Russian grammar is one of the most important parts of the language. Grammar allows us to speak confidently, correct and without errors. Often the speech of people who do not know grammar sounds very funny, because all the words sound ridiculous and incoherent. For example, everyone has heard how some foreigner tries to communicate in Russian. Frankly, they don't succeed and they look ridiculous. In order not to look like them, you need to know grammar.

A noun is one of the most important independent parts of speech, which is practically the most common part of speech. It has such unstable features as number and case. The case paradigm is change noun depending on the meaning it has in a sentence. In this article you will learn how to determine cases of nouns, what are indirect cases, how to ask questions about them correctly, as well as about the cases themselves and their questions.

Cases

The only rule for correct modification of nouns is the correct placement of the ending in connection with the question asked. This is an easy task for native speakers, but foreigners need to remember the endings and identify them correctly.

Declensions

There is also 3 types of declination in nouns.

First declension. Creatures name. masculine and feminine endings -a, -ya. For example, a flask, a pig.
Second declension. Creatures name. masculine and neuter with endings -о, -е. For example, a tree, a well.
Third declension. The name of feminine creatures with a zero ending, or ending in -ь. For example, horse, horse.

Changing nouns different declinations.

	Question	1st declension (plural)	2nd declension (plural)	3rd declension (plural)
Nominative pad.	who?, what?	tire(s), mom(s)	spaceship(s)	horse(s)
Genitive pad.	who?, what?	tires(tyres), mom(s)	spaceship(s)	horse(s)
Dative case.	to whom?, to what?	tire(s), mother(s)	spaceship(s)	horses(horses)
Accusative pad.	who?, what?	tire(s), mother(s)	spaceship(s)	horse(s)
Creative downfall.	by whom?, by what?	tire(s), mom(s)	spaceship(s)	horse(s)
Prepositional pad.	about whom?, about what?	about the tire (about tires), about mom (about moms)	about spaceship (about spaceships)	about the horse (about horses)

In Russian there is such a concept as indirect cases– these are all cases except the nominative.

They all have their own meaning:

Determinants

There are many ways to determine the case of a noun. The fastest, easiest and most effective way today is to use qualifiers. Different cases can be determined using the following determiners.

Using determiners makes it easier to change nouns by case. To do this, just put this word in front of the noun, and then ask a question and put the correct ending. For each case, it is enough to remember one word.

In addition, the question is of great importance for determining case. The table gives an idea of what prepositions are used with case forms of nouns in the Russian language.

Cases are the foundation of Russian grammar and everyone is required to know each of them by heart. But it’s very easy to remember all of them; two days of cramming is enough to remember them for the rest of your life. Good luck!

, patient, bene- or malefactive, addressee, instrument, means, etc. As a rule, in languages with several cases, three or four of them perform primarily syntactic functions (nominative, accusative, ergative, genitive) and have a very wide, vague range of semantic functions, and the rest (dative, instrumental, translative, aversive and many others ) are more semantically specialized. As a rule, in languages with rich case systems (Finno-Ugric, Caucasian), a significant part of the cases are forms of localization, denoting different ways of locating an object in space (inside a landmark, above or below it, end and starting points of movement, etc.). These are allative, illative, innessive, prolative and others. In addition, in languages like Russian or German, case forms of adjectival parts of speech (adjectives, participles), along with gender and number, act as the main tool of agreement - an important means of increasing the coherence of the text.

Etymology of the term

Russian term case, like the Russian names of most cases, is a calque from Greek and Latin - ancient Greek. πτῶσις (fall), lat. casus from cadere (to fall). Highlight direct case (nominative and sometimes also accusative) and indirect cases (others). This terminology is associated with the ancient concept of “declination” (lat. declinatio) as “deviations”, “falling away” from the correct, “direct” form of the word, and was supported by associations with the game of dice (where with each throw one side or another falls out - in this case, one “direct” and several “indirect”).

