(no subject)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Thank you all so much for your help with gift ideas! Unfortunately, I'll actually be living with a different family now (the woman is a cook, and I have no idea about the husband), but most of the ideas were general enough that it definitely gave me something to work with! Thanks again!

My next question is a bit of a random one, and I wouldn't be surprised if no one knew if there was any information on it available.

I'm wondering if there are any statistics available on the frequency of use of each of the cases, in a VERY general sense.

For example, let's say the Nominative case occurs 30% of the time, the genitive 20%, accusative and dative 15% each, prepositional and instrumental 10% each. Something of that sort ^_^

I know this would obviously be close to impossible to measure accurate (if at all), and I really only want it to satisfy my own curiosity, so if no one can find anything, I'll understand ^_~

Thank you all!

(P.S. 2 days until I leave for Russia! Soooo excited!!!)

Comments

[toh-rus.livejournal.com]

well, it is easy to find out.
just pick up some russian book and start to count :)
i think it will depends on genre of the book and author.
also it depends if you look only in dialogs or take whole text.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Please don't take it as an offense, but counting the frequency of use of the cases in Russian language seems to be as informative as counting the frequency of the use of the digits in a computer program. The digit 4 is used 15 per cent more frequent than the digit 6 in [N] (insert your favorite computer program here). Then what? :)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Not offensive at all! I agree that it's pretty useless information... and yet that knowledge alone is not enough to satiate my thirty curiosity ^_~ It was really just one of those things that I was wondering and hoping someone might have the information handy ^_^

[definite.livejournal.com]

In fact, linguists do not agree with your point. They have already counted the statistics of case usage and are discussing it even in LJ. :)

In Russian: http://mitrius.livejournal.com/484722.html
In English: http://community.livejournal.com/terra_linguarum/280215.html

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Oh well, people who work with the National Corpus :) The following is stricly IMHO - but for me this great body of work (http://www.ruscorpora.ru/) always looked as informative as counting the angels on a needle's tip (which was regarded as a very serious scientific work just five hundred years ago!) :))

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This was exactly what I was looking for!

I do have one question though: In the Russian one, there was something I didn't recognize at all: ""2Предл". 1% -"

What exactly is that? And why does it only occur in the singular and not in the plural?

Thanks again!

[definite.livejournal.com]

"2Предл" is so called "2nd Prepositional case". In Russian there are more than 6 cases, though they never say so at school and to foreign students to make things simpler. This 2nd Prep. case is always used with prepositions (that's why it is called so), however, endings of nouns do not follows the pattern of the 1st ("standard") Prepositional case.

For example, if we take the word "берег" (bank, shore), it can have two forms in Prep. case:
1st Prep.: "(я думаю) о береге" / "(I'm thinking) about the shore"
2nd Prep.: "(я сижу) на берегу" / "(I'm sitting) on the shore"

There are also the 2nd Genitive case ("выпить чая - выпить чаю" / "to drink tea"), the 2nd Accusative case ("пойти в солдаты" / "to become a soldier") and the Vocative (Звательный) case ("Отче наш" / "Our Father", the prayer). All these cases are rather rare (about 1% of usage), they have been inherited from Ancient Russian and Old Slavonic. All of them (except Voc.) are used in the singular only, their plural forms are the same as the plural of their 1st ("standard") counterparts. That is why, btw, they are called "2nd" and do not have names of their own.

All this stuff is taught at Russian Filology Departments at univercities, and sometimes it's a real shock even for Russian students to find out that the system of 6 cases, which was ultimate truth for them during many years at school, is not so simple.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

2nd Prepositional is also sometimes called locative (локатив) - "в снегу", "во тьме".
And there is two vocatives - old vocative, inherited from Church Slavonic (отче! человече! сыне! Боже!) and new vocative, or short vocative, which is not only an original Russian feature, but quite a recent evolvement (дядь! мам! Машк! Петь!).

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

You just shattered all my dreams!

Honestly though, I saw this sort of thing coming... we're reviewing the genitive now and they said there were sometimes an "u" ending for masculine partitives, but not very often, and if we use the regular genitive instead it would be fine. They've also mentioned a "sub-group" of masculine prepositionals that take "u" as well, so I was thinking perhaps it was another case altogether.

Thank you!