# the number of cases



## papillon

Very comprehensive summary, vput!

I have a small question related to this:


> Russian: ... *6-8 cases* (depending on how you look at it)...


How does one need to look at it to get 8?

EDIT: OK, I posted before Jana's "admonishment" regarding opening new posts.


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## Crescent

papillon said:


> How does one need to look at it to get 8?


Actually, I was slightly puzzled about that as well! I always thought that we only had six cases in Russian(Именительный, родительный, дательный, винительный, творительный, предложный)?
But this post reminded me of a discussion we had on the Slavic forums a very long time ago, about a case called ''vocative'' (I think).

So maybe what vput meant, was that there are other cases (such as the vocative) which although they existed in archaic Russian, they a now extinct and not used at all anymore. 
What is the other one, then, vput? 

P.S. To be honest - I have no idea if my explanation is anywhere near to the truth - I am just taking an educated guess.


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## Thomas1

papillon said:


> Very comprehensive summary, vput!
> 
> I have a small question related to this:
> How does one need to look at it to get 8?
> 
> EDIT: OK, I posted before Jana's "admonishment" regarding opening new posts.


# 8 местный. 

Tom

PS: I am joining the bunch to express my admiration for the layout, very nicely put, vput!


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## vput

Russian vocative has almost totally disappeared as in Slovak, and for practical purposes, it's easier to say that Russian and Slovak don't have vocative (apart from in a few set expressions and names).

For those "other" cases, it depends in this way:

We usually learn that the Russian cases are: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative and instrumental.

However, some people say that Russian has two genitives (regular genitive and partitive genitive) and two locatives.

Ex.

I drink water (acc.) vs. I drink some of the water ("partitive genitive")
ya piyu vod*u* vs. ya piyu vod*y*

I am in snow vs. I think about snow.
ya v sneg*u* vs. ya dumayu o sneg*e*.

Again, it depends on whether you prefer to split the genitive and locative, or don't.


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## Q-cumber

Here is an article that describes 13 (!) cases os the Russian language.


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## Etcetera

The number of cases actually depends on your point of view.
When we did our course of Russian at University, our professors seemed to deliberately avoid mentioning the number of cases. They talked about diffrent theories, but preferred not to make us stick to this or that theory. 
I guess the main reason why the number of cases was reduced to 6 in most textbooks is to make things as easier as possible and to avoid too much ambiguity.


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## Anatoli

I agree with you, Anna. You probably meant _ambiguity_.  Situations, which don't create new set of endings like in the link provided by Thomas, should not be called separate cases, IMHO but variations, and perhaps such cases should be described in school textbooks as well in advanced classes. _Locative_ may have some different endings to _prepositional_ but it's not common, not sure it needs to be called a separate case.

What is called _partitive_ is _genitive_ case and it is normally described as the usage of genitive.

_Vocative_ is valid but very seldom used in modern Russian.


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## Q-cumber

Anatoli said:


> _Vocative_ is valid but very seldom used in modern Russian.



I don't think so. "Vocative" is widely used by Russians in everyday talks (Валер! Саш! Ань! etc.). However, I agree with the author of the above linked article:


> Мне не нравится идея считать это падежом, поскольку мне не кажется, что полученное в результате слово вообще является именем существительным. Поэтому же, кстати, притяжательный падеж в русском языке не является падежом, так как слова «васин» или «мамин» являются не существительными, а прилагательными. Но что за часть речи тогда «Оль»? Я где-то встречал мнение, что это междометие, и, пожалуй, я соглашусь с этим. Действительно, «Оль» отличается от «эй» лишь тем, что оно образовано от имени «Оля», но по сути является всего лишь возгласом, направленным на привлечение внимания.


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## Anatoli

Q-cumber said:


> I don't think so. "Vocative" is widely used by Russians in everyday talks (Валер! Саш! Ань! etc.). However, I agree with the author of the above linked article:


One problem with this vocative form is that it's not accepted as standard (yet?) and it's perfectly OK or even more correct to say: Валер_а_! Саш_а_! Ан_я_! etc. By no means, I am not saying it's not OK to say so (my wife often calls me _То-оль!_  ) but would you recommend to put these forms in the Russian textbooks as the form of address? Besides, there's some level of intimacy in this shortened form of address, don't you think? 

