Thread: Need help on cases

Originally Posted by tohca

У Наташи есть два маленьких сына.
У Наташи есть - accusative?
два маленьких сына - genetive?

У Наташи follows the pattern of у меня - у него - у неё

= Natasha has, I have - he has - she has

Literally the grammar form is "By / ( belonging to ) Natasha " - there is/are .

Y takes the genative case, this is why Natasha is ended with ee. Her sons are the subject of the sentence. ....They to her have.

For the rest the rule is after 1234 always use genative singular, not plural (сыновей is gen.pl ) for the noun, but use gen plural for the adjective.

Surely there must be some better grammar books ou there - Does anybody have any recommendations?

Originally Posted by tohca

Thanks it is clearer now. However your point about:
Два маленьких сына - a subject
I think this is not correct, not in the subject sentence.

У Наташи есть два маленких сына.

У Наташи = by / at Natasha.

У always takes the genitive case, it's a rule.

есть = is

Natasha is not the subject of the sentence, as grammatically she is not doing anything. She has nothing to do with the verb.

Remember in Russian, you don't say "Natasha has two small sons", you say "By Natasha there are two small sons". The construction is passive, i.e. there isn't an object of the sentence so nothing can be in the accusative case.

In Russian word order is free, so just because два маленких сына comes at the end of the sentence, it doesn't mean it's the object.

два маленьких сына is in the subject of the sentence.

У Наташи (by Natasha) есть (there are ) два маленких сына (two small sons).

два, три, четыре are followed by the genitive singular of nouns, and the genitive plural of adjectives. This is a rule, learn it, don't question it.

Два красивых (gen. plu.) мужчины (gen. sig.)
Три новых (gen. plu.) магазина (gen. sig.)

The semantic subject is not necessarily the same as the grammatical subject.

У Наташи два сына.
By Natasha [are] two son.
Notice that there is no verb in this sentence, or rather it is expressed as a null.

Do you remember the old 50s song Bei mir bist du sheyn? Same thing, but in Yiddish. By me are you great!

The numerals 2, 3, 4 have peculiarities because they used to be used with the dual number. Yes, you heard me right, Russian used to have singular, plural, and dual! all with the standard mishmash of endings. Besides the fact that we now have the gen. sg. after 2,3,4 and the gen.pl. after 5 on up, this old dual explains why you have the odd plurals like очи, глаза, where you might expect *ока and *глазы. And then there's the real remnants of двое, трое, четверо etc. instead of два, три, четыре. That is a set of words you will learn in fourth-year Russian class.

HTH. and would that be Надеюсь, что помог НЧП?

Originally Posted by chaika

The semantic subject is not necessarily the same as the grammatical subject.

У Наташи два сына.
By Natasha [are] two son.
Notice that there is no verb in this sentence, or rather it is expressed as a null.

Do you remember the old 50s song Bei mir bist du sheyn? Same thing, but in Yiddish. By me are you great!

The numerals 2, 3, 4 have peculiarities because they used to be used with the dual number. Yes, you heard me right, Russian used to have singular, plural, and dual! all with the standard mishmash of endings. Besides the fact that we now have the gen. sg. after 2,3,4 and the gen.pl. after 5 on up, this old dual explains why you have the odd plurals like очи, глаза, where you might expect *ока and *глазы. And then there's the real remnants of двое, трое, четверо etc. instead of два, три, четыре. That is a set of words you will learn in fourth-year Russian class.

HTH. and would that be Надеюсь, что помог НЧП?

English also had the dual number.

двести

Originally Posted by tohca

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Originally Posted by tohca

However your point about: Два маленьких сына - a subject
I think this is not correct, not in the subject sentence.

Er... What's a subject sentence?
Anyway, I'm 99% sure "У Наташи" is indirect object, so I don't see any other candidate for a subject, except of "sons".

The subject sentence:
У Наташи есть два маленьких сына. Natasha has two small sons. From New Penguin Ex. 10/6 #18.

I think Наташа is the subject. However, because of 'у' as in 'У Наташи' the ending has to conform to the genetive case. Nevertheless it is still the subject. If this is not the case, then I am one very confused student.

Наташа is not the subject.

The subject of the clause is the person/thing doing the action of the verb.

The verb here is есть = to be.
Есть does not refer to Natasha, it refers to the two small sons.

It might help you to understand if we put the sentence in the Subject Verb order:

Два маленьких сына есть у Наташи.
Two small sons are by Natasha.

Mandy, please see:

http://learning-russian.gramota.ru/book ... ?part4.htm

and some interesting stuff about language, in Russian though...

http://zabaznov.ru/rusyaz.html

Спасибо, мои друзей, теперь яснее.

Originally Posted by tohca

Спасибо, мои друзья, теперь яснее.

Originally Posted by TATY

Два красивых (gen. plu.) мужчины (gen. sig.)

It's grammatically correct, but sounds strange... I'd say "двое красивых мужчин".