Case determination problem

With this approach, “nine cases of the Russian language are beyond doubt,” and with the adoption of certain assumptions, twelve can be identified. In his memoirs V. A. Uspensky claims that this was the first scientific(i.e. formalized) case definition. The ideas of Kolmogorov - Uspensky in the early 1970s were developed by linguists A. A. Zaliznyak and A. V. Gladky. However, the question remained at the level of experimental research: “There is no strict definition of case in traditional linguistic works,” Zaliznyak stated in one of the works of those years.

List of cases

Below is a list of cases distinguished in different grammatical traditions (the questions are given for Russian equivalents that are suitable in meaning). Some cases in some languages may partially or completely overlap each other in functionality and/or morphological characteristics.

Latin name	Russian equivalent, or explanation	Characteristic questions	Function	Examples of languages in which it is used
Nominative	Nominative	Who? What?	Subject	Almost all agglutinative and inflected languages
Genitive	Genitive	Whom? What?	Affiliation, composition, participation, origin, definition, negation	Arabic, Slavic, Finnish, Georgian, German, (Ancient) Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Latin, Lithuanian, Sanskrit, Turkic languages, Japanese
Possessive	Possessive case	Whose?	Only affiliation	Kazakh; can be separated from the genitive in: English, Quechua, Altaic and Finno-Ugric languages, Korean
Dative	Dative	To whom? Why?	Object of transmission, addressee of speech, experiencer	Of the early Indo-European languages, it survives in the Balto-Slavic, Romance and Germanic languages; Finno-Ugric languages, Japanese and Korean languages
Accusative	Accusative case	Whom? What?	Action Object	Almost all agglutinating languages, most inflected
Ergative	Active case	Who? What?	Subject of the action	Ergative languages
Absolute	Nominative	Who? Whom? What?	Action or state object	Ergative languages
Affect	Dative	Who? To whom?	A subject who perceives something or experiences some feeling
Comitative or Sociative	Joint case	With whom?	Secondary subjects of action	Finnish, Estonian, Basque, Japanese, Korean
Instrumentalis	Instrumental case	By whom? How?	Instrument of action; sometimes the subject of the action	Mongolian, Serbian, Russian, Polish, Korean, Japanese and Kazakh
Partitive	Partial case	What?	The action goes only to part of the object	Finnish, Estonian, Udmurt
Vocative	Vocative case		Appeal	Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Bosnian, Polish, Belarusian, Serbian, Croatian, Czech, Ukrainian, Romanian, Korean, Bulgarian
Essive		Which? How?	Being in any state	Finnish, Estonian
Translative	Permutative case	What? Who/what have you become?	Change of state or location	Finnish, Estonian
Caritiv	Disclaimer			Yenisei
Temporalis	There is no exact analogue	When?	Action time	Finno-Ugric
Equative	There is no exact analogue	Like who?	Comparison	Finno-Ugric
Spatial cases
Locative	Local case	Where? What?	Location	Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Baltic languages, Etruscan
Adessiv		Where? About what?	Location (external)	Finno-Ugric
Abessive	Disclaimer	Without whom? Without what?	Absence of something, being outside of something	Finnish, Estonian
Inessiv		Where? What?	Location (internal)	Finnish, Estonian, Korean
allative	Directive case	Where? Why?	The final point of the trajectory, the object on which the action will affect	Finno-Ugric, Turkic languages, Korean, Japanese
Illative	There is no exact analogue	Where? What?	Final (internal) point of action	Finno-Ugric languages
Ablative	Original	Where? Why? From what?	Starting point of action	Finno-Ugric languages, Turkic, Sanskrit, Korean, Japanese
Elative	There is no exact analogue	From (inside) what?	Initial (internal) point of action	Finno-Ugric languages
Superessive	There is no exact analogue	On what?	Location (overhead)	Nakh-Dagestan, Finno-Ugric
Sublative	There is no exact analogue	For what?	Final (overhead) point of action	Nakh-Dagestan, Finno-Ugric
Delative	There is no exact analogue	Why?	Initial (surface) point of action	Nakh-Dagestan, Finno-Ugric
Subessive	There is no exact analogue	Under what?	Location (lower)	Nakh-Dagestan
Subdirectives	There is no exact analogue	Under what?	Final (lower) point of action	Nakh-Dagestan
Subelative	There is no exact analogue	From under what?	Initial (lower) point of action	Nakh-Dagestan
Post-essive	There is no exact analogue	For what?	Location (back)	Nakh-Dagestan
Post-directive	There is no exact analogue	For what?	Final (target) point of action	Nakh-Dagestan
Postelative	There is no exact analogue	Because of what?	Initial (target) point of action	Nakh-Dagestan
Prolativ	There is no exact analogue	Along what?	Only for extended objects	Mongolian, Finnish
Prosekutiv	Longitudinal case	Along what?		Yenisei
Terminative	Limit case	To what level? (to where?)	Specifying Height/Depth	Mongolian, Estonian

