings przy , with locative, meaning "next to" etc.

Common Polish conjunctions include i (and less commonly oraz ) meaning "and", lub and albo meaning "or",ale meaning "but", lecz meaning "but" chiefly in phrases of the type "not x but y", e (or more formallysometimes i ) meaning "that", je li meaning "if" (also gdyby , where by is the conditional particle), czymeaning "whether" (also an interrogative particle), kiedy or gdy meaning "when", wic, dlatego and zatemmeaning "so, therefore", poniewa meaning "because", cho /chocia meaning "although", and aby/ ebymeaning "in order to/that" (can be followed by an infinitive phrase, or by a sentence in the past tense; in thelatter case the by of the conjunction is in fact the conditional particle and takes personal endings asappropriate).

In written Polish, subordinate clauses are normally set off with commas. Commas are not normally used before conjunctions meaning "and" or "or".

Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however, as it is a synthetic language, it is possible to move words aroundin the sentence. For example, Alicja ma kota ("Alice has a cat") is the standard order, but it is also possible touse other orders to give a different emphasis (for example, Alicja kota ma , with emphasis on ma ("has"), usedas a response to an assertion of the opposite).

Certain words, however, behave as clitics: they rarely or never begin a clause, but are used after another stressed word, and tend to appear early in the clause. Examples of these are the weak pronouns mi, go etc.,the reflexive pronoun si, and the personal past tense endings and conditional endings described under Verbsabove.

Polish is a pro-drop language; subject pronouns are frequently dropped. For example: ma kota (literally "hasa cat") may mean "he/she/it has a cat". It is also possible to drop the object or even sometimes verb, if theyare obvious from context. For example, ma ("has") or nie ma ("has not") may be used as an affirmative or negative answer to a question "does... have...?".

Note the interrogative particle czy, which is used to start a yes/no question, much like the French "est-ceque". The particle is not obligatory, and sometimes rising intonation is the only signal of the interrogativecharacter of the sentence.

Negation is achieved by placing nie directly before the verb, or other word or phrase being negated (in somecases nie- is prefixed to the negated word, equivalent to English un- or non- ). If a setence contains a negativeelement such as nigdy ("never"), nikt ("no-one"), etc., the verb is negated with nie as well (and several suchnegative elements can be combined, as in nikt nigdy nie robi nic , "no-one ever does anything", literally"no-one never doesn't do nothing").


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The equivalent of the English "there is" etc. is the appropriate part of the verb by ("to be"), e.g. jest...("there is..."), s ... ("there are..."), by (a/o)... ("there was..."), etc., with a noun phrase in the nominative. Thenegative form is always singular (and neuter where applicable), takes the noun phrase in the genitive, anduses ma rather than jest in the present tense: nie ma kota ("there isn't a cat", also "the cat isn't there"), nieby o kota etc. (as usual, the word order is not fixed).

Where two concepts are equated, the particle to is often used instead of a part of by, with the nounsexpressing the concepts in the nominative case (although verb infinitives can also be used here: istnie tocierpie "to exist is to suffer"). There are also sentences where to appears to be the subject of by, but thecomplement is in the nominative and the verb agrees with the complement: to jest..." ("this/it is..."), to s ... ,to by (a/o)... , etc.

Subjectless sentences

There are various types of sentence in Polish that do not have subjects:

Sentences where the subject pronoun is dropped (see above), but is still understood.Sentences formed from certain verbs that can appear (in third-person singular neuter form) without a

subject, corresponding to an English impersonal "it", as in pada o ("it was raining/snowing").Sentences with verbs in second-person singular masculine (or sometimes third-person masculine

personal plural) form, but no subject, corresponding to English "you" with general meaning, as inrobisz to ("you do this", i.e. "one does this").Sentences with the reflexive particle si but no subject, the verb being third-person singular, as in tutaj

pije si wdk ("here one drinks vodka/vodka is drunk") note that the logical direct object is in theaccusative, not the nominative as in analogous constructions in other languages such as Russian.Sentences with the subjectless past tense form of the verb (see Verbs above).Sentences with impersonal particles such as mo na ("it is possible"), wolno ("it is permitted").

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The nominative case (abbreviated NOM ) is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech,which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to itsobject or other verb arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the nominative, and thenominative is the dictionary form of the noun.

1 Etymology2 Linguistic characteristics

2.1 Subjective case3 Examples

3.1 Subject

3.2 Predicate noun or adjective4 References5 External links

Nominative comes from Latin c sus nomin t vus "case for naming", [1] which was translated from AncientGreek ptsis onomastik "inflection for naming", [2] from onomz "call by name", [3] from noma "name". [4]

Dionysius Thrax in his Art of Grammar refers to it as or euthea "straight",[5]

in contrast to the obliqueor "bent" cases.

The reference form (more technically, the least marked ) of certain parts of speech is normally in thenominative case, but this is often not a complete specification of the reference form, as it may also benecessary to specify such as the number and gender. Thus the reference or least marked form of an adjectivemight be the nominative masculine singular. The parts of speech which are often declined and therefore mayhave a nominative case are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and less frequently numerals and participles. The

nominative case often indicates the subject of a verb but sometimes does not indicate any particular relationship with other parts of a sentence. In some languages the nominative case is unmarked, it may besaid to be marked by a zero morpheme. Moreover, in most languages with a nominative case, the nominativeform is the lemma; that is, it is the reference form used to cite a word, to list it as a dictionary entry, etc..

Nominative cases are found in Slovak, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Georgian, German, Latin, Greek,Icelandic, Old English, Old French, Polish, Czech, Romanian, Russian, and Pashto, among other languages.English still retains some nominative pronouns, which are contrasted with the accusative (comparable to theoblique or disjunctive in some other languages): I (accusative, me), we (accusative, us), he (accusative, him),

she (accusative, her ), they (accusative, them) and who (accusative, whom). A usage that is archaic in most, but not all, current English dialects is the singular second-person pronoun thou (accusative thee ). A specialcase is the word you: Originally, ye was its nominative form and you the accusative, but over time you hascome to be used for the nominative as well.

minative case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_case

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The term "nominative case" is most properly used in the discussion of nominativeaccusative languages, suchas Latin, Greek, and most modern Western European languages.

