Slovak: priority of grammatical cases? If so, then N<A<G<L?

[Concise]

1st case - nominative (N)
2nd case - genitive (G)
3rd case - dative (D)
4th case - accusative (A)
6th case - locative (L)
7th case - instrumental (I)

So, these are the cases in Slovak and they are numbered. I always wondered whether the numbers meant anything more than an arbitrary order.

And this is the essence of my post, too.


My first dilemma with cases rose after I learnt that Slavic languages including Slovak are special and numbers over 4 requires not plural nominative , but genitive, so eg. “päť domov”. If “I see five houses”, should genitive case be changed to accusative ? Or not, because only 5 has to be in accusative.

And I learnt that

“Vidím päť domov”.

So I said genitive case is “stronger” than accusative. Or in a more scientific way “I see five of the houses.”

But if I go further and “I am writing about five houses” then

“Píšem o piatich domoch.”

What the heck! The scientific way does not work, because “I am writing about five houses” cannot be interpreted as “I am writing about five of the houses”.

Anyway, the other approach still works, Locative case (and probably Dative, and Instrumental, too) is “stronger” than Genitive.

But lots of questions remained:

1. if a date is expressed with genitive, like “tridsiateho prvého decembra”, what happens in similar situations?

A) “I like 31st of December.”
It is accusative, and probably neither the day, nor the month has to be changed.

B) “I speak about 31st of December”. It is locative, but do I have to modify either just the day, or both the day and the month? Without ruining this special form of expressing a date.

2. Is there a general rule going beyond numbers (& sort of like “mnoho”, “viac”, “pol” etc.) + nouns in Genitive? Which is valid for all the similar situations dealing with cases?

3. Is there any “priority order”between Dative, Locative and Instrumental?

4. Is there any global “priority order” at all, and all these situations could be explained in different way?

NB: in Hungarian either you choose an indirect solution and insert a new word and modify that word following the basic rules of the language or you choose the clumsy way and you put 2 suffixes to the same nouns. But in Slovak I never saw a noun with 2 suffixes like “stromovoch”. Certainly there are tricky things like “domovoch”. ;-)

 

[Concise]

Re 1/B)in the meantime i found that Locative is really stronger than Genitive even in this more complex situation, see “

“Štáty, ktoré sa stanú zmluvnými stranami tejto zmluvy po tridsiatom prvom decembri po nadobudnutí jej účinnosti….”,

but I still need a confirmation, especially for question 3 and 4.

And I feel that maybe swapping from “základné číslovky” to “radové číslovky” in expressing time in cases other than nominative for the numbers over 4 means also a sort of solution to avoid this situation described above.

I mean “o jednej hodine”, “o dvoch/troch/štyroch hodinách” works, but then only “o piatej hodine” and not “o piatich hodinách”.

 

[wyrzyk]

Slavic numbers are weird. You could say that a number like “5” behaves like a noun (“a five of things”) in some cases (NOM/ACC) and behaves like a determiner (“five things”) in other cases (DAT/LOC/INSTR).

But that’s an exception, not a rule. In general there is almost never any “conflict” between cases.

“prvý decembra” is a nominal phrase (“the 1st of December” as in “the 1st of December is beautiful”); “prvého decembra” can be an adverbial phrase (“on the 1st of December”). It might be a bit more complex than that, but ultimately the nominative is still the basic form.

The numbering of the cases is arbitrary (and mostly borrowed from Latin); cases 5 and 6 (locative and instrumental) are switched between Slovak and Polish, but this has nothing to do with the actual grammar.

 

[Awwal12]

But that’s an exception, not a rule. In general there is almost never any “conflict” between cases.

Quite expectedly, but still there are contexts when some cases override others. In particular, in certain situations the case of what should be the direct object is genitive rather than accusative (the historical alternation between the two cases have also resulted in modern accusative forms of some - usually animated - nouns in many Slavic languages). But it's not like there is some consistent hierarchy in place, and I doubt the order is based on anything but the tradition ultimately going back to Latin and Ancient Greek scholars.