Case hierarchy

Modern linguistic typology is based on the idea that cases represent an ordered system, a hierarchy in which each case is assigned a certain rank:

Within the framework of this hierarchy, in general, the following rule applies: “If a language does not have a specific case, then it will not have other cases occupying a place to the right of it in the hierarchy,” in other words, if a language does not have a locative, then it will not have , for example, instrumentalis. This hierarchy, however, reflects only a general tendency and represents a frequency rather than an absolute linguistic universal. Thus, in the Russian and Czech languages there is no ablative, but there is an instrumentalis (and in Russian the latter turns out to be the most formally distinctive case, with the lowest index of intercase homonymy). In the Irish language, the nominative and accusative have ceased to differ, but the dative and locative in a number of forms do not coincide; it retains the genitive and vocative, but does not have the ablative and instrumentalis. In Punjabi, the accusative, genitive and dative have merged to form one oblique case, while retaining the vocative, locative and ablative.

Case system of the Russian language

Main cases

The modern school grammatical tradition distinguishes six main cases, but grammarians distinguish a number of peripheral cases, so that in complete descriptions of the Russian language their number reaches 13:

№	Russian name	Latin name	Auxiliary words	Characteristic question
1	Nominative	Nominative (Nominativus)	Eat	Who? What?
2	Genitive	Genitivus	No	Whom? What?
3	Dative	Dativus	Give	To whom? Why?
4	Accusative	Accusativus	Blame	Whom? What?
5	Instrumental	Instrumental (Instrumentalis)	Satisfied	By whom? How?
6	Prepositional	Prepositive (Praepositionalis) and local (locative, Locativus)	Think	About whom? About what? In whom? What? Where? (Locative)

Case	Question	1st declension (plural)	2nd declension (plural)	3rd declension (plural)
I. p.	Who? What?	boards A(boards), dad (dads)		maz b(ointments)
R. p.	Whom? What?	boards And(boards), dads (dads)	tractor A(tractors), logs (logs)	maz And(ointments)
D. p.	To whom? Why?	boards e(boards), dad (dads)	tractor at(tractors), logs (logs)	maz And(to ointments)
V. p.	Whom? What?	boards at(boards), dad (dad)	tractor(s), log(s)	maz b(ointments)
etc.	By whom? How?	boards Ouch/board oh(boards), dad/dad (dads)	tractor ohm(tractors), logs (logs)	maz yu(ointments)
P. p.	About whom? About what? In whom? What?	boards e(boards), dad (dads)	tractor e(tractors), logs (logs)	maz And(ointments)


	Nominative				Genitive				Dative				Accusative				Instrumental				Prepositional
	units			pl	units			pl	units			pl	units			pl	units			pl	units			pl
	1	2	3	pl	1	2	3	pl	1	2	3	pl	1	2	3	pl	1	2	3	pl	1	2	3	pl
mf	-A	---	---	-s	-s	-A	-And	-s	-e	-y	-And	-am	-y	---	---	-s	-Ouch	-ohm	-yu	-ami	-e	-e	-And	-Oh
w			-ь					---								---


Wed		-O	---					---



	letters A			s	letters s			V	letters e			am	letters at			s	letters Ouch			ami	letters e			Oh
	Who? What? Eat.				Whom? What? No.				To whom? Why? Give.				Whom? What? Blame.				By whom? How? Satisfied.				About whom? About what? Think.