In activestative languages there is a case sometimes called nominative which is the most marked case, and isused for the subject of a transitive verb or a voluntary subject of an intransitive verb but not for aninvoluntary subject of an intransitive verb; since such languages are a relatively new field of study, there is nostandard name for this case.

Subjective case

Some writers on English grammar employ the term subjective case instead of nominative, in order to drawattention to the differences between the "standard" generic nominative and the way it is used in English.

Generally, when the term subjective case is used, the term objective is used for the oblique case, whichcovers the roles of accusative, dative, and objects of a preposition. The genitive case is then usually calledthe possessive form and often is not considered as a noun case per se; English is then said to have two cases,the subjective and the objective. This view is an oversimplification, but it is didactically useful.

Subject

The nominative case marks the subject of a verb. When the verb is active, the nominative is the person or thing doing the action (agent); when the verb is passive, the nominative is the person or thing receiving theaction.

The boy ate pizza.The pizza has been eaten.

Predicate noun or adjective

The nominative also marks things equal to the subject (that is, a predicate noun or adjective).

Socrates was a wise man .Socrates was wise .

^ nominativus (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=nominativus) .Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary on Perseus Project.

1.

^ (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=o)nomastiko/s). Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A GreekEnglish Lexicon at Perseus Project

2.

^ (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=o)noma/zw)3.^ (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=o/noma)4.^ Dionysius Thrax. (http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante02/DionysiosThrax/dio_tech.html) (Art of Grammar), section (10b): (On the noun). BibliothecaAugustana.

5.

German nominative case (http://www.deutsched.com/Grammar/Lessons/0204dative.php) A lessoncovering the nominative case in the German languageRussian Nominative: [1] (http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/nouns_nominative.php) , [2]


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(http://www.russianresources.info/links.aspx/grammar/nouns/nom) , [3] (http://www.learnrussian.net/learn-russian-nominative-case.html)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nominative_case&oldid=508286547"Categories: Grammatical cases

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In grammar, genitive (abbreviated GEN ; also called the possessive case or second case ) is the grammaticalcase that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun; however, it can also indicate various other relationships than possession: certain verbs may takearguments in the genitive case, and it may have adverbial uses ( see Adverbial genitive).

Placing the modifying noun in the genitive case is one way to indicate that two nouns are related in a genitiveconstruction. Modern English typically does not morphologically mark nouns for a genitive case in order toindicate a genitive construction; instead, it uses either the 's clitic or a preposition (usually of ). However, the

personal pronouns do have distinct possessive forms. There are various other ways to indicate a genitiveconstruction, as well. For example, many Afroasiatic languages place the head noun (rather than themodifying noun) in the construct state.

Depending on the language, specific varieties of genitive-nounmain-noun relationships may include:

possession ( see possessive case, possessed case):inalienable possession (" Janets height", " Janets existence", " Janets long fingers")alienable possession (" Janets jacket", " Janets drink")relationship indicated by the noun being modified (" Janets husband")

composition ( see Partitive case):substance ("a wheel of cheese ")elements ("a group of men ")source ("a portion of the food ")

participation in an action:as an agent ("She benefited from her father's love") this is called the subjective genitive(Compare "Her father loved her", where Her father is the subject .)

as a patient ("the love of music ") this is called the objective genitive (Compare "She lovesmusic", where music is the object .)origin ("men of Rome ")reference ("the capital of the Republic " or "the Republic's capital")description ("man of honour ", "day of reckoning ")compounds (" dooms day" ("doom's day"), Scottish Gaelic " ball coise " = "football", where " coise " =gen. of " cas ", "foot")

Depending on the language, some of the relationships mentioned above have their own distinct casesdifferent from the genitive.

Possessive pronouns are distinct pronouns, found in Indo-European languages such as English, that functionlike pronouns inflected in the genitive. They are considered separate pronouns if contrasting to languageswhere pronouns are regularly inflected in the genitive. For example, English my is either a separate

possessive adjective or an irregular genitive of I , while in Finnish, for example, minun is regularlyagglutinated from minu- "I" and -n (genitive).

In some languages, nouns in the genitive case also agree in case with the nouns they modify (that is, it ismarked for two cases). This phenomenon is called suffixaufnahme.

In some languages, nouns in the genitive case may be found in inclusio that is, between the main nounsarticle and the noun itself.

Many languages have a genitive case, including Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Basque, Belarusian, Czech,Slovak, Estonian, Finnish, Gaelic, Georgian, German, Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian,Polish, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovene, Turkish and Ukrainian. English

tive case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case

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In Estonian, the genitive marker -n has elided with respect to Finnish. Thus, the genitive always ends with avowel, and the singular genitive is sometimes (in a subset of words ending with a vocal in nominative)identical in form to nominative.

In Finnish, in addition to the uses mentioned above, there is a construct where the genitive is used to mark asurname. For example, Juhani Virtanen can be also expressed Virtasen Juhani ("Juhani of the Virtanens").

A complication in Finnic languages is that the accusative case -(e)n is homophonic to the genitive case. Thiscase does not indicate possession, but is a syntactic marker for the object, additionally indicating that theaction is telic (completed). In Estonian, it is often said that only a "genitive" exists. However, the cases havecompletely different functions, and the form of the accusative has developed from * -(e)m. (The same soundchange has developed into a synchronic mutation of a final m into n in Finnish, e.g. genitive sydmen vs.nominative sydn .) This homophony has exceptions in Finnish, where a separate accusative -(e)t is found in

pronouns, e.g. kenet "who (telic object)", vs. kenen "whose".

