From the school bench, we clearly know that there are 6 cases in Russian. But it turns out that this is not entirely true, there are much more cases in grammar. Many of them have been preserved in a residual state, having come into the Russian language from Old Slavonic and Old Russian. One of these phenomena is the vocative case in Russian.
Vocative case: acquaintance
In order to designate an appeal to a person, object or object, the vocative case is used in Russian. The examples are quite varied:
- Masha, go look at the cat!
- Vit, bring firewood!
- Van, call your dad soon!
- Lord, help me in this difficult situation!
- Oh God, give me strength!
The examples showed that the object in the vocative case is expressed by a noun, is its short form.
From the history of the case
In the Indo-European language - the ancestor of our modern one - this case was equal in rights with other cases. However, when Indo-European split into many language families, Sv. n. in most cases began to coincide with the nominative and ceased to be an independent case. However, in the grammars of 1918 this case was still mentioned.
Now for it is used by Him. n., but the vocative case is partially preserved in Russian. Examples are:
- Marin, please bring a book from the library.
Compare: the use of Im. n. instead of Sound. n. will in no way affect the meaning of the sentence: Marina, please bring a book from the library.
- Look around, old man, everything is destroyed and put on fire.
Here the vocative form "starche" is used to give the statement an elevated sound, this is the so-called high syllable. If we replace the form with Im. etc., then the meaning will not change, but the phrase will sound different.
- Lord, help me walk this path.
Such a word form is used in religious texts and prayers, heard by native speakers, and is not perceived as something unusual.
Features of the case form
Let's single out several key features inherent in this case form:
- Coincides in form with Him. P.
- Used for the sole purpose of appeal.
- Its function resembles an interjection.
- It is perceived by a native speaker not as a noun, but as an exclamation.
The vocative case could be formed in various ways, the main ones are presented in the table.
When forming a new vocative case, endings in such words can be reduced:
- Names, including a diminutive version (Van, Vanyush).
- Terms related to the family (mom, aunt, dad, grandfather).
- Some words form a vocative form even in the plural (guys, girls).
The methods of forming vocative forms cannot be called diverse, but they are often used in oral speech.
Vocative forms
In the table, we present the main forms characteristic of words in the vocative case.
In addition to truncating the endings of proper names, it is also possible to use short forms of the names of relatives. The vocative case is also formed in Russian. Examples are given below:
- Mom, where is the tablecloth?
- Dad, help solve the problem!
- Aunt, when are you coming?
The form of the vocative case is also preserved in the words "grandfather", "daughter":
- Daughter, come visit soon!
- Grandpa, come here quickly, help!
Such sentences have a pronounced colloquial connotation.
The vocative case in Russian: an example and interesting facts
- The second name Sound. p - vocative.
- There is an old vocative (used as an equivalent case in the ancient form of the language) and a new vocative (formed in oral speech by native speakers by truncating the endings of nouns).
- Initially, it was in many languages: Sanskrit, Latin and ancient Greek, but did not move into modern languages.
- It has been preserved in some languages: in Romanian, Greek, Ukrainian, Serbian, Polish and others.
- The vocative form disappeared from the Russian language quite early, in the 14th-15th centuries, remaining only as a respectful appeal to boyars and princes.
Only masculine and feminine singular nouns could form the vocative case in Russian. Examples: Friends! God! Prince!
Often vocative forms are used in stable phraseological turns: Lord God Jesus Christ (all four words in vowels), our lord.
In the literature of the 19th-20th centuries, the vocative case was also used for archaization. The examples are now quite diverse:
- In Pushkin's text "What do you need, old man" the form is used to create the effect of archaism.
- "Turn around, son." This form helps to recreate the peculiarities of the speech of the Ukrainian Cossacks.
The vocative case in Russian: the rule
Words in the vocative case in a sentence play the role of an address, so they are separated by commas in writing.
Here's an example:
- Marus, come to the performance today.
- Mom, help me wash the dishes!
- Vanyush, where is the new book?
From the above examples, it can be seen that this rule applies to any sentence - declarative, imperative or interrogative.
Often, to give the text an ironic coloring, the vocative case in Russian is used. Example: Man! When will you take up your mind and work properly!
The vocative case in Russian, examples of which were given above, is an amazing grammatical phenomenon, indicating that our language changes over time. If many centuries ago this form was commonly used in oral speech, now it is often used only in religious texts or to give a sentence an elevated color.
What do the words “son”, “older”, “father”, “grandfather”, “daughter”, “human”, “friend”, “eagle”, “prince”, “doctor”, “Veles”, “God” mean? , "God"?
