1. Declension Revision
Lithuanian nouns,
adjectives, pronouns and numerals inflect for case. Cases help determine
the role a word plays in a certain context.
In English, nouns and
adjectives no longer have grammatical cases. The only words retaining some
remainders of case distinctions are personal pronouns and the word “who”:
I
– me, he – him, she – her, we – us, they – them, who – whom.
{ the words “you” and “it” have the same form in both cases }
The lack of case forms is
compensated for by strict word order and extensive usage of
prepositions. Consider the following examples:
Ann
loves Tom. ~ Tom loves Ann.
Ann
gave Tom a book. ~ Tom gave Ann a book.
Ann
gave a book to Tom. ~ Tom gave a book to Ann.
Tom
is writing with a pen.
The
smell of cigarette smoke bothers her.
In the Lithuanian, the order
of words is much more flexible than it is in English. Words usually have case
endings that clearly determine their roles in a sentence. There are seven (7)
cases in modern standard Lithuanian:
1. Vardininkas
– the Nominative
Case. It answers the question “kas?” – “who? what?”
2. Kilmininkas
– the Genitive
Case. It answers the question “kieno? ko?” – “whose? of whom? of what?”
3. Naudininkas
– the Dative
Case. It answers the question “kam?” – “to/for whom? to/for what?”
4. Galininkas
– the Accusative
Case. It answers the question “ką?” – “whom? what?”
5. Įnagininkas
– the
Instrumental Case. It answers the question “kuo?” – “with whom? with what?”
6. Vietininkas
– the Locative
Case. It answers the questions “kur? kame?” – “where? in whom? in what?”
7. Šauksmininkas
– the Vocative
Case. It is used to address people and sometimes animals and inanimate objects.
As you can see, Lithuanian
doesn’t make a distinction between animate and inanimate objects. There’s only
one question word – “kas”. English has “who” and “what”.