A difference is also observed in some of the related Smi languages, where the pronouns and the plural of nouns in the genitive and accusative are easily distinguishable from each other, e.g., ku'c mi "eagles'(genitive plural)" and ku'c mid "eagles (accusative plural)" in Skolt Sami.

In Slavic languages such as Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, etc., both nouns and adjectives reflect thegenitive case by using a variety of endings depending on the word's lexical category, its gender, and number (singular or plural).

Possessives

To indicate possession, the ending of the noun indicating the possessor changes to , , or , depending on

the word's ending in the nominative case. For example:

Nominative: " " ("Here is Anton").Genitive: " " ("Here is Anton's pencil").

Possessives can also be formed by the construction " [subject] [object]":

Nominative: " " ("Here is Sergei").Genitive: " " ("Sergei has a pencil").

In sentences where the possessor includes an associated pronoun, the pronoun also changes:

Nominative: " " ("Here is my brother").Genitive: " " ("My brother has a pencil").

And in sentences denoting negative possession, the ending of the object noun also changes:

Nominative: " " ("Here is Irina").Genitive: " " ("Irina does not have a pencil").

To express negation

The genitive case is also used in sentences expressing negation, even when no possessive relationship isinvolved. The ending of the subject noun changes just as it does in possessive sentences:

Nominative: " ?" ("Is Maria at home?").Genitive: " " ("Maria is not at home," literally, "Of Maria there is none at home.").


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Use of genitive for negation is obligatory in Slovene, Polish and Old Church Slavonic. Russian, Belarussianand Ukrainian optionally employ genitive for negation. In Czech, the negative genitive is perceived asarchaic, as it is in Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian. [1]

Partial direct object

The genitive case is used with some verbs and mass nouns to indicate that the action covers only a part of the

direct object (having a function of non-existing partitive case), whereas similar constructions using theAccusative case denote full coverage. Compare the sentences:

Genitive: " " ("I drank water," i.e. "I drank some water, part of the water available")Accusative: " ("I drank the water," i.e. "I drank all the water, all the water in question")

Prepositional constructions

The genitive case is also used in many prepositional constructions.

Czech prepositions using genitive case: od (from), z, ze (from), do (into), bez (without), krom (excepting), msto (instead of), podle (after, according to), podl (along), okolo (around), u (near, by),vedle (beside), b hem (during), pomoc (using, by the help of), stran (as regards) etc.

The genitive case is used in the German language to show possession. For example:

das Buch der Schlerin (the book of the schoolgirl) - Femininedas Buch des Schlers (the book of the schoolboy) - Masculine

An s is simply added to the end of the name if the identity of the possessor is specified. For example:

Claudias Buch (Claudia's book)

There is also a genitive case with German pronouns such as 'dein' (your) and 'mein' (my).

The genitive case is also used for objects of some prepositions (e.g. trotz [despite], wegen [because of],[an]statt [instead of], whrend [during]), and is required as the case of the direct object for some verbs (e.g.

edenken , sich erf reuen , bedrfen ; Usage: wir gedachten der Verstorbenen - We remembered the dead; wir erfreuen uns des schnen Wetters - We're happy about the nice weather.).

All of the articles change in the genitive case.

Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural

Definite article des der des der

Indefinite article eines einer eines (no article)

Adjective endings in genitive case:


Definite article -en -en -en -enIndefinite Article -en -en -en -en

No article -en -er -en -er


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The following prepositions can take the genitive: auerhalb, innerhalb, statt, trotz, whrend, wegen, anddank.

(Altaic is a proposal; on this point of grammar, the included languages behave similarly.)

Japanese

The Japanese possessive is constructed by using the suffix -no to make the genitive case. For example:

Nominative: neko ('cat'); te ('hand, paw')Genitive: neko-no te ('cat's paw')

It also uses the suffix -na for adjectival noun; in some analyses adjectival nouns are simply nouns thattake -na in the genitive, forming a complementary distribution ( -no and -na being allomorphs).

KoreanThe possessive in Korean can be formed using the ending -ui ' '.

This is a car. igeoneun jadongchayeyo. .This is the man's car. igeoneun namja-ui jadongchaeyeyo. .

Turkish

The Turkish possessive is constructed using two suffixes: a genitive case for the possessor and a possessivesuffix for the possessed object. For example:

Nominative: Kad n ('woman'); ayakkab ('shoe')Genitive: Kad n n ayakkab s ('the woman's shoe')

Genitive case marking existed in Proto-Semitic, Akkadian, and Ugaritic. It indicated possession, and it is preserved today only in literary Arabic.

Akkadian

Nominative: arrum (king)Genitive: aat arrim (wife of king = king's wife)

Arabic

Called al-majr r (meaning "dragged") in Arabic, the Genitive case functions both as an indication of ownership (ex. the door of the house ) and for nouns following a preposition.

Nominative: baytun (a house)

Genitive: b

bu baytin (the door of a house) b

bu l-bayti (the door of the house)The Arabic genitive marking also appears after prepositions.

e.g. bbun li-baytin (a door for a house)


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The dative case (abbreviated DAT , or sometimes D when it is a core argument) is a grammatical casegenerally used to indicate the noun to which something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink".

In general, the dative marks the indirect object of a verb, although in some instances the dative is used for thedirect object of a verb pertaining directly to an act of giving something. In Russian and Swiss German, for example, the verb "to call (by telephone)" is always followed by a noun in the dative.

The thing being given may be a tangible object, such as "a book" or "a pen", or it may be an intangibleabstraction, such as "an answer" or "help".

In some languages, the dative case has assimilated the functions of other now-extinct cases. In AncientGreek, the dative has the functions of the Proto-Indo-European locative and instrumental as well as those of the original dative.

Sometimes the dative has functions unrelated to giving. In Scottish Gaelic and Irish, the term dative case ismisleadingly used in traditional grammars to refer to the prepositional case-marking of nouns followingsimple prepositions and the definite article. In Georgian, the dative case also marks the subject of thesentence in some verbs and some tenses. This is also called the dative construction.