The vocative case / word form (vocative / 'vocativus', 'personal form') is a special form of a name (noun) that distinguishes an object (person, phenomenon, object, entity) that is referred to in the text (sentence/phrase).
Historically, the vocative form was in the Indo-European language and its case system. It exists in Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek. But it was lost by many modern Indo-European languages, although some languages have retained it to our time, for example, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Serbian, Greek, Gypsy, Celtic, Scottish, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Georgian, Arabic, Korean and many other.
In the Old Slavic language, as in all other ancient Slavic languages, the case system did not consist of 6 cases, but of 7. The seventh case / form is the vocative (“vocative”).
Quote from the textbook of the Old Russian language:
The seventh case - vocative - served to express grammatical appeal. It had special forms only for masculine and feminine nouns in the singular, and in other cases did not differ from the nominative (for example, What, sir, do you forcibly in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign"). Often the vocative case is called not a case, but a vocative form, since it did not express the relationship of the noun to other words in the phrase. However, it could have dependent words and cannot be excluded from the declension system, which means that it is permissible to consider it as a case.
Unfortunately, this form of the word has disappeared in modern Russian. But it is often used in confidential communication, and the phrase shows a closer relationship or respect.
How to build the vocative form of words
For masculine words ending in a hard consonant, the ending "-e" was used; for those that ended in a soft consonant, "-y" was used.
For feminine words, the ending "-o" was used.
There are additional rules.
For the Old Church Slavonic language, the rules were similar, as in all Slavic languages.
In the process of inflection, the alternation of consonants took place: “k” - “h” (man - human; їzhak - їzhache), “g” - “zh” (god - God, friend - friend), "x" - "c" (Vlakh - vlas), “s” - “w” (bes - beshe, but Veles - Veles), “z” - “zh” (prince - prince).
vocative, vocative- the form of names used as an address.
In the strict sense of the word, this is not a real case. As an exclamation, the vocative always stands outside the syntactic relation to other members of the sentence and therefore can be compared with an interjection with which it has something in common (cf. such vocatives as God! Fathers! etc., with interjections like morbleu, parbleu, Potztausend, etc.).
The vocative case in the Indo-European languages either has its own forms, originating from the Indo-European parent language, or is replaced by the nominative case. The real forms of the vocative case are peculiar only to the singular number of masculine and feminine names; the neuter gender in all numbers, as well as the dual and plurals of masculine and feminine, instead of the vocative, use the nominative case. Often the vocative forms do not have a case ending, so that in them we find the pure stem of the given word. This feature, perhaps, is a remnant of ancient times and was inherited from a pre-inflectional era, when the name of an object was a pure stem, without any case endings. The vocative case in the Indo-European proto-language was distinguished by a special accentuation (the emphasis was transferred to the first syllable: oh, mother! = Skt. mâtar, Greek. μήτερ. At the bases on about And â in the vocative case, a special alternation of the last vowel of the stem is noticed: Gr. nominative Λύχο-ς, vocative λύχε; Greek homer. nominative νύμφά, vocative νύμφα, etc. i- And u- there is a full form of the stem: Skt. ave, glory. noshti; Skt. sûno, Slav. son etc.
Many languages of the Indo-European group have lost the vocative case, but some have retained:
- Greek (wolf: λύκος - λύκε),
- many Slavic -
- Ukrainian (passenger - passenger),
- Polish (professor: pan profesor - panie profesorze!),
- Czech (professor: pan profesor - pane profesore!) and others;
- some celtic -
- Irish,
- Scottish;
- Baltic -
- Latvian, etc.).
- Romanian (the only one in the Romance group) (man: om - omule!).
The vocative case also exists in some languages of other groups: Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Georgian.
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- Nominative (nominative),
- Genitive (genitive),
- Partial (partitive)
- Dative (dative),
- accusative (accusative),
- Creative (instrumentalis),
- Prepositional (prepositive);
- Local (locative, prepositional form in - at);
- vocative form(vocative)
Vocative case, vocative(lat. vocativus) is a special form of a name (most often a noun) used to identify the object being addressed. The name of this form "case" is conditional, because in a strictly grammatical sense, the vocative form is not a case.
Historically, the vocative form was an element of the Indo-European case system and existed in Latin, Sanskrit, and Ancient Greek. Although, subsequently, it was lost by many modern Indo-European languages, some languages \u200b\u200bhave retained it to our time, an example of which can be Greek, Romany, many Slavic languages \u200b\u200b(Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Serbian, etc.) and some Celtic languages \u200b\u200b(Scottish and Irish), Baltic languages (for example: Latvian and Lithuanian). Of the Romance languages, the vocative form has been preserved only in the Romanian language. It is also present in some non-Indo-European languages such as Georgian, Arabic and Korean.
