A4 Cases and Prepositions

Cases

There are 6 cases:

nominative (N) accusative (A) genitive (G)

dative/locative (DL) instrumental (I) vocative (V)

Dative and locative have different stress for few nouns, but this can be ignored.

These are common ways cases are used without prepositions:

Nominative case (the dictionary form, the subject case):

subjects	Ana jede. Ana is eating.
with the verb biti (je² +) be	Ona je gladna. She’s hungry.
with some other verbs	Ona se zove Ana. Her name is Ana. Postajem star. I’m getting old.

• calling someone: Dođi, Ivane! Come, Ivan!

Primary spatial relations (‘in’, ‘on’)

destination	location	origin
u¨ + A	u¨ + DL	iz¨ + G

Nouns using this scheme are:

• closed spaces: soba room, auto car, kutija box, peć f furnace, čekaonica waiting room...

• literally inside something: šuma forest, grad city, voda water, pjesma song, more sea...

• institutions*: vrtić kindergarden, škola school, bolnica hospital, vojska army...

• written material: knjiga book, pismo letter, članak article, novine f pl newspaper...

• conditions: problem problem, žurba hurry, dug debt...

• surfaces: zid wall, pod floor, stol table, papir paper, ekran computer screen

• places on top of things: grana branch, stablo tree, ograda fence, stolica chair

• things perceived as surfaces: nebo sky, svijet world, slika picture, film movie

• stations and terminals: stanica station, kolodvor terminal, aerodrom airport

• floors above the ground floor: drugi kat second floor, tavan attic

• cardinal directions: sjever north, jug south, istok east, zapad west

• characteristic points*: vrh top, dno bottom, početak beginning, kraj end, rub edge

• activities: posao work, sastanak meeting, odmor vacation, rođendan birthday party, ispit exam, zabava party, put way (i.e. travelling), nogomet football

• food and drink as activities: ručak lunch, večera dinner/supper, kava coffee, pivo beer

• places as metaphors: more seaside, selo countryside

• exposure to weather conditions: sunce sun, vjetar wind, kiša rain, snijeg snow

• in broadcast and similar: radio radio, televizija TV, internet internet

• being in schedules: raspored schedule, program TV/radio schedule

* exceptions: fakultet university, faculty uses na-s/sa, unlike other institutions sredina middle (also: središte) and centar centre use u-iz, unlike other characteristic points

(The rest is coming soon...)

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