The dative was common among early Indo-European languages and has survived to the present in the Balto-Slavic branch and the Germanic branch, among others. It also exists in similar forms in several non-Indo-European languages, such as the Uralic family of languages, Altaic family of languages and Japanese(sometimes considered as Altaic).

Under the influence of English, which uses the preposition "to" for both indirect objects ( give to ) and

directions of movement ( go to ), the term "dative" has sometimes been used to describe cases that in other languages would more appropriately be called lative.

1 Etymology2 English

2.1 Set expressions2.2 Relic pronouns

2.3 Modern English3 German4 Latin5 Greek 6 Slavic languages7 Baltic languages8 Armenian9 Sanskrit10 Non-Indo-European languages

10.1 Hungarian10.2 Tsez

11 See also12 External links13 References

ve case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dative_case

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"Dative" comes from Latin c sus dat vus, meaning "case for giving", a translation of Greek"inflection for giving", [1] from its use with the verb didnai "to give". [2] Dionysius Thrax in his Art of Grammar also refers to it as "for sending (a letter)", [3] from the verb epistll "send to", a wordfrom the same root as epistle.

The Old English language, current until approximately sometime after the time of the Norman Conquest in1066, had a dative case; however, the English case system gradually fell into disuse during the MiddleEnglish period, when in pronouns the accusative and dative merged into a single oblique case that was alsoused for all prepositions. This conflation of case in Middle and Modern English has led most moderngrammarians to discard the "accusative" and "dative" labels as obsolete, often using the term "objective" for oblique. [citation needed ]

Set expressions

While the dative case is no longer a part of modern English usage, it survives in a few set expressions. Onegood example is the word "methinks", with the meaning "it seems to me". It survives in this fixed form fromthe days of Old English (having undergone, however, phonetic changes with the rest of the language), inwhich it was constructed as "[it]" + "me" (the dative case of the personal pronoun) + "thinks" (i.e., "seems",< Old English thyncan, "to seem", a verb closely related to the verb thencan, "to think", but distinct from it inOld English; later it merged with "think" and lost this meaning).

The dative case also survives, albeit rarely, in the ethic dative, used to express one's interest in a matter. Thisonly occurs with pronouns. For instance, in the sentence, "Cry me a river," "me" is used to express thespeaker's interest in the action.

Relic pronouns

The pronoun whom is a remnant of the dative case in English, descending from the Old English dative pronoun "hw m" (as opposed to the nominative "who", which descends from Old English "hw ") though"whom" also absorbed the functions of the Old English accusative pronoun "hwone". It is also cognate to theword " wem" (the dative form of " wer ") in German. The OED defines all classical uses of the word "whom" insituations where the indirect object is not known in effect, indicating the anonymity of the indirect object.

Likewise, "him" is a remnant of both the Old English dative "him" and accusative "hine", "her" serves for both Old English dative "hire" and accusative "h e", etc.

Modern English

In Modern English, an indirect object is often expressed with a prepositional phrase of "to" or "for". If thereis a direct object, the indirect object can be expressed by an object pronoun placed between the verb and thedirect object. For example, "He gave that to me " and "He built a snowman for me " are the same as "He gaveme that" and "He built me a snowman". Here, the object pronoun "me" has the same function as a dative

pronoun in a language that distinguishes accusative and dative cases.

In general, the dative is used to mark the indirect object of a German sentence. In the following example dem


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Mann is in the dative:

Ich schickte dem Mann das Buch. (I sent the book to the man )

Certain German prepositions require the dative: aus , auer , bei , mit , nach , seit , von, zu, and gegenber .Other prepositions ( an , auf , hinter , in, neben , ber , unter , vor , and zwischen ) may be used with dative(indicating current location), or accusative (indicating direction toward something). Das Buch liegt auf demTisch (dative: the book is lying on the table), but Ich lege das Buch auf den Tisch (accusative: I put the book on the table). In addition, those German prepositions that require the genitive in formal language, tend to beused with the dative in contemporary colloquial German; for example, "because of the weather" is oftenexpressed as "wegen dem Wetter" instead of the formally correct "wegen des Wetters".

Note that the concept of an indirect object may be rendered by a prepositional phrase. In this case, the noun'sor pronoun's case is determined by the preposition, NOT by its function in the sentence. Consider thissentence:

Ich sandte das Buch zum Verleger. 'I sent the book to the editor.'

Here, the subject, Ich , is in the nominative case, the direct object, das Buch , is in the accusative case, andum Verleger is in the dative case, since zu always requires the dative ( zum is a contraction of zu + dem).

However:

Ich habe das Buch an meinen Freund ( accusative ) weitergegeben. 'I forwarded the book to my friend.'(weitergeben = lit.: to give further).

In this sentence, Freund would seem to be the indirect object, but, because it follows an (direction), theaccusative is required, not the dative.

All of the articles change in the dative case.


Definite article dem der demden (plus an "n" at theend of mostsubstantives)

Indefinite article (and other "ein-words"(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/German/Grammar /Articles#Ein-words) )

einem einer einemkeinen (plus an "n" atthe end of mostsubstantives)

Some German verbs require the dative for their direct objects. Common examples include folgen , helfen , and

antworten . In each case, the direct object of the verb is rendered in dative. For example:

Meine Freunde helfen mir . (My friends help me)

The dative case is also used with reflexive (sich) verbs when specifying what part of the self the verb is beingdone to:

Ich wasche mich . - accusative (I wash myself)Ich wasche mir die Hnde . - dative (I wash my hands, literally "I wash to myself the hands")

Cf. the respective accord in French: "Les enfants se sont lav s" ( the children have washed themselves ) vs.

"Les enfants se sont lav" [uninflected] "les mains" ( ... their hands ).Adjective endings also change in the dative case. Another factor that determines the endings of adjectives iswhether the adjective is being used after a definite article (the), after an indefinite article (a/an), or withoutany article before the adjective ( many green apples).