_ Interjections (междометия)_? No, I, personally, don't like this definition either. To me, they are non-standard, colloquial vocatives. IMHO, of course.


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## Q-cumber

Anatoli said:


> One problem with this vocative form is that it's not accepted as standard (yet?) and it's perfectly OK or even more correct to say: Валер_а_! Саш_а_! Ан_я_! etc. By no means, I am not saying it's not OK to say so (my wife often calls me _То-оль!_  ) but would you recommend to put these forms in the Russian textbooks as the form of address? Besides, there's some level of intimacy in this shortened form of address, don't you think?
> _ Interjections (междометия)_? No, I, personally, don't like this definition either. To me, they are non-standard, colloquial vocatives. IMHO, of course.



Well, I've never looked at the Russian from a professional point of view, so to speak. That's why I'd prefer not to provide any recomendations regarding the Russian textbooks or so.  At the same time, I don't think that word forms, widely used by native speakers in their everyday conversations, can be called "non-standard". I liked the idea to treat these vocatives as interjections, because they don't apppear to be full value nouns, indeed; they only serve to attract attention of a particual person and are used separately.


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## papillon

Q-cumber said:


> I liked the idea to treat these vocatives as interjections, because they don't apppear to be full value nouns, indeed; they only serve to attract attention of a particual person and are used separately.



I fully agree! In fact I was wondering how this form is treated by linguists.

Furthermore, I also have a problem with the old vocative form being called a case, since this form lacks attributes of a "real" case. Specifically, in Russian it "doesn't answer to a question" as we would say.

Именительный: кто, что
Родительный: кого, чего
...
Звательный: ??, ??


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## Etcetera

Anatoli said:


> I agree with you, Anna. You probably meant _ambiguity_.


Yes. Thank you for correcting me!



> _Vocative_ is valid but very seldom used in modern Russian.


Let me disagree. To me it seems that it's used quite often, especially in oral speech. Vocative forms are rather informal, but nevertheless they are used.


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## Thomas1

papillon said:


> [...]
> Звательный: ??, ??


Not sure if this applies to Russian but vocative in Polish doesn't answer any questions too. In fact, to make a noun in vacative we use _o + the noun_, e.g.: o Aniu!, o Boże!, o Krzysiu!, etc. I guess it is much easier to form it when you imagine that you have to call someone as if they were god (this is (i.e. prayers, religious songs, etc) the entourage where you come across vocative most often).
As far as I can remember you have:
_(o) Бо́же!_
(o) _о́тче!_
So it looks like the _o_ rule applies also to Russian (to be confirmed, nontheless ).

Tom


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## Thomas1

Anatoli said:
			
		

> One problem with this vocative form is that it's not accepted as standard (yet?) and it's perfectly OK or even more correct to say: Валер_а_! Саш_а_! Ан_я_! etc. By no means, I am not saying it's not OK to say so (my wife often calls me _То-оль!_  ) but would you recommend to put these forms in the Russian textbooks as the form of address? Besides, there's some level of intimacy in this shortened form of address, don't you think?


There's something that's bugging me and I have to ask, Anatoli, are Валер_а_! Саш_а_! Ан_я_! realy vocative? I may be mislead by my mother tongue vocative desinences, but they all look to me like nominative since I expect different endings here.
Compare:
_Бог --> Бо́же!_
_отец --> о́тче!_
_врач --> вра́чу_


Etcetera said:


> [...]
> Let me disagree. To me it seems that it's used quite often, especially in oral speech. Vocative forms are rather informal, but nevertheless they are used.


Well, I'd guess it is the case used the most seldom, isn't it?


Tom


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## Etcetera

Thomas1 said:


> Well, I'd guess it is the case used the most seldom, isn't it?