Russian language
In modern Russian, it exists in the form of several archaisms, for the most part included in phraseological turns and other speech formulas ( God, Creator, God, Jesus, Christ, lord, metropolitan, doctor, older, father, brother, son, friendlier, prince, human and others). It has been lost in the modern literary language.
At the same time, sometimes "modern vocative" word forms with a zero ending of nouns of the first declension are understood as Mish, Linen, Tan, Marin, granny, mom, dad etc., that is, coinciding in form with the plural declension of the genitive case.
In the Old Russian language, nouns had the vocative case only in the singular and only masculine and feminine, but not the middle one (since the latter was a remnant of the Indo-European “inanimate gender” and, by origin, denoted only inanimate objects). The vocative case was formed as follows:
- Ancient stem in -a:
O after a hard consonant, -e after a soft one: woman! sister! soul! de vice!
- Ancient stem in -o:
E after a hard consonant, th after a soft one: old! father! horse! Igor!
- Ancient stem in -u:
W: honey! son!
- Ancient stem in -i:
I: night! the lights! God!
In addition, in the process of inflection, there was an alternation of consonants according to the first palatalization: k - h (man - human), Mrs - g (God - God, friend - friend), x - c (Vlakh - Vlas).
In other declensions, the vocative coincided with the nominative.
The vocative case is sometimes found in literature either for the purpose of archaization ( "What do you want, old man?"- Pushkin), or in quotations from Church Slavonic texts and prayers ( "King of heaven, save me..."- Lermontov), or to "Ukrainize" the speech of Ukrainian heroes ( "Turn around, son!"- Gogol; "Where are you from, man?"; “I, father, fled from Balta”- Bagritsky).
Latvian
In Latvian, the vocative case is important to memorize for the I, II, III and IV declensions.
For example:
For V, VI cl. the vocative case is formed only when the word has a diminutive suffix; when it is formed, the ending is discarded. For example: Ilze - Ilz it e-Ilz it!, zivs - zivt inš-zivt in!
For the plural, the vocative is the same as the nominative.
Ukrainian language
In the Ukrainian language, as well as in its basis - Old Russian, a separate vocative case has been preserved ( nickname vodminok or common form) - for the singular of the first, second and third declensions. In the plural, as well as in the fourth declension, it coincides with the nominative case, except for the exception - "panove", the vocative case from the plural of the word "pan" ("lord"), which corresponds to the Russian address "lord".
In the first declension, the endings -о, -е, -є, -ю are used: mum - mamo, Earth - earth, Maria - Mary, granny - granny.
In the second declension, the endings -y, -u, -e are used: father - dad, Andriy - Andriy, Dmitro - Dmitre.
In the third declension, the ending -e is used: nothing - at night. However, third declension nouns are usually inanimate and are not used in the vocative case.
Belarusian language
Usually in the modern Belarusian language (the so-called "People's Commissar" or the official version) there is no separate vocative case.
Supporters of the "classical" variant of the Belarusian language (tarashkevitsa), on the contrary, usually emphasize the vocative case as a distinctive feature of the Belarusian language from Russian.
Polish language
In Polish, the vocative case (usually referred to as the "vocative form", wołacz) has been preserved for all masculine and feminine singular nouns. With regard to nouns of the middle gender (second declension) and the plural of all genders, it completely coincides with the nominative.
The endings of singular nouns of the first declension (masculine, in the nominative case end in a consonant) depend on the final sound of the stem. If this sound is hard, then it softens and / or alternates, and the ending will be - "e, for example: chłop - chłopie, naród - narodzie, autor - autorze (Exceptions: dom - domu, syn - synu, dziad - dziadu). A similar ending is observed in words with a stem in -ec, for example chłopiec - chłopcze If the final sound of the stem is soft, back-lingual (-k, -g) or hardened (-rz, -cz, etc.) - ending -u: koń - koniu, robotnik - robotniku.
Third declension nouns (masculine -a, -o, feminine -a, -i) in the singular vocative end in -o: żona - żono, poeta - poeto.
Nouns of the fourth declension (feminine, in the nominative case end in a consonant) in the singular vocative end in -i: powieść - powieści.
Bulgarian language
Latin language
In Latin, the vocative case (Casus Vocativus) of nouns coincides with the nominative in all cases, except for one: if the noun of the second declension of the singular in I.p. ends in -us, then in the vocative case it will end in -e: I.p. barbarus (barbarian) - Sv.p. barbare. Moreover, if the stem of a noun ends in -i (that is, the noun ends in -ius), then in the vocative case it has a zero ending: I.p. Demetrius, Sv.p. Demetri.
