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The Slovak language, like most Slavic languages and Latin, is an inflected language, meaning that the endings (and sometimes also the stems) of most words (nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals) change depending on the given combination of the grammatical gender, the grammatical number and the grammatical case of the particular word in the particular sentence: a) Gender: There are four grammatical genders in Slovak language: animate masculine, inanimate masculine, feminine and neuter. In popular description, the first two genders are often covered under common masculine gender. Almost all Slovak nouns and adjectives, as well as some pronouns and numerals can be categorized into one of these genders. Exceptions are pluralia tantum (''Vianoce'' - Christmas) and words that are drifting into other gender and are currently in the neuter (''knieža'' - Fürst), and masculine animals that are animate in singular and mostly inanimate in plural. b) Number: Like in English, Slovak has singular and plural nouns. Morphological traces of the ancient Indo-European dual number remain, but are not a separate grammar category anymore. A particular case is associated with three distinct groups of numerals associated with nouns: * 1 (one) - nominative case singular, for example ''jeden dub'' (one oak) * 2, 3, 4 - nominative case plural, for example ''dva duby'' (two oaks) * 0, 5 and more - genitive case plural, for example ''päť dubov'' (five () oaks) c) Morphological cases: * the nominative case (N) = the subject; the basic form of the word; answers the question Who / What; for example father (sg), fathers (pl) * the genitive case (G) = * * (1) in English "of x" or "x's" ; answers the questions Of whom / Of what; for example father's (sg. ), fathers' (pl); * * (2) is used after the prepositions ''bez'' (without), ''blízko'' (near), ''do'' (to, into), ''doprostred'' (in(to) the middle of), ''mimo'' (out(side) of), ''miesto'' (instead of), ''okolo'' (around), ''od'' (from), ''podľa'' (according to), ''pomimo'' (next to, around), ''pomocou'' (by means of), ''pozdĺž'' (along), ''u'' (at), ''uprostred'' (in the middle of), ''vedľa'' (next to, adjacent to), vnútri (in, inside of), ''vyše'' (above), z (out of, from), *''za'' (behind) * the dative case (D) = * *(1) in English "to x"; answers the question To whom / To what; for example to the father (sg), to the fathers (pl); * *(2) is used after the prepositions ''k'' (to, towards), ''kvôli'' (because of), ''napriek'' (in spite of), ''naproti'' (facing, opposing), ''oproti'' ((facing, opposing)), ''voči'' (facing, against) * the accusative case (A) = * *(1) the direct object; answers the question Whom / What; for example (see the ) father (sg), fathers (pl); * *(2) is used after the prepositions: ''cez''(through), *''medzi'' (between, among), *''na'' (on, at), *''nad'' (above), *''po'' (after, for), *''o'' (about, on), *''pod'' (under), ''pre'' (for, because of), *''pred'' (before, in front of), *''v'' (in, on), ''vzhľadom na'' (regarding, concerning), *''za'' (behind, for) * the locative case (L) = used after the prepositions *''na'' (on), *''po'' (after), *''o'' (about, on), ''pri'' (at, next to), *''v'' (in, on) *the instrumental case (I) = * *(1) in English "by (means of) x"; answers the question By (means of) whom / By (means of) what; for example () by the father; * *(2) is used after the prepositions: *''medzi'' (between, among), *''nad'' (above), *''pod,'' (under), *''pred'' (before, in front of), ''s'' (with), *''za'' (behind, at the back of) * The (syntactic) vocative case (V) is not morphologically marked anymore in modern Slovak (unlike in modern Czech). Today the (syntactic) vocative is realised by the (morphological) nominative case, just like in English, German and many other languages. However, the ancient vocative declensions have survived (mostly in conserved, archaic words or language, e.g. in fairy tales, folklore, or in an ironic sense) in some words, some examples: ''syn'' (son) - V: ''synku'', ''brat'' (brother) - V: ''bratu'', ''bratku''), ''chlapec'' (boy, knave) - V:''chlapče''), ''švagor'' (brother-in-law) - V: ''švagre'' or N, ''kmotor'' (godparent) - V:''kmotre'' or N), ''chlap'' (man, male) - V: ''chlape'', ''priateľ'' (friend) V: ''priateľu'' or N, ''pán'' (mister, lord) - V: ''pane'' or N), ''majster'' (master artist) - V: ''majstre'' or N), ''boh'' (god) - V: ''bože'', ''mama'' (mum, mother) - V: ''mamo'', ''mami'') and was retrofitted (with the help of Czech influence) to some more words, like ''šéf'' (chief, boss) - V: ''šéfe''. There is a dispute among some Slovak linguists whether to include vocative into grammar categories but with declension (mostly) equal to the nominative, or to unify it with nominative case category. But since the morphological vocative is used only for the above restricted number of words and in addition only in some contexts, it is surely an exaggeration to say that the (morphological) vocative is still in the Slovak language. Note however that there is no dispute that the syntactic vocative is present in Slovak (and in every other language). Slovak schools have been teaching for at least 30 years that there is no grammar category of vocative anymore in use, and since 1990 they have not mentioned the vocative at all. The Slovak Encyclopedia of Linguistics (1993) explicitly says: the vocative is nowadays replaced by the nominative. However, the Slovak National Corpus explicitly includes vocative as a separate case in the morphological analysis and corpus tagset. There is a also different form of morphological vocative emerging in spoken language, used with some familiar forms of personal names (Paľo - Pali, Jano, Jana - Jani, Zuza - Zuzi) and familiar forms of kinship words, such as ''mama - mami'' (mum, mother), ''oco - oci'' (dad, father), ''tata, tato - tati'' (dad, daddy), ''baba, babka - babi'' (gran, granny, grandmother). This usage is very similar to the "new Russian vocative" (Маш', Петь', мам'), but it is not accepted into standardised codified language. This could have developed out of proper names that were formed using the Hungarian diminutive suffix -i and that are used in spoken Slovak, and therefore is often homonymous with nominative (semi-)diminutive forms of the names. Other possibility is influence of Czech (from common bllingual TV during Czechoslovakia) where Jani/Zuzi as well as mami/tati/babi is part of Common Czech. == Legend== * "ends in" in the following refers to the ending in the nominative singular (N sg), unless stated differently * Soft consonants are: all consonants with the diacritic mark ˇ (for example š, ľ) + c, dz, j. Hard and neutral consonants are all the remaining consonants * For masculine nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals it is necessary to distinguish between animate and inanimate ones. An animate noun is a person (for example father, Peter) and an inanimate noun is any other noun (for example table, fear, democracy). Animals are usually viewed as persons only in sg. For the animate nouns, the G is identical with the A (both in sg. and in pl.), and for the inanimate nouns, the N is identical with the A (both in sg. and in pl. ). Animate/Inanimate adjectives, pronouns and numerals are those referring to an animate/inanimate noun respectively (for example in "my father" the "my" is animate, because father is animate). * sg = singular, pl = plural * N, G, D, A, L, I are abbreviations of grammatical cases (see above) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Slovak declension」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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