	Nominative	Genitive	Dative	Accusative	Instrumental	Prepositional
	virtue b	virtue And	virtue And	virtue b	virtue yu	virtue And
1 Declension	A	And	e	at	oh, oh	e
1 Declension	-	-	-	-	-	-
2 Declension		A	at		ohm	e
2 Declension	-	-	-	-	-	-
3 Declension	b	And	And	b	yu	And
3 Declension	virtues	virtues	virtues	virtues	virtues	virtues

Male	which one, whose	which one, whose	which one, whose	which one, whose	what, whose	which one, whose
Male	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous
Female	which one, whose	which one, whose	which one, whose	which one, whose	which one, whose	which one, whose
Female	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous
General	what, whose	which one, whose	which one, whose	what, whose	what, whose	which one, whose
General	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous
Many	what, whose	which ones, whose	what, whose	what, whose	what, whose	which ones, whose
Many	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous	virtuous
	Who? What? Eat.	Whom? What?	To whom? Why? Give.	Whom? What? Blame.	By whom? How? Satisfied.	About whom? About what? Think.

Additional cases

There is a strong opinion that in the Russian language several cases can be distinguished, which are not mentioned when teaching at school and are not very often used in speech. This

Ablative (initial, positive case) - a case denoting the beginning of movement and answering the question “from where?” In Russian it coincides with the genitive case from work - no work, from Moscow - no Moscow. However, occasionally it retains its specificity. For example, along with the form came out of the forest there is an ablative came out of the forest, nosebleed, work from home Vocative (vocative case) - a case occasionally used when addressing. In the Russian language, two or three forms of the vocative case can be distinguished. Examples of the so-called “new vocative” case: Anya - Anh!, Sasha - Sash!. The “old vocative” case was preserved in the words “starche” (elder), “otche” (father), “Lord” (Lord), “Bozhe” (God) and others. This case was considered the seventh Russian case in grammars published before 1918. The third form of the vocative case is preserved in the words “grandfather”, “daughter”, “mati”, etc. The name of this form “case” is conditional, since in a strictly grammatical sense the vocative form is not a case. The vocative has also been preserved in other Slavic languages. For example, Ukrainian grammar distinguishes a separate vocative case (Ukr. personal information): “You are good, my kobzar, Good, father, robish!” (Taras Shevchenko, “Kobzar”) - in the vocative form, “kobzar” turns into “kobzar”, and “father” turns into “father”. For a limited number of words, vocatives also exist in Belarusian. Locative (local case, second prepositional) The prepositional case combines explanatory meaning (about what?) and local meaning (where?). Most words have the same forms: “talk about the table” - “to be in the table”, “about the hut” - “in the hut”. However, a number of words actually have two forms of the prepositional case: “about the closet” - “in the closet” and “about the forest” - “in the forest”, which makes it possible to distinguish a special local case. Due to the small number of words whose forms do not coincide (there are just over a hundred of them), in the academic tradition in the Russian language such a case is usually not highlighted. Partitive (quantitative-separation or second genitive) In this case, a noun is placed, meaning the whole in relation to some part. Answers the question “what?” We can hear this case in two equivalent forms of some phrases: for example, “a head of garlic”, but also “a head of garlic”; it is especially noticeable in relation to uncountable nouns: sugar, sand (not to be confused with the dative), tea, etc. In the context, one can trace the separation of the genitive and the given case: “no sugar” and “put sugar.” In the generally accepted school system, all these forms are classified in the genitive case.
There is an opinion that this case is one of two that can be a direct object of the verb. Moreover, verbs can have as a direct object either only a noun in the partitive or in the accusative. (This often depends on the animateness and countability of the noun.) Waiting With verbs “to wait” and similar in meaning, the genitive form is used, which is sometimes separated into a separate case. For example: I'm waiting letter(accusative), but I'm waiting letters(waiting). Translative (transformative, inclusive case) Form used in constructions like “go to soldiers", "elect to presidents", "enroll in actors", indicating a transition to another state or position. In these cases, the accusative plural coincides in form with the nominative.

There are six cases in Russian:

Nominative,
Genitive,
Dative,
Accusative,
Instrumental,
Prepositional

But there is only one main case - Nominative, since it is direct, and other cases come from it, and it is the main part of speech in a sentence. Therefore, those other cases are indirect, that is, all other cases (five cases).