Originally Posted by tohca

Спасибо, мои друзья, теперь яснее.

Друзья мои (as an address) is better here.

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by TATY

Два красивых (gen. plu.) мужчины (gen. sig.)

It's grammatically correct, but sounds strange... I'd say "двое красивых мужчин".

There are some rules concerning the use of "собирательные числительные" ("двое", "трое", "четверо", etc.). You can read them here or at greater length here, at the end of the page (sorry, it's in Russian).

For example, you may find out there that using these numerals with nouns "люди", "дети", "ребята", "лица" ("persons") is a must, and using them with "мужчины" is a stylistically prefered variant.

Originally Posted by chaika

The numerals 2, 3, 4 have peculiarities because they used to be used with the dual number. Yes, you heard me right, Russian used to have singular, plural, and dual! all with the standard mishmash of endings.

Just out of interest, can you explain what a dual number is ? ... Obviously not singular and not plural or is it both at the same time? I know it's probably not that relevant to today's Russian.

Между прочим, спосибо, что Оlga дала итернетсайты р яыка

Originally Posted by Mandy

Just out of interest, can you explain what a dual number is ? ... Obviously not singular and not plural or is it both at the same time?

It's plural, but for a denotation objects which are two in number (ears, eyes, knees...).

Originally Posted by Mandy

Между прочим, спасибо, что Оlga дала ссылки на итернет-сайты по изучению русского языка

Originally Posted by Mandy

Just out of interest, can you explain what a dual number is ? ...

Counting I (шагА, рядА, часА, шарА) - used for amounts two, three, four, twenty-two, twenty-three, etc. Similar to Genitive Singular (шАга, рЯда, чАса, шАра) except for the accented syllable in several common words.(c)

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by TATY

Два красивых (gen. plu.) мужчины (gen. sig.)

It's grammatically correct, but sounds strange... I'd say "двое красивых мужчин".

There are some rules concerning the use of "собирательные числительные" ("двое", "трое", "четверо", etc.). You can read them here or at greater length here, at the end of the page (sorry, it's in Russian).

For example, you may find out there that using these numerals with nouns "люди", "дети", "ребята", "лица" ("persons") is a must, and using them with "мужчины" is a stylistically prefered variant.

For those using The New Penguin Russian Course, you'll find information about the collective numerals in Section 22.10.

BTW, what font is that first website using? It came up completely garbled, like I see sometimes if I try to load a page with Chinese characters, but this is the first time I've ever gotten that from a Russian site.

Originally Posted by Grogs

BTW, what font is that first website using? It came up completely garbled, like I see sometimes if I try to load a page with Chinese characters, but this is the first time I've ever gotten that from a Russian site.

Hm, try changing encoding in your browser... This site uses standard Cyrillic Windows-1251.

No, it's dual, as in when you are talking about two things. The dual had its own endings that were not the same as the singular or the plural. For example, here are four words, for type, horse, year, and sea,

Nom./Acc./Vocative рода, коня, лѣтѣ, мори
Gen./Locative роду, коню, лѣту, морю
Dat./Instr. родома, конема, лѣтома, морема

From Wiki.


The seas are drying up.
If you are talking about several seas you would say моря, but if you meant only two you would say мори.

Aren't you glad you don't have to memorize a whole nother set of endings (adjectives and verbs had endings for the dual as well).

The dual is a common IndoEuropean grammatical feature found in all IE languages, at least in their older forms -- I don't know whether it is still alive anywhere, but I wouldn't be surprised. My Serbocroatian and Bulgarian is failing me here.

Originally Posted by chaika

No, it's dual, as in when you are talking about two things. The dual had its own endings that were not the same as the singular or the plural. For example, here are four words, for type, horse, year, and sea,

Nom./Acc./Vocative рода, коня, лѣтѣ, мори
Gen./Locative роду, коню, лѣту, морю
Dat./Instr. родома, конема, лѣтома, морема

From Wiki.


The seas are drying up.
If you are talking about several seas you would say моря, but if you meant only two you would say мори.

Aren't you glad you don't have to memorize a whole nother set of endings (adjectives and verbs had endings for the dual as well).

The dual is a common IndoEuropean grammatical feature found in all IE languages, at least in their older forms -- I don't know whether it is still alive anywhere, but I wouldn't be surprised. My Serbocroatian and Bulgarian is failing me here.

Slovenian is the only Slavic language that retains a full dual number.

Remnants of the dual number exist in Ukrainian more than Russian. E.g.очима is the instrumental plural of eyes (nom. sig. око), [the normal, regular instrumental plural ending is -ами, like in Russian] which is similar to the:
Dat./Instr. родома, конема, лѣтома, морема chaika posted.

Also, I sort of mentioned this before, in Russian:
сто
двести (две сти) - сти was the dual number of сто.
триста - ста is the genitive singular of сто.
пятьсот - сот is the genitive plural of сто.