# The cases that the preposition "в" governs



## Konstantinos

Totally, 4 cases:

1) Nominative: Он пошёл в *солдаты*.

2) Accusative: Она идёт в *школу*.

3) Prepositional: Она была в *школе*.

4) Genitive: Специалисты предсказывают дефицит в *девятьсот биллонов* долларов.

Am I right? Or not? Maybe it can also govern the dative or the instrumental?


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## bibax

Only accusative and prepositional (= locative):  в *школу,* в *школе*.


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## AllaSwitzerland

Konstantinos,

In the phrase "Он пошел в солдаты" , "солдаты" is a plural noun in the Accusative case. 

"Специалисты предсказывают дефицит в *девятьсот биллионов* долларов" -- "долларов" is also in the Accusative case.  
(However, in Russian the equivalent of "billion" is "миллиард".)


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## Konstantinos

AllaSwitzerland said:


> In the phrase "Он пошел в солдаты" , "солдаты" is a plural noun in the Accusative case.



I think, the nominative plural of the noun солдат is солдаты and the accusative plural солдат.

One more example: Он не годится в *офицеры*.

Офицеры is the nominative plural of the noun офицер.



AllaSwitzerland said:


> "Специалисты предсказывают дефицит в *девятьсот биллионов* долларов" -- "долларов" is also in the Accusative case.
> (However, in Russian the equivalent of "billion" is "миллиард".)



Yes, but why in this case биллион in the genitive: биллионов?


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## AllaSwitzerland

Konstantinos, thanks, 

Дефицит в девятьсот биллионов долларов -- "биллионов" in the Genitive because the principal word in the phrase is 900 (девятьсот) and it governs the case of the word "биллионы" : Девятьсот (кого? чего?) биллионов _(Родительный)_  долларов.


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## ahvalj

_В солдаты_ is indeed the Accusative, simply an older form of it, preserved in this particular construction. The original Accusative in this declension type ended on -_ы_, whereas the Nominative ended on -_и_: with time, the original Accusative form replaced the original Nominative, to be replaced in its turn by the Genitive in animate nouns. The Nominative itself cannot be used after prepositions. 

The situation is clear in the Singular: _он пошёл в папу _("he grows similar to his father").


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## igusarov

Konstantinos said:


> I think, the nominative plural of the noun солдат is солдаты and the accusative plural солдат.
> One more example: Он не годится в *офицеры*.
> Офицеры is the nominative plural of the noun офицер.


It is accusative. Quite a lot of expressions like "позвать в гости", "взять в жены", "играть в куклы", "кандидат в мастера спорта" use a special form of accusative, which is constructed as if that noun _was inanimate_. See, for example, classification of such expressions at rusgram.ru


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## ahvalj

_В девятьсот биллионов_ is the Accusative: _биллионов_ is caused not by the preposition, but by the numeral. Compare _в сотню биллионов_.


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## Awwal12

igusarov said:


> It is accusative. Quite a lot of expressions like "позвать в гости", "взять в жены", "играть в куклы", "кандидат в мастера спорта" use a special form of accusative, which is constructed as if that noun _was inanimate_. See, for example, classification of such expressions at rusgram.ru


"Special form of accusative" (which is morthologivcally identical to nominative) is something else that the accusative, isn't it?
We could say with the same success that there is only the nominative case in Russian... with six special forms of it.


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## ahvalj

Awwal12 said:


> "Special form of accusative" (which is morthologivcally identical to nominative) is something else that the accusative, isn't it?
> We could say with the same success that there is only the nominative case in Russian... with six special forms of it.


Following this logic, _в стол_ is Nominative as well. And also in _мать любит дочь_ we have two Nominative forms.


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## layman_linguist

Konstantinos said:


> Am I right? Or not? ?


 
It depends on how precise an answer you need.

The Newtonian answer (sufficient for a beginner, true in most real-life cases) is "The Russian preposition в governs either the accusative case or prepositional case". The simple answer disregards some niceties of the Russian language:
(I) Russian numeral phrases mostly behave like noun phrases but not always. A is one of the cases where the numeral phrase grammar is special, differing from the noun phrase grammar.
(II) P is an umbrella term for two different cases: the locative prepositional (LP) and the topical prepositional (TP). They are mostly identical in form but not always.
(III) In the accusative case, animate nouns (especially in the plural) are sometimes used in a form coinciding with the nominative case (rather than genitive).
Reverting to your examples: (1) illustrates Nicety III, (2) and (3) are the default uses, (4) illustrates Nicety (I).


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## Ben Jamin

I think that it is not the preposition *в* that governs the case of the noun, but the verb. That's why one uses different cases with different verbs but with the same preposition..


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## ahvalj

Ben Jamin said:


> I think that it is not the preposition *в* that governs the case of the noun, but the verb. That's why one uses different cases with different verbs but with the same preposition..


Where is the verb in _в лесу/в лес_?


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## Ben Jamin

ahvalj said:


> Where is the verb in _в лесу/в лес_?


There will be one when you make a sentence. Nobody says just only _*в лесу* or *в лес*__, _except as a truncated answer to sentence, and then the verb is implied.
Где он *находился*? В *лесу*.
Куда он *шёл*?  В *лес*.


