Thread: Declension of nouns

I've attempted to assemble a table of declined nouns of various types just to get a handle on the majority of nouns out there.

Would you grammarians take a look a see if they are correct and, if not, offer suggestions/corrections?

I'd appreciate it.

Click here for the document in Word 2003 format.

Thanks!

First of all the order of cases is wrong. It should be:
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Instrumental
Prepositional

Now here are the mistakes I found:

словаря - singular accusative should be словарь
дамы - plural accus should be дам
дамамы - plural instr should be дамами
станцию - sing inst should be станцией
лошадями - plural inst is ok but it also can be лошадьми (both forms are correct)
слова - sing accus should be слово
морей - plural dat should be морям
морям - plural gen should be морей
желание - sing prep should be желании
желанями - plural inst should be желаниями
желанях - plur prep should be желаниях
платьей - plural dat should be платьям
платьям - plural gen should be платьев

13 mistakes, that is unpleasant... not a good number

Whew... I've got tired a bit Hopefully, I was attentive enough.

Originally Posted by Vadim84

First of all the order of cases is wrong. It should be:
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Instrumental
Prepositional

Interesting that you point that out. Russian is the only language I've found that lists the cases in that order. All others I've studies list them as N, A, D, G, etc. Of course after Genative, the cases tend to vary from language to language.

As far as the unfortunately numbered list of errors, they have been corrected (and the corrected version can be found at the same link). I thought that learning the singular declensions was difficult! At any rate, at least it's not Hungarian (17 cases).

Thanks again; this will help quite a lot.

I've found biblical Greek typically as N, G, D, A.

Originally Posted by challenger

I've found biblical Greek typically as N, G, D, A.

Yep, you're right!

Greek is cased as Nominative, Genative, Dative, Accusative, and Vocative.

Come to think of it, Latin is cased as Nominative, Genative, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, and Vocative.

I totally retract my previous comments!

It doesn't make the greatest sense to me, however, because one generally deals with accusative as direct object (я читаю мою интересную новую русскую книгу.) long before genative.

Does anyone have any idea what reason there might be for listing the cases in a certain order?

I think the order depends on your native language. In my language the order in the books is presented either N A G D I L/P or N G D A I L/P, but it doesn't really matter as long as each case is correct when you speak or write.

Originally Posted by Spiderkat

I think the order depends on your native language. In my language the order in the books is presented either N A G D I L/P or N G D A I L/P, but it doesn't really matter as long as each case is correct when you speak or write.

Wow, in a different order it could be D A P L I N G, if they had only organized it that way, it would be so much easier to remember the order!

Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie

Wow, in a different order it could be D A P L I N G, if they had only organized it that way, it would be so much easier to remember the order!

Actually L and P are for the same case so you would have to find a new mnemonic word.

You went to a lot of work, given that those charts can be found at the back of any first-year grammar. One attaboy for you!

If I were you, though, I would stick to the standard, accepted sequence of cases, which has been in use for 300 years. Take it on faith, like writing "whose" instead of "hooz". =:^) Also it is "Genitive" not "genative".

Incidentally, speaking of random sequencing, in your sentence
я читаю мою интересную новую русскую книгу.
your sequence of adjectives is incorrect. (also -- should be свою). Compare it with:
I am reading my interesting new Russian book vs.
I am reading my new interesting Russian book.

just sign me,
NGDAIP-L

(don't forget the locative, as in в сад

Originally Posted by Spiderkat

I think the order depends on your native language. In my language the order in the books is presented either N A G D I L/P or N G D A I L/P, but it doesn't really matter as long as each case is correct when you speak or write.

Agreed. I suspect that the order in which the cases appear is most intuitive when it is as it was when you were first introduced to the case concept.

Cases are not taught in English, even though English still retains artifacts of such a structure--remnants of the highly inflected Anglo-Saxon. The same remnants to which Modern German still tightly clings.

I've studied the structures of many many languages and found no 'rule' that points to the order of listed cases, but I've been surprised in the past...!

What say you? Is Russian *your* mother tongue, Spiderkat?

Originally Posted by crux_online

...

What say you? Is Russian *your* mother tongue, Spiderkat?

Nope, French.

And what bloody difference does it make which order the cases are metioned? Especially when they can be taught in different orders. At my college my Native Russian teacher taught it NPAGDI

Originally Posted by chaika

You went to a lot of work, given that those charts can be found at the back of any first-year grammar. One attaboy for you!

I'll take that attaboy by the way, with this explanation:

You can feed me all the paradigms you want out of first year grammar books, but I don't don't learn very well by spoonfeeding. If I want to come away with anything other than a headache, I have to immerse myself in it

Originally Posted by chaika

If I were you, though, I would stick to the standard, accepted sequence of cases, which has been in use for 300 years. Take it on faith, like writing "whose" instead of "hooz". =:^) Also it is "Genitive" not "genative".