In written speech, certainly.
In oral speech, probably.


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## Kolan

Thomas1 said:


> Compare:
> _Бог --> Бо́же!_
> _отец --> о́тче!_
> врач --> вра́чу
> 
> Well, I'd guess it is the case used the most seldom, isn't it?


It is the most seldom, irregular and only applies to a limited number of _survived_ words, in addition to the above:

_Господь - господи!_
_(Сын - сыне!) obsolete, but understood
(Мать - мати!) obsolete, but understood
_


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## Crescent

Etcetera said:


> Yes. Thank you for correcting me!
> 
> 
> Let me disagree. To me it seems that it's used quite often, especially in oral speech. Vocative forms are rather informal, but nevertheless they are used.



_Informal?  _Do you really think so? I would argue the opposite, considering the fact that their seldomness probably proves that the vocative case declensions are more.. formal, than others. Almost like the most seldom is there for the ''special'' or elite. I don't really know, but if I had to guess I'd say it was the people who respect their native language (a little bit too much I would say) who would use these forms, instead of the ordinary folk.

On the other hand, I can see what you mean, Etcetera, by saying they are informal. It is true that ''Боже'' and ''господи'' are used in the vocative ''ты'' form and give a slight intimacy and familiarity with God. (Like Zadornov once said in his linguistic concert ''Вы'' used to mean ''тьма'', and that's why the believers never called God 'на Вы'  )


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## Q-cumber

"Господи, мой Боже,
Зеленоглазый мой!
Пока Земля еще вертится,
И это ей странно самой,
Пока еще хватает времени и огня -
Дай же ты всем понемногу... И не забудь про меня..."
_(Булат Окуджава "Молитва Франсуа Вийона")_


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## cheshire

I heard one Russian speaker say "We used to have one [vocative] before *the Bolshevik Revolution*..." Could anyone explain it for me?


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## tkekte

They were probably referring to the word боже (god (in the vocative case)), and since the Bolshevik Revolution "forbade" religion, the Russian language "lost" its most often used word in the vocative. (it didn't really lose it though, it's still used... and always was. )


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## cheshire

Thanks! So it "officially" disappeared, from like newspapers and so on, and it furtively survived in the meantime, right?


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## Crescent

cheshire said:


> Thanks! So it "officially" disappeared, from like newspapers and so on, and it furtively survived in the meantime, right?



That's exactly right, Cheshire!  Just because something has been forbidden by the gouvernment, or laws, doesn't mean that the people for whom this is morally important will abstain from it. Even though religion was suppressed during the Russian Revolution, that didn't mean that people had stopped believing in God, or that they had stopped worshipping him. 
It simply meant that they had to be silent and secretive about it.


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## Kolan

Well< just came up to my mind, that we have another nice word that can be  still employed in the vocative case, *старик (старец)* - *старче!*

"Ну, что тебе надобно, старче!" (Пушкин, Сказка о золотой рыбке).


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## tkekte

It can't be "employed" anywhere outside of Pushkin's writings.


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## Kolan

tkekte said:


> It can't be "employed" anywhere outside of Pushkin's writings.


Я бы не был так категоричен. Вдохновлённые пушкинской строфой, современные авторы (не обязательно поэты и даже литераторы вообще) к этому обращению могут прибегать в собственных сочинениях, причём для описания ситуаций, далёких от сказочно-былинных.

http://www.fotokritik.ru/photo/297875/

Православная литература, написанная современным языком в наше время, даёт независимые примеры употребления обращения *старче!

*— Как, *старче,* мне не гордиться, когда я вижу, что мне приходят в голову мудрые мысли и что мною восхищаются мои соученики?
http://www.eparhia-saratov.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3827&Itemid=9/

Современные поэты тоже ценят это обращение, причём с пушкинскими строками оно не связывается

 Сердце сжимается, *старче,* но не ложись на диван, 

http://www.poezia.ru/article.php?sid=43265

То есть, я хочу сказать, что слово живёт.


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