My first dilemma with cases rose after I learnt that Slavic languages including Slovak are special and numbers over 4 requires not plural nominative , but genitive

The roots of the mess with Slavic cardinal numerals (which got worse as centuries passed, reaching a particularly dreadful state in modern Russian) ultimately are in late Proto-Indo-European. In Proto-Slavic, nouns from 1 to 4 already essentially were adjectives and the remaining ones were nouns, hence the discrepancy in the syntax. Then came the loss of the dual number (anywhere beyond Slovene, anyway) and numerous levellings, and here we are.

 

[Concise]

the historical alternation between the two cases have also resulted in modern accusative forms of some - usually animated - nouns in many Slavic languages

Wow, I did not expect this piece of info, but I am happy that I got a sort of explanation for the phenomenon of Acc. Sing. of animated nouns and Acc. Sing. + Acc. Pl. of humanoid nouns (including devil ).

By the way could you shed some light
A) why the animals have two plural declensions ("living" and "non-living"), and
B) why the Acc. Pl. equals to Nom. Pl. and NOT the Gen. Pl. even in the "living" plural declension of animals?

In Proto-Slavic, nouns from 1 to 4 already essentially were adjectives and the remaining ones were nouns, hence the discrepancy in the syntax.

It seems that in spite of trying hard I cannot mentally imagine that jeden, dva, tri and sˇtyri were adjectives, while pa:t' et al. were nouns. So it is still a too big gradient for me, but it is not surprising at all.

Re 1/B)in the meantime i found that Locative is really stronger than Genitive even in this more complex situation, see “

“Štáty, ktoré sa stanú zmluvnými stranami tejto zmluvy po tridsiatom prvom decembri po nadobudnutí jej účinnosti….”,

but I still need a confirmation, especially for question 3 and 4.

And I feel that maybe swapping from “základné číslovky” to “radové číslovky” in expressing time in cases other than nominative for the numbers over 4 means also a sort of solution to avoid this situation described above.

I mean “o jednej hodine”, “o dvoch/troch/štyroch hodinách” works, but then only “o piatej hodine” and not “o piatich hodinách”.

Can some of you please confirm or deny+explain whether my bet on this swap from “základné číslovky” to “radové číslovky” above the number 4 has anything to do with avoiding any collision/misunderstanding/ambiguity etc. or it has more to do with the statement from Awwal12 about adjectives (1,2,3,4) and nouns (>=5)?

 

[Concise]

By the way could you shed some light
A) why the animals have two plural declensions ("living" and "non-living"), and
B) why the Acc. Pl. equals to Nom. Pl. and NOT the Gen. Pl. even in the "living" plural declension of animals?

Re A):

In the lack of any answers to A) or B) I both tried to search for it here using English keywords and then in the internet using Slovak keywords. My closest hit is the last sections of Učíme sa doma: Kedy píšeme psy a kedy psi

But frankly speaking it doesnt explain the logical/historical reason behind.

Re B):

My question was based on this pes skloňovanie podstatné meno | gramatika slova, but now I checked it at more places, and it seems that I found an error in kvizy.eu, because other places like Slovenské slovníky use eg. psov and not psi as accusative in the animate plural declension.

 

[Awwal12]

Wow, I did not expect this piece of info, but I am happy that I got a sort of explanation for the phenomenon of Acc. Sing. of animated nouns and Acc. Sing. + Acc. Pl. of humanoid nouns (including devil ).

By the way could you shed some light
A) why the animals have two plural declensions ("living" and "non-living"), and
B) why the Acc. Pl. equals to Nom. Pl. and NOT the Gen. Pl. even in the "living" plural declension of animals?

Please bear in mind that while animacy developed in different Slavic languages according to similar patterns, it is by no means uniform across Slavic languages (and I don't even mean that Bulgaro-Macedonian dialects have lost the declension of nouns whatsoever). For a comparison, in Russian there is no contast between "living" and "non-living" declensions of animals (basically every living being that can be "personalized" is declined just as human beings would, and for nouns like "dolls" declension depends on the context), while animated accusative plural forms *do* coincide with genitive plural ones; that's essentially the terminal stage of the grammaticalization of animacy which also demonstrates maximum levelling. Most Slavic languages, however, are seemingly stuck on the intermediate stage of those developments.

 

[Concise]

Thx, so mainly historical reason, and less logical one.