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Definite article -en -en -en -en

Indefinite Article -en -en -en -en

No article - em -er -em -en

Except the main case ( Dativus ), there are several other kinds:

Dativus finalis with the meaning of purpose, e.g., auxilio vocare - "to call for help", venio auxilio -"I'm coming for help", accipio dono - "I receive this as a gift" or puellae ornamento est - "this servesfor the girl's decoration";

Dativus commodi (incommodi) , which means action for somebody, e.g., Graecis agros colere - "to tillfields for Greeks"; Combination of Dativus commodi and finalis (double Dative): tibi laetitiae "to youfor joy"

Dativus possessivus (possessive dative ) which means possession, e.g., angelis alae sunt - literally "to

(or for) the angels are wings", this is typically found with a copula and translated as "the angels havewings".

Dativus ethicus (ethic dative ) indicates that the person in the dative is or should be especiallyconcerned about the action, e.g., 'quid mihi Celsus agit?' ' What is Celsus doing' (I am especiallyinterested in what it is)?

Dativus auctoris , meaning; 'in the eyes of', e.g., 'vir bonus mihi videtur' 'the man seems good to me'.The Dative is also used to express agency with the gerundive, a future passive participle that, alongwith the verb to be, expresses obligation or necessity of the action being performed on the noun withwhich it agrees, e.g., 'haec nobis agenda sunt,' 'these things must be done by us'

In addition to its main function as the Dativus , the dative case has other functions in Classical Greek [4] :

Dativus finalis: The dativus finalis , or the 'dative of purpose', is when the dative is used to denote the purpose of a certain action. For example:

" ""I fight for the king ".

" ""I die for honour ".

Dativus commodi (incommodi): The dativus commodi sive incommodi , or the 'dative of benefit (or harm)' is the dative that expresses the advantage or disadvantage of something for someone . For example:

For the benef it of : " " (Sophocles, Ajax 1366)."Every man toils for himself ".

For the harm or disadvantage of : " ."(Thucydides 2.12.4).

"This day will be the beginning of great sorrows for the Greeks (i.e., for their disadvantage)".

Dativus possesivus: The dativus possesivus , or the 'dative of possession' is the dative used to denote the possessor of a certain object or objects. For example:

" , ." (Thucycdides1.86.3)."For others have a lot of money and ships and horses, but we have good allies (i.e., Toothers there is a lot of money..)".

Dativus ethicus: The dativus ethicus , or the 'ethic or polite dative,' is when the dative is used to signify


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that the person or thing spoken of is regarded with interest by someone. This dative is mostly, if notexclusively, used in pronouns. As such, it is also called the "dative of pronouns." For example:

" ." (Demosthenes 18.178)."Pay close attention to this, I beg you (i.e., please pay..)".

" , ." (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 18.178)."Oh, mother, how handsome grandpa is ( I've just realized! )".

Dativus auctoris: The dativus auctoris , or the 'dative of agent,' is the dative used to denote the doer of an action. Note, however, that in Classical Greek, the agent is usually in the genitive after (by, atthe hands of). The agent is in the dative only with the perfect and pluperfect passive, and after theverbal adjective in - . For example:

" ." (Isocrates 8.39)"Many cures have been discovered by doctors ."

Dativus instrumenti: The dativus instrumenti , or the 'dative of instrument,' is when the dative is used todenote an instrument or means of a certain action (or, more accurately, as the instrumental case). For example:

" ." (Homer, Odyssey 9.407)"He kills me with a bait (i.e., by means of a bait)."

Dativus modi: The dativus modi , or the 'dative of manner,' is the dative used to describe the manner or

way by which something happened. For example:" ." (Thucydides 8.84)"having died of (from ) a disease ."

Dativus mensurae: The dativus mensurae , or the 'dative of measurement,' is the dative used to denotethe measurement of difference . For example:

" ." (Plato, Phaedo 101a)"taller by a head ."

" ." (Plato, Laws 729d)"by far the best."

In Russian, the dative case is used to indicate the indirect object of an action (that to which something isgiven, thrown, read, etc.). In the instance where a person is the goal of motion, dative is used instead of accusative to indicate motion toward. This is usually achieved with the preposition " " + destination in dativecase; , meaning 'to the doctor'.

Dative is also the necessary case taken by certain prepositions when expressing certain ideas. For instance,when the preposition is used to mean "along", its object is always in dative case as with, , 'alongthe sides'.

Other Slavic languages apply the dative case (and the other cases) more or less the same way as doesRussian, some languages may use the dative in other ways. The following examples are from Polish:

after certain verbs (dzi kowa komu "to thank someone", pomc komu "to help someone", wierzy komu "to believe someone")in certain expressions (Czy podoba ci si piosenka? "Do you like the song?", Jest mi zimno "I'm cold",Jest nam smutno "We're feeling sad", B dzie wam trudniej... "It will be more difficult for you guys"),nio jej si, e... "She dreamt that")dativus commodi to indicate action for somebody (Zbuduj temu czowiek owi dom "I will build ahouse for this person")when something is taken away or something occurs to someone (Zdech im pies "Their dog died",Zabrali mu komputer "They took away his computer", Zepsu nam si samochd "Our car brokedown", Co mi si przypomnia o "I just remembered something")

Other kinds of dative case are also used in Serbo-Croatian language: Dativus finalis ( Titaniku u pomo "to


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Titanic's rescue"), Dativus commodi/incommodi (Operi svojoj majci sue "Wash the dishes for your mother"), Dativus possessivus ( Ovcama je dlaka gusta "Sheeps' hair is thick"), Dativus ethicus ( ? "What is Boni doing? (I am especially interested in what it is)") and Dativus auctoris (Izgleda miokej "It seems okay to me").