And this is a note, what cases are there in general in the Russian language, what questions do they answer. It is worth noting that there are always two questions, since a noun can be either animate or inanimate. For animate nouns we use the first case questions, for inanimate nouns we use the second case questions.

First, let's remember all the cases in the Russian language (and, if you remember, there are only six of them).

1). Nominative case (answers the questions who? what?);

2). Genitive case (no who? no what?);

3). Dative case (approached whom? approached what?);

4). Accusative case (I see who? I see what?);

5). Instrumental case (happy with whom? Satisfied with what?);

6). Prepositional case (talked about whom? talked about what?).

Indirect all cases are called except the nominative (genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional).

In a sentence, words related to indirect cases will be secondary members of the sentence: nouns - by addition, adjectives - by definition, etc.

These are all cases except the nominative (who? what?), namely: genitive (whom? what?), dative (whom? what?), accusative (whom? what?), instrumental (whom? what?), prepositional ( about whom? about what?). The nominative is called direct, sometimes the accusative is also classified as direct, but not all linguists agree with this.

In total, there are about six cases in the Russian language. Everyone has their own specific questions, usually two of them. And it is from them that the child is guided by which case the word belongs to and how to inflect the word in all cases.

The cases themselves are divided into main and indirect. Five cases are considered indirect, the nominative of them is excluded.

Table of oblique cases:

There are six cases in total in the Russian language, one of them - nominative - is called direct, because it directly says who? or what? and nouns in this case can be either subject or predicate. All other cases are indirect: nouns in these cases can only be expressed by secondary members of the sentence.

Sometimes when people hear the word indirect cases, and in particular, most often schoolchildren, a slight stupor arises. In fact, everything is very simple - indirect cases are ordinary cases minus the nominative. Here is their list:

There are quite a lot of terms in the Russian language. Indirect cases are all available cases except the nominative. Words in these cases have a dependence on other words in the sentence, which is why they are called that way.

It's easy to remember, but it's also easy to forget.

There are six cases in total in the Russian language. Each case has its own questions that define it. And in addition to this, these questions are determined for both animate and inanimate objects. And here is a plate with cases of the Russian language:

The nominative case is the base (initial form), and the remaining five cases are indirect cases.

Indirect cases in Russian are everything except the Nominative. That is, if there are six cases in the Russian language, then five of them are indirect. The fact is that the nominative case is the basic, dictionary form of a noun and other forms (other cases) are formed from it, changing endings, suffixes or even the root of the word (the latter is less common).

So, here are these indirect cases:

Of the six cases in the Russian language, we call five indirect. These are genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional. The one remaining case is the nominative, which is the initial form of the word.

Words in the oblique cases in a sentence serve as secondary members of the sentence, while the word in the nominative case expresses the subject.

For example:

The cat ran to her kittens.

Cat - nominative case, subject.

For kittens - dative case (indirect), object.

The concept of indirect case is closely related to the concept of the initial form. When a word can be in different forms in a language, one of them must certainly be chosen as the main one, and all the others - depending on or attached to it, indicating how and why they differ. This type of relationship between forms is called paradigmatic, and the construction of a whatnot from the main form and non-basic ones is called paradigm(declension, conjugation, etc.). There is nothing scary or complicated about this. The very first paradigms were found on Sumerian clay tablets, so people have been familiar with such concepts since ancient times.

In Russian initial form for nouns, the variant of the nominative case in the singular is considered (or in the plural for those nouns that simply cannot be in the singular, for example, scissors or vacation). All other case forms are called indirect: genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional. The accusative case often externally coincides with the nominative case, this is only a special case homoformies, no more.

The meaning of INDIRECT CASE in the Dictionary of Linguistic Terms

OBLIQUE CASE

Any case except nominative. The combination of the genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional cases into one category of indirect case is based on the fact that they all express syntactic dependence on other words in a phrase or sentence, as opposed to the direct (nominative) case, which occupies an independent syntactic position in relation to others words.

Dictionary of linguistic terms. 2012