In today's issue, we continue to answer questions sent by readers. Here is Love's letter:
“Good evening, Julia!
Maybe for us, trying to learn Serbian, the topic "Features of the vocative case" will be interesting?
I tried to arrange the names of the Serbs in addressing them in a vocative form. But some said that their name does not change when referred to.
Sincerely, Love"
Does he exist?
To answer Lyubov's question, first let's figure out what the "vocative case" is and why, when teaching the Serbian language, acquaintance with it is often superficial, why it raises so many questions and misunderstandings. The vocative case is usually called the form of nouns (proper names or common nouns), which is used when directly referring to a person or object:
Detso, go ovamo! children, come here
Love me, we will! - My love, I love you
Ladies and gentlemen! - Ladies and Gentlemen!
To begin with, it should be noted that the vocative case does not exist at all, i.e. there is a special form of the word used to refer to someone or something, but it is not a case.
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.sp-force-hide ( display: none;).sp-form ( display: block; padding: 9px; max-width: 100%; ).sp-form input ( display: inline-block; opacity: 1; visibility : visible;).sp-form .sp-form-fields-wrapper ( margin: 0 auto; width: 420px;).sp-form .sp-form-control ( background: #ffffff; border-color: #cccccc; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; font-size: 15px; padding-left: 8.75px; padding-right: 8.75px; border-radius: 4px; -moz-border-radius: 4px; -webkit- border-radius: 4px; height: 35px; width: 100%;).sp-form .sp-field label ( color: #444444; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;) .sp-form .sp-button ( border-radius: 4px; -moz-border-radius: 4px; -webkit-border-radius: 4px; background-color: #0089bf; color: #ffffff; width: auto; font -weight: bold;).sp-form .sp-button-container ( text-align: left;)The vocative case form (from the Latin word "vocativus") is used to identify the object to which the appeal is used. As a rule, this applies to nouns. It should be noted that such a form is conditionally called a case, since if we talk about grammatical semantics, then such a form is not a case at all.
This case form has its roots in the Indo-European languages. The vocative case was used in languages such as ancient Greek, Latin, and even Sanskrit. Later, in most Indo-European languages, this case ceased to exist, but some language systems still retain this case form.
These languages today include: Romani, a number of Celtic and Baltic languages, Greek and some Slavic. If we talk about the Romance group, then this form is also inherent in the modern Romanian language. The vocative case is also used today by people who speak Arabic, Georgian and Korean.
In Russian, the beginning of the death of this form dates back to about the 11th century, when a mixture of the vocative with the nominative began to be traced. Later, this form was still encountered, but it was used only with respectful appeal to people who had a high rank. A similar use was recorded in the 14th-15th centuries (in birch bark letters). For example: “Father!”, “Lord!”, “Prince!” etc.
The vocative form left colloquial speech in the middle of the 16th century. And only in the church language did an address of this kind continue to exist, for example, “Vladyko!”
Until 1918, in Russian grammars, this case was the seventh in the list of cases. Today, if such an obsolete form has been preserved, then it is used as a form of the nominative case, for example: "Vladyka Moses read a prayer service." But some come out in defense of the pure Russian language and call for the complete abandonment of the archaic form.
But in spite of everything, the obsolete form still continues to exist in some archaisms. Here we are talking about stable phraseological turns, which include such archaisms. In the literature, the vocative form is used in some cases:
For deliberate archaization of the text;
To give the Ukrainian heroes of the works a certain "Ukrainization";
When using Church Slavonic quotations in the text.
It is worth noting that the use of such a case form in the church language (it should be noted that the Church Slavonic language is the officially recognized language in which services are conducted in the Russian Orthodox Churches) on a regular basis has led to the fact that, in addition to the speech of clergy, in the speech of believers and parishioners more and more often you can hear obsolete forms of the vocative case. Such forms also often appear in new Russian texts on religious subjects.
Many hymnographic texts have been studied, from the analysis of which it follows that the use of the vocative case form is associated with traditional canons with complete disregard for grammatical norms. Moreover, the obsolete vocative form in some cases is used not only for proper names, but also for inanimate names (common nouns). For example: “image”, “warmth”, “bridge”, “protected”, “stone”.
Today, nouns related to the first declension and having a zero ending are often referred to the new vocative case. For example: “Kat”, “Mash”, “Sing”, “mom”, “grandfather”, etc. As we can see, these forms completely coincide with the forms of the genitive plural. But such a topic is still a subject of controversy for linguists, since not everyone wants to single out such a form in a separate category of grammar.