Unusual in other Indo-European branches but common among Slavic languages, endings of nouns andadjectives are different. Other factors are gender and number. In some cases, the ending may not be obvious,even when those three factors are considered. That is, in Polish, syn ("son") and ojciec ("father") are bothmasculine singular nouns, but syn syn owi and ojciec ojc u .

Both Lithuanian and Latvian have a distinct dative case in the system of nominal declensions.

Lithuanian nouns preserve Indo-European inflections in the dative case fairly well: (o-stems) vaikas -> sg.vaikui, pl. vaikams; ( -stems) ranka -> sg. rankai, pl. rankoms; (i-stems) viltis -> sg. vil iai, pl. viltims;(u-stems) s nus -> sg. s nui, pl. s nums; (consonant stems) vanduo -> sg. vandeniui, pl. vandenims.

Adjectives in the dative case receive pronominal endings (this might be the result of a more recentdevelopment): tas geras vaikas -> sg. t am ger am vaikui, pl. t iems ger iems vaikams.

The Dative case in Latvian underwent further simplifications - the original masculine endings of both nounsand adjectives have been replaced with pronominal inflections: tas v rs -> sg. tam v ram, pl. tiem v riem.Also, the final "s" in all Dative forms has been dropped. The only exception is personal pronouns in the

plural: mum s (to us), jum s (to you). Note that in colloquial Lithuanian the final "s" in the Dative is oftenomitted, as well: time geriem vaikam.

In both Latvian and Lithuanian, the main function of the Dative case is to render the indirect object in a

sentence: (lt) a duodu vyrui knyg ; (lv) es dodu [duodu] v ram gr matu - I am giving a book to the man .The Dative case can also be used with gerundives to indicate an action preceding or simultaneous with themain action in a sentence: (lt) jam jus, visi atsistojo - when he walked in, everybody stood up , lit. to himhaving walked in, all stood up ; (lt) jai miegant, visi dirbo - while she slept, everybody was working , lit. to her

sleeping, all were working .

In modern standard Lithuanian, Dative case is not required by prepositions, although in many dialects it isdone frequently: (dial.) iki (+D) iai dienai, (stand.) iki (+G) ios dienos - up until this day .

In Latvian, the dative case is taken by several prepositions in the singular and all prepositions in the plural

(due to peculiar historical changes): sg. bez (+G) tevis (without thee) ~ pl. bez (+D) jums (without you) ; sg. pa (+A) ce u (along the road) ~ pl. pa (+D) ce iem (along the roads) .

The dative case in Armenian ( ) is signified in most cases with a - (-i) ending.

The most common use of the Dative in Armenian is to indicate the indirect object of an action.

( un , dog) ( un i , to the dog)

( ) ( unin (or an) utelik talis ei ) = I gave the dog food / I gavefood to the dog)

In addition to showing the indirect object of an action, it also shows movement toward a place or direction.


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(dun , house) (dun in , to the house) ( ) (dunin ( ) modetsa ) = I approached the house

The term "dative" is grammatically similar to the Sanskrit word "datta". "Datta" means "gift" or "the act of giving". The dative case is the fourth in the usual procedure in the declension of nouns (chaturthi-vibhakti).

Hungarian

As with many other languages, the dative case is used in Hungarian to show the indirect object of a verb. For example, Dnielnek adtam ezt a knyvet (I gave this book to Dniel ).

It has two suffixes, -nak and -nek ; the correct is selected by vowel harmony. The personal dative pronounsfollow the -nek version: nekem, neked , etc.

This case is also used to express "for" in certain circumstances, such as "I bought a gift for Mother".

In possessive constructions the nak/nek endings are also used but this is NOT the dative form (rather, theattributive or possessive case) [5]

Tsez

In the Northeast Caucasian languages, such as Tsez, the dative also takes the functions of the lative case inmarking the direction of an action. By some linguists, they are still regarded as two separate cases in thoselanguages, although the suffixes are exactly the same for both cases. Other linguists list them separately onlyfor the purpose of separating syntactic cases from locative cases. An example with the ditransitive verb"show" (literally: "make see") is given below:

I I .kidb- ui-qo-r k et u b-ik a-r-xogirl :OBL-ERG boy -POSS-DAT/LAT cat :[III]:ABS III-see -CAUS-PRES

"The girl shows the cat to the boy."

The dative/lative is also used to indicate possession, as in the example below, because there is no such verbas "to have".

I I .kidbe-qo-r k et u zow-sigirl :OBL-POSS-DAT/LAT cat :ABS be :PST-PST

"The girl had a cat."

As in the examples above, the dative/lative case usually occurs in combination with another suffix as poss-lative case; this should not be regarded as a separate case, however, as many of the locative cases inTsez are constructed analytically; hence, they are, in fact, a combination of two case suffixes. See Tsezlanguage#Locative case suffixes for further details.

Verbs of perception or emotion (like "see", "know", "love", "want") also require the logical subject to stand inthe dative/lative case. Note that in this example the "pure" dative/lative without its POSS-suffix is used.


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I I . Ali-r Pat i y-eti-xAli-DAT/LAT Fatima :[II]:ABS II- love -PRES

"Ali loves Fatima."

Dative constructionDeclension in EnglishDouble dative

German dative case (http://www.deutsched.com/Grammar/Lessons/0204dative.php) A lesson coveringthe dative case in the German languageHungarian dative case (http://www.hungarianreference.com/Nouns/nak-nek-dative.aspx) from www.HungarianReference.comRussian Dative: [1] (http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/nouns_dative.php) , [2](http://www.russian-resources.info/links.aspx/grammar/nouns/dat) , [3] (http://www.learnrussian.net/learn-russian-dative-case.html)

^ (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=dotiko/s) . Liddell,Henry George; Scott, Robert; A GreekEnglish Lexicon at Perseus Project

1.

^ (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=dido/nai) in Liddelland Scott

2.

^ Dionysius Thrax. (http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante02/DionysiosThrax/dio_tech.html) (Art of Grammar), section (10b): (On the noun). BibliothecaAugustana.