It's only in use for some languages; as I pointed out earlier, other languages use other orders. In addition, NADGIP is more intuitive to me that NGDAIP for the reasons I lay out earlier in this thread.

Plus, I'm going to place the blame for not capitalizing the cases squarely on the shoulders of the Darvocet I took last night for my crumbling spine.

Originally Posted by chaika

Incidentally, speaking of random sequencing, in your sentence
я читаю мою интересную новую русскую книгу.
your sequence of adjectives is incorrect. (also -- should be свою). Compare it with:
I am reading my interesting new Russian book vs.
I am reading my new interesting Russian book.

No difference in English, though the first is more natural. Using "new interesting" requires a glottal stop to separate the words (unless you taper the 'w' to near silence); if the 'w' is slurred into 'interesting' the pattern of stresses will be such that 'new' sounds as if it is part of the next word. And since Americans are intolerant of even the slightest hint of non-nativity and accents, this may raise eyebrows.

There might be an area where NEW precedes INTERESTING natively, but I haven't been there.

It would be interesting to test this hypothesis.

[quote=chaika](don't forget the locative, as in в сад

A. The instrumental plural of "дама" is indeed "дамами" .

B. The standard order for Russians is NGDAIP. There's a catchy little rhyme to remember it, but I don't remember the rhyme.

C. W plus I will not result in a glottal stop. W is a semivowel glide, it's much easier to elide the two sounds into one "Wi," if anything is going to happen. The glottal stop rarely occurs in English. In American English, the only instance I can think of is the - in "Uh-Oh." Other dialects have it more, such as Cockney English. And there is a standard order of adjectives in English, but there's some leeway; Russian might not necessarily be so.

D. Locative=Prepositional, in general; the special prepositional case ending in -у isn't only the locative, as a technicality any time you use it for static location, it's the locative.

E. The ю in "чаю" is actually the genitive. Some words, mostly masculine food words, have a special partitive genitive used to say "some." Other words that do this include сыр and шоколад. The ending is always stressed. So when you say "Я хочу ещё чаю," that literally means "I want more/still of tea."

Other than that, nicely done; cases are hard to lay out by yourself. A good start.

Originally Posted by token_287

W plus I will not result in a glottal stop. W is a semivowel glide, it's much easier to elide the two sounds into one "Wi," if anything is going to happen. The glottal stop rarely occurs in English. In American English, the only instance I can think of is the - in "Uh-Oh." Other dialects have it more, such as Cockney English. And there is a standard order of adjectives in English, but there's some leeway; Russian might not necessarily be so.

'W' is indeed a semivowel and could glide into the 'i' of interesting without any mechanical problem. My main focus was that if that were to occur, the word 'new' would almost certainly--and to a great extent--be de-emphasized. With it having been so diluted, the stress pattern coupled with the slur between the words would probably have the effect of making 'new' sound like part of the word 'interesting' which seems terribly awkward.

Additionally, I mentioned also:

Originally Posted by crux_online

(unless you taper the 'w' to near silence)

What are your thoughts about this aspect of it?

Glottal stops are rare in American English (I can't speak for the various British dialects) because of the strong proclivities toward economy of effort, rather than because of any rule. The fact is that we'd liaison 'uh-oh' if we could (I'm certain many do).

Originally Posted by token_287

Other than that, nicely done; cases are hard to lay out by yourself. A good start.

Thanks for the comment, but you needn't look far to see whose input I've consumed!

On a personal note:

I'm almost loathe to have these types of discussions online because meanings and intentions can sometimes be taken personally and I don't want that to happen.

Everyone please note that I come to the discussion with my own set of observations and ideas, and posit them with the belief that they are correctly held. But I simultaneously hold that my strongest characteristic academically is my willingness to alter or dispose of a premise in favor of stronger evidence. But I might need convincing; don't mistake my sometimes terse responses for a dismissal of an argument.

Since 'a new interesting book' is entirely unnatural English, what you might do with the 'w' and what effect that may have on the sentence seems a tiny bit academic, no?

Originally Posted by scotcher

Since 'a new interesting book' is entirely unnatural English, what you might do with the 'w' and what effect that may have on the sentence seems a tiny bit academic, no?

Yes. But don't you find academic discussion have their own value?

I was using 'academic' as a euphemism

Originally Posted by scotcher

I was using 'academic' as a euphemism

I totally missed it!

Originally Posted by token_287

The standard order for Russians is NGDAIP. There's a catchy little rhyme to remember it, but I don't remember the rhyme.

Here is that rhyme in Russian:
Иван Родил Девчонку, Велел Тащить Пеленки

Именительный
Родительный
Дательный
Винительный
Творительный
Предложный