 

[Concise]

In Proto-Slavic, nouns from 1 to 4 already essentially were adjectives and the remaining ones were nouns,

The more times I spent thinking about it, the more I feel it should have been just the opposite.

Was it not a simple typo and the numbers of 5 and over were the adjectives in Proto-Slavic?

My thinking based on the feeling that ordinal numbers are closer to adjectives than cardinal numbers are. Let me repeat some ofmy way of thinking posted already:

<<I mean “o jednej hodine”, “o dvoch/troch/štyroch hodinách” works, but then only “o piatej hodine” and not “o piatich hodinách”.>>

<<

an some of you please confirm or deny+explain whether my bet on this swap from “základné číslovky” to “radové číslovky” above the number 4 has anything to do with avoiding any collision/misunderstanding/ambiguity etc. or it has more to do with the statement from @Awwal12 about adjectives (1,2,3,4) and nouns (>=5)?

>>

Am I wrong?

Oh, I see. Since the numbers 5 and more were real nouns, it is why cardinal numbers are changed to ordinal numbers when expressing time of day in Slovak..

 

[Concise]

“prvý decembra” is a nominal phrase (“the 1st of December” as in “the 1st of December is beautiful”); “prvého decembra” can be an adverbial phrase (“on the 1st of December”). It might be a bit more complex than that, but ultimately the nominative is still the basic form.

Well, I remembered this note and since I thought I always had to use the genitive case, I decided today that I would check how to say properly dates in Slovak

This time my reference is slovake.eu - Learn Slovak online for free

It is clear that the genitive form implies that we speak about “on the xx of YYY”, but it seems that genitive is really a bit more than a simple (time) adverbial phrase.

The date of today can be expressed by the nominative form and the genitive form, too.

1. “Dnes je dvadsiateho druhého januára dvetisícdesať.”
2. “Dnes je dvadsiaty druhý január dvetisícdesať.”

And I could not figure out whether there is any difference between using the nominative an the genitive in this case. The English translations of these two sentences do not differ if I use google translate. Nor do the Hungarian ones.

I bet that while we can change the sides around “je” in 2., maybe we cannot do it in 1. But maybe we can do that for both.

Is there a logical explanation of the difference, or there is no difference, and I have to simply accept both forms?

 

[Concise]

Hmmmm,
1. Today is [the day] of [the] 22nd [element] of [the month] January of [the year] 2010.

2. Today is 22nd [day], [and the months is] January, [and the year is] 2010.

While 2. sounds logical to me instead of 1. I would use

3. “Dnes je dvadsiay druhý januára dvetisícdesať.”

if I had not earlier read 1. as a used construction to describe the date of today.

 

[francisgranada]

Hmmmm,

3. “Dnes je dvadsiay druhý januára dvetisícdesať.”

In my opinion:

“Dnes je dvadsiay druhý januára dvetisícdesať.” - grammatically wrong (incorrect).
“Dnes je dvadsiateho druhého januára dvetisícdesať.” - the usual form to express the date
“Dnes je dvadsiaty druhý január dvetisícdesať.” - grammatically correct, even understandable, but ambiguous. It could mean also "the 22nd January of the year 2010" (as if there were more Januaries in the year 2010).

P.S. “Dnes je dvadsiay druhý deň januára dvetisícdesať.” would be grammatically correct, but this is a constatation of a fact, not the way how the date is expressed in Slovak.

 

[jasio]

So, these are the cases in Slovak and they are numbered. I always wondered whether the numbers meant anything more than an arbitrary order.

Probably it's a bit of both, but I wouldn't blame the Slovaks. ;-)

Exactly the same order is in Polish (with the Vocative case added at the end), Ukrainian, Russian, German (except that they distinguish only the first four cases), to name only a few. Hence, I would expect that the order, or at least most of it, was inherited from Latin:

casus sunt sex: nominativus, genetivus, dativus, accusativus, vocativus, ablativus

The Nominative case is special, because it's the only case possible for the subject of the phrase, and often it contains a null suffix, so it's naturally the first. However the order of the oblique cases seems to be pretty arbitrary, and if there was any justification for it, it concerned the Latin language rather than the Slovak language specifically. For example, as far as I am aware, the order of ancient Greek cases was different:

nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, Ancient Greek nouns - Wikipedia