3.

^ Morwood, James. Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek. Oxford University Press, 2002. (ISBN0-19-521851-5)

4.

^ Ignatius Singer, 'Simplified Grammar of the Hungarian Language', 1882.5.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dative_case&oldid=507404867"Categories: Grammatical cases

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In a declined language, the morphology of the article or noun changes in some way according to the grammatical role played by thenoun in a given sentence. For example, in German, one possible translation of "the car" is der Wagen . This is the form in thenominative 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 theaccusative case, which entails an article shift in German Ich sehe den Wagen . In German, masculine nouns change their definitearticle from der to den in the accusative case.

Examples

Indo-European languagesLatin

In Latin, nouns, adjectives, or pronouns in the accusative case ( accusativus ) can be used

as a direct object.to indicate duration of time. E.g., multos annos , "for many years"; ducentos annos , "for 200 years." This is known as theaccusative of duration of time .to indicate direction towards which. E.g. domum , "homewards"; Romam , "to Rome" with no preposition needed. This isknown 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 (e.g. Dixit me fuisse saevum , "He said that I had been cruel;" in later Latin works, suchas the Vulgate, such a construction is replaced by quod and a regularly structured sentence, having the subject in the

nominative: e.g., Dixit quod ego fueram saevus ).with case-specific prepositions such as "per" (through), "ad" (to/toward), and "trans" (across).in exclamations, such as me miseram, "wretched me" (spoken by Circe to Ulysses in Ovid's Remedium Amoris; note that thisis feminine: the masculine form would be me miserum).

For the accusative endings, see Latin declension.

German

German uses the accusative to mark direct objects and objects of certain prepositions, or adverbs relating to time. The accusative ismarked for masculine articles, pronouns, and adjectives.

German articles

The masculine forms for German articles, e.g., 'the', 'a/an', 'my', etc., change in the accusative case: they always end in -en. Thefeminine, neutral and plural forms do not change.


Definite article (the) den die das die

Indefinite article (a/an) einen eine ein

For example, " Hund " (dog) is a masculine ( der ) word, so the article changes when used in the accusative case:

Ich habe einen Hund . (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.

German pronouns

Some German pronouns also change in the accusative case.

German prepositions

The accusative case is also used after particular German prepositions. These include bis, durch, fr, gegen, ohne, um , after whichthe accusative case is always used, and an, auf, hinter, in, neben, ber, unter, vor, zwischen which can govern either the accusativeor the dative. The latter prepositions take the accusative when motion or action is specified (being done into/onto the space), buttake the dative when location is specified (being done in/on that space). These prepositions are also used in conjunction with certainverbs, in which case it is the verb in question which governs whether the accusative or dative should be used.

German adjectives

Adjective endings also change in the accusative case. Another factor that determines the endings of adjectives is whether theadjective is being used after a definite article (the), after an indefinite article (a/an) or without any article before the adjective ( many

usative case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative_case

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green apples).


Definite article -en -e -e -en

Indefinite Article -en -e -es -en

No article -en -e -es -e

German adverbial use

In German, the accusative case is also used for some adverbial expressions, mostly temporal ones, as in " Diesen Abend bleibe ichdaheim " (This evening I'm staying at home), where " diesen Abend " is marked as accusative, although not a direct object.

Russian

In Russian, accusative is used not only to display the direct object of an action, but also to indicate the destination or goal of motion.It is also used with some prepositions. The prepositions and can both take accusative in situations where they are indicating thegoal of a motion.

In the masculine, Russian also distinguishes between animate and inanimate nouns with regard to the accusative; only the animatescarry a marker in this case.

In fact Russian almost lost the real PIE accusative case, since only singular feminine nouns ending in 'a' have a distinct form. Other words use the genitive case or the nominative case in place of the accusative, depending on their animacy.

Armenian

While the Armenian dialects both have a de facto accusative case, Eastern Armenian uses an accusative marker for transitiveverbs [7]

Example:

- girkh - book (Nominative) - usuchi h - teacher (Nominative)

:Aram verchrech girkhAram took the book.

:Aram sirum ir usuchi hinAram loves his teacher.

Constructed languages

Esperanto

Esperanto grammar involves only two cases, a nominative and an accusative. The accusative is formed by the addition of -n to thenominative form, and is the case used for direct objects. Other case functions, including dative functions, are achieved with

prepositions, all of which normally take the nominative case. Direction of motion can be expressed either by the accusative case, or by the preposition al (to) with the nominative.

Ido

In Ido the -n suffix is optional, as subjectverbobject order is assumed when it is not present. Note that this is sometimes done inEsperanto, especially by beginners, but it is considered incorrect while in Ido it is the norm.

Uralic languages

Finnish

According to traditional Finnish grammars, the accusative is the case of a total object, while the case of a partial object is the partitive. The accusative is identical either to the nominative or the genitive, except for personal pronouns and the personalinterrogative pronoun kuka/ken , which have a special accusative form ending in -t , kenet .


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The major new Finnish grammar, Iso suomen kielioppi , breaks with the traditional classification to limit the accusative case to thespecial case of the personal pronouns and kuka/ken . The new grammar considers other total objects as being in the nominative or genitive case.

Hungarian

The accusative case in Hungarian applies to nouns, pronouns; even to adjectives and numerals when either of them stands alone inthe sense of direct object.

Accusative is formed by the suffix -t. In many cases, -t is preceded by a suffix-initial vowel, primarily based on specific vowelharmony, resulting in -at , -et , -ot , or -t . The rules are complex, also involve consonants, and have exceptions. Thus: k ertet (garden),k k et (blue); f alat (wall), h a t ot (six); p olcot (shelf), ny olc at (eight); k dt (fog), k nyvet (book).