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## ahvalj

Yet the verb may be omitted, which suggests that [_в_ + a case form] is enough to express the meaning. Plus, if we put a synonymous preposition, the case may change: _говорить про тебя/говорить о тебе_.

Update. If it were the verb that governed the case, we would have expected the same case with various spatial prepositions, e. g. the Accusative _на/в/за/под стол_ and the Prepositional (=Locative) _на/в/за/под столе_, whereas in reality we find for the placement _на/в столе_ vs. _за/под столом_.


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## Awwal12

ahvalj said:


> Following this logic, _в стол_ is Nominative as well. And also in _мать любит дочь_ we have two Nominative forms.


If the accusative form of some WORDS is identical to their nominative or genitive forms, it doesn't mean accusiative doesn't exist in Russian (on the contrary, it's much more convenient to call it accusative than to state that one words take the nominative and other take the genitive in identical positions). But when one word may have two different "accusatives", it's a problem. So no, your example does NOT follow my logic.


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## ahvalj

Awwal12 said:


> If the accusative form of some WORDS is identical to their nominative or genitive forms, it doesn't mean accusiative doesn't exist in Russian (on the contrary, it's much more convenient to call it accusative than to state that one words take the nominative and other take the genitive in identical positions). But when one word may have two different "accusatives", it's a problem. So no, your example does NOT follow my logic.


The cases, as everything else, are a kind of grammatical abstraction: their number and nomenclature represent a balance between the grammatical tradition, etymology and compactness of description. That is the reason why the Russian grammars prefer to maintain the six traditional cases, which can be formed for virtually any declinable word (if there is synonymy in the Singular, the cases are distinct in the Plural; if there is synonymy in one declensional type, it is absent in some other).


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## Drink

Ben Jamin said:


> I think that it is not the preposition *в* that governs the case of the noun, but the verb. That's why one uses different cases with different verbs but with the same preposition..



Он ехал в лес.
Он ехал в лесу.

Yet the meaning of "ехал" is exactly the same in both sentences. In the first sentence, the prepositional phrase specifies the destination of the action, while in the second, it specifies the location of the action.


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## Awwal12

ahvalj said:


> The cases, as everything else, are a kind of grammatical abstraction


Precisely. And it is not really convenient to name two obviously different cases identically. It is much more convenient just to suppose that in some constructions objects may take the nominative. OR to invent some additional case at least.


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## ahvalj

Awwal12 said:


> Precisely. And it is not really convenient to name two obviously different cases identically. It is much more convenient just to suppose that in some constructions objects may take the nominative. OR to invent some additional case at least.


This is not the Nominative in the modern language even because in the rare cases when such a construction is used in the Singular, the noun stands in the clear Accusative: _хиротонисал диакона Василия во пресвитера_ from igusarov's link above. Plus, as I had written, in the _o_-declension this -_ы_ is simply the original form of the Accusative Plural that has survived the intrusion of the -_ов_ ending in the animate nouns.


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## Awwal12

ahvalj said:


> This is not the Nominative in the modern language even because in the rare cases when such a construction is used in the Singular, the noun stands in the clear Accusative: _хиротонисал диакона Василия во пресвитера_ from igusarov's link above.


And why exactly should we consider it as the same construction? 


ahvalj said:


> Plus, as I had written, in the _o_-declension this -_ы_ is simply the original form of the Accusative Plural that has survived the intrusion of the -_ов_ ending in the animate nouns.


I'm afraid that is not much relevant for the synchronous description.


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## layman_linguist

Awwal12 said:


> And why exactly should we consider it as the same construction?
> 
> I'm afraid that is not much relevant for the synchronous description.



  Факты: в русском языке реально употребляются такие обороты:
                  Таких не берут в космонавты.
                  Я бы в лётчики пошёл, пусть меня научат.
                  Я хотела больше зарабатывать, вот и _пошла в актрисы._

                  Он ушёл в партизаны, когда ему было 12 лет.

_                Всех своих детей она вывела в люди._

_Интерпретация фактов:_
  1) Это особая форма винительного падежа. Осталась от прежних времён, когда такая форма винительного и была единственно возможной. Употребляется в ограниченном числе грамматических конструкций. Имя существительное одушевлённое употребляется не в своём собственном значении, а в смысле "некоторое сообщество, состоящее из означенных индивидуумов".
  2) Это особый падеж, ведь именительный не может зависеть от предлогов: предлоги управляют только косвенными падежами (= не именительным падежом).
  2) Это форма именительного падежа. Именительный, как и все другие падежи, может употребляться после предлогов. Примеры других предлогов, управляющеих именительным: "Я выпил напиток типа Кока-Кола". "Закажи что-нибудь а-ля Фанта".

  Предлагаю высказаться за и против.


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## rusita preciosa

You may find these threads interesting: click, click


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## ahvalj

Это обсуждалось уже неоднократно и, очевидно, вполне удовлетворительного решения не имеет. Я в целом согласен с Зализняком, что целесообразнее считать это ещё одним побочным падежом в ряду: второй родительный (_мало сахару_), второй винительный (_пойти в дворники_), второй местный (_в лесу_), счётная форма (_два часа_), звательная форма (_мам!, отче!_). На полноценные падежи они не тянут в виду ограниченности круга слов, их образующих.


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