Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 January 10

= January 10 =

Order of cases in Slavic languages
It appears that there are two ways to list the grammatical cases in Slavic languages when it comes to declension tables in grammars and learning materials. The first four (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative) seem to be inherited from the Latin tradition and their order stays the same throughout all Slavic languages. Then things start to diverge. While Polish, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian prefer the order instrumental–locative/prepositional–vocative, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene opted for vocative–locative–instrumental. (Of course, not every language still uses the vocative case.) Can these two arrangements of cases be traced back to specific early works and authors? Which languages set the examples followed by others? --147.142.61.119 (talk) 08:57, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Vocative being fifth may also be influenced by Latin. In the 1533 Náměsťská mluvnice, the first substantial Czech grammar, the locative and instrumental aren't mentioned at all - it just goes through all the Latin cases and describes how to translate them into Czech. Vocative is fifth and "ablative" (which is translated as od + genitive) sixth. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 09:30, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Some Church Slavonic grammars had litterally Greek and Slavic forms side by side, including Omegas for Slavic plural genitives. Locative/prepositional and instrumental have a rough corrispondence in the Latin ablative, but no clear one in Greek, guess moving vocative to the end may have to do with the fact that it's not always recognizable (or that it is/was? listed last/fifth in Greek). If the list you provided is reliable, it corresponds to some cultural/linguistic distinction between Slavic languages (Czech and Slovak are considered nord/western Slavic, but share some common traits with southern Slavic languages, more recent cultural ties are probably more relevant in this case). It's a tough question and the difference may have a newer and relatively arbitrary origin. Not sure when Latin vocative was (for the first time?) listed after the accusative. 176.247.151.184 (talk) 02:14, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I found this linguistic blog post about the arbitrariness of the conventional order of cases in Polish. The excerpt from an article published in 1967 (about halfway through the post) is of particular interest, showing how different grammarians of Polish used different ways of ordering cases. The table uses abbreviations of Polish case names:
 * mian. – mianownik – nominative
 * biern.– biernik – accusative
 * dop. – dopełniacz – genitive
 * cel. – celownik – dative
 * woł. – wołacz – vocative
 * narz. – narzędnik – instrumental
 * miejsc. – miejscownik – locative
 * — Kpalion(talk) 11:24, 11 January 2022 (UTC)