In fewer cases, the root of the word is also affected. Word endings -a or -e will (even if they are the endings of a preceding suffix)change to - and -, respectively, before -t . E.g.: f a (tree) -> f t . The long vowel of a one-syllable word may get shortened. E.g.: r (lord) -> ur at . But: b r (Boer) -> b r t. If a word has more than one syllable and the last syllable ends in a consonant, the vowel of the last syllable may drop. E.g.: krm (fingernail) -> krm t . But: kr m (my circle) -> krm et . Notably, the first-person andsecond-person personal pronouns have quite unique accusative forms (indeed, as indicated in the table, in the singular case theending -et is rather optional, even considered archaic).

Nominative Accusative

first-person singular (I) n engem(et)second-person singular (you) te tged(et)

third-person singular (he/she/it) tfirst-person plural (we) mi minket

second-person plural (you) ti titeket

third-person plural (they) k ket

Semitic languages

Accusative case marking existed in Proto-Semitic, Akkadian, and Ugaritic. It is preserved today only in literary Arabic and Ge'ez.

Akkadian

Nominative: aw lum (a/the man)Accusative: apaqqid aw lam (I trust a/the man)

Classical Arabic

In Arabic, the accusative case (also the subjunctive mood) is called an-na b, and a word in the accusative case (also a verb inthe subjunctive) is called al-man b, both from the verb na aba "set up". The accusative is used to mark the object of a verb and to form adverbs.

Nominative: rajulun "a man", ar-rajulu "the man"

Accusative: as'alu rajulan "I ask a man", as'alu ar-rajula "I ask the man"

See also

Nota accusativiAccusative absoluteMorphosyntactic alignment

Notes

^ Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. .Oxford, 1989

1.

^ acc st vus (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper /text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=accusativus) .Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary onPerseus Project.

2.

^ (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper /text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=ai)tiatikh/) . Liddell,

3.

Henry George; Scott, Robert; A GreekEnglish Lexicon atPerseus Project^ "accusative" (http://oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=accusative) . Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). OxfordUniversity Press. 2001. http://oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=accusative.

4.

^ Harper, Douglas. "accusative" (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=accusative) . Online Etymology Dictionary .

5.


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http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=accusative.^ Herbert Weir Smyth. A Greek grammar for colleges. p. 353,sect. 1551.a. : name of the accusative.

6.^ http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Armenian_Language_Lessons_Chapter_2#Accu

7.

External links

Russian Accusative: [1] (http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/nouns_accusative.php) , [2] (http://www.russian-plus.com/Cases/accusative-case.html) , [3] (http://www.russian-resources.info/links.aspx/grammar/nouns/acc) , [4](http://www.learnrussian.net/learn-russian-accusative-case.html)German Accusative Case (http://www.deutsched.com/Grammar/Lessons/0203accusative.php) Grammar lesson covering theaccusative case in the German languageArabic case endings (http://arabic.tripod.com/CaseSigns.htm)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Accusative_case&oldid=506506282"Categories: Grammatical cases

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The instrumental case (abbreviated INS or INSTR ; also called the eighth case ) is a grammatical case used toindicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes anaction. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.

1 General discussion2 Examples

2.1 Indo-European languages2.1.1 Sanskrit2.1.2 Greek 2.1.3 Czech

2.1.4 Armenian2.2 Non-Indo-European languages2.2.1 Hungarian2.2.2 Finnish2.2.3 Nahuatl

3 Sources4 External links

The instrumental case appears in this Russian sentence:

.Ya napisal pis'mo perom."I wrote (the) letter with (a) quill pen."

Here, the inflection of the noun indicates its instrumental role the nominative changes its ending to become .

In Modern English, the word why is one instance of an etymologically instrumental declension. Though notcommonly known to be of pronominal origin, it was, in fact, inherited from Old English hw , which was thedeclension of hwt (now what ) in the Old English instrumental case a grammatical feature rare even in OldEnglish. The modern instrumental case (as present in why) does not bear the meaning of instrument, but of

purpose, cause, or reason: rather, the closely related form how is used to express instrument, way, or means.In nominal use, Modern English expresses the instrumental meaning by use of adverbial phrases that beginwith the words with, by, or using then followed by the noun indicating the instrument :

I wrote the note with a pen. I wrote the note (by) using a pen.

Technical descriptions often use the phrase "by means of", which is similar to "by use of", as in:

I wrote the note by means of a pen. I wrote the note by use of a pen.

umental case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_case

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This can be replaced by "via", which is a Latin instrumental ablative of the nominative (vi ) via , meaningroad, route, or way. In the ablative this means by way of . The English suffix "-wise", meaning way , performsthe same function, although in most cases it would be reserved for poetic effect:

I wrote the note penwise.

The above sentence structures, however, can be altogether avoided in English by transforming the noun intoa past-tense verb, e.g. "I penned the note."

The instrumental case appears in Old English, Old Saxon, Georgian, Basque, Sanskrit, and the Balto-Slaviclanguages. An instrumental/comitative case is arguably present in Turkish and other Altaic languages, as wellas in Tamil. Also, Uralic languages reuse the adessive case where available, locative case if not, to mark thesame category, or comitative case (Estonian). For example, the Finnish kirjoitan kynll does not mean "Iwrite on a pen", but "I write using a pen", even if the adessive -ll is used. In Ob-Ugric languages, the samecategory may also mark agents with verbs that use an ergative alignment, like "I give you, using a pen".

The instrumental case is most notably used in Russian, where the case is called (tvoritelnij padezh) . In most declension paradigms, the instrumental case in Russian can generally be

distinguished by the - ("-om") suffix for most masculine and neuter nouns, the - /-o ("-oyu"/"-oy")suffix for most feminine nouns and - ("-ami") for any of the three genders in the plural.

However, in Russian, as with many Slavic languages, the instrumental case is not only used to denote themeans of a certain action, but also:

to denote a time when an action occurs ("during"). For example, in the sentence " "(ya rabotayu utrom), which means "I work in the morning"; the word (utro, "morning") in itsinstrumental case denotes the tim

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