Case: case
Case is an inflectional feature of nouns and other parts of speech (adjectives, numerals) that mark agreement with nouns. It is also valency feature of prepositions (saying that the preposition requires its argument to be in that case).
Case helps specify the role of the noun phrase in the sentence. For example, the nominative and accusative cases often distinguish subject and object of the verb, while in fixed-word-order languages these functions would be distinguished merely by the positions of the nouns in the sentence.
Ukrainian morphology distinguishes seven cases: Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Ins, Loc, and Voc (this ordering is fixed in the grammar).
Examples
- singular nominative мама “mother”, genitive мами , dative мамі, accusative маму, vocative мамо, locative мамі, instrumental мамою
- plural nominative мами, genitive мам, dative мамам, accusative мам, vocative мами, locative мамах, instrumental мамами
The descriptions of the individual case values below include semantic hints about the prototypical meaning of the case. Bear in mind that quite often a case will be used for a meaning that is totally unrelated to the meaning mentioned here. Valency of verbs, adpositions and other words will determine that the noun phrase must be in a particular grammatical case to fill a particular valency slot (semantic role).
Nom: nominative
The base form of the noun, also used as citation form (lemma). This is the word form used for subjects of clauses.
Examples
- Наташа спить. “Natasha sleeps.”
- Іван любить Наташу. “Ivan loves Natasha.”
Gen: genitive
Prototypical meaning of genitive is that the noun phrase somehow belongs to its governor; it would often be translated by the English preposition of.
Note that despite considerable semantic overlap, the genitive case is not the same as the feature of possessivity (Poss). Possessivity is a lexical feature, i.e. it applies to lemma and its whole paradigm. Genitive is a feature of just a subset of word forms of the lemma. Semantics of possessivity is much more clearly defined while the genitive (as many other cases) may be required in situations that have nothing to do with possessing.
Examples
- Київ – столиця України. “Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine.”
Dat: dative
This is the word form often used for indirect objects of verbs.
Examples
- Я подарувала м’яч своєму братові. “I gave my brother a ball as a present.” (своєму братові “my brother” is dative and м’яч “ball” is accusative.)
Acc: accusative
Perhaps the second most widely spread morphological case. This is the word form most frequently used for direct objects of verbs.
Examples
- Іван любить Наташу. “Ivan loves Natasha.”
Ins: instrumental
The role from which the name of the instrumental case is derived is that the noun is used as instrument to do something (as in писати ручкою “to write using a pen”). Many other meanings are possible, for example the instrumental is required by the preposition з “with” and thus it includes the meaning expressed in other languages by the comitative case.
In Ukrainian the instrumental is also used for the agent-object in passive constructions (cf. the English preposition by).
Examples
- Цей закон було схвалено владою. “This bill has been approved by the government.” (Passive example)
Loc: locative
The locative case often expresses location in space or time, which gave it its name. As elsewhere, non-locational meanings also exist and they are not rare. On the other hand, some location roles may be expressed using other cases (e.g. because those cases are required by a preposition).
This is the only Ukrainian case that is used exclusively in combination with prepositions.
Examples
- В липні я був у Швеції. “In July I was in Sweden.”
- Вона при надії. “She is expecting a baby.” Literally: “*She is at hope.” (Non-locational non-temporal example)
Voc: vocative
The vocative case is a special form of noun used to address someone. Thus it predominantly appears with animate nouns (see the feature of Animacy). Nevertheless this is not a grammatical restriction and inanimate things can be addressed as well.
Examples
- Що думаєш, Олю? “What do you think, Olya?”
- Зоре моя вечірняя, зійди над горою […] “My evening star, rise over the mountain […]” (poetic language). Technically only the noun Зоре “star” has a different, vocative form, but the possessive pronoun моя “my” and the adjective вечірняя “evening”, which agree with the noun in gender and number, are treated as vocatives as well.
Case in other languages: [am] [apu] [arr] [bej] [bg] [cs] [el] [eme] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [fi] [ga] [gn] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [ka] [kmr] [koi] [kpv] [ky] [mdf] [myu] [myv] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj]