Intl. J. Humanities (200 8) Vol. 1 5 ( 2): (1 – 9 ) Case Assignment in Russian and Persian Mireyla Ahmadi 1 Received: 23/8/2006 Accept: 10/11/2007 Abstract Russian language, with regard to its gramma r, is a language with its ow n special complexities , hardly found in other languages. Although langua ges are different from each other, they have some similarities as well. The Iranian learner, while learning Russian, analyzes the sentences using patterns similar to his/ her native language patterns. Occasionally, such native patterns cause the learner to make glaring mistakes. Verb, in Russian language, is a word that grammatically conducts a noun and its modifiers ( падеж ). The difficulty , which the learners encounter is the lack of a complete agreement of verb conduction. That is to say, it is possible f or a verb in Downloaded from eijh.modares.ac.ir at 10:46 IRST on Tuesday September 28th 2021 Persian language to conduct its dependent word in a particular manner, which the very same verb, in Russian language , might conduct its defendant word in a different manner . It is even possible that the verb conduction by the same verb in the two language s might occur by means of two totally different prepositions. In other to avoid such errors, it seems necessary to make the learners aware of their occurrences at the very initial steps of language learning. Keywords: Russian language , Persian language , verb, grammatical case (manner) , mother tongue, student. 1. Assistant Professor , Department Russian Language, Tarbiat Modares university, E -mail: [email protected] 1 Case Assignment in Russian and Persian Introduction Russian is one of the languages whose Man has been engaged in t he learning of new teaching / learning have gained momentum in la nguages since the time immemorial , as the the past 15 years in Iran. Th e collapse of Soviet acquisition of a new language implies Union in 1990s and the fall of dividing lines familiarity with a new culture, history, customs, between socialist countries created new traditions and also the possibility of opportunities for more contact between Russia establishing communication with other people. and other nations. Iran as a neighboring Though language learning can be set off by country , was no exception to this rule and after different objectives or motivations, however, the disintegr ation of Soviet Union, the there are still numerous problems in the way of commercial, political and cultural ties and the language learners. Most of thes e problems are exchange of students became very common created by the patterns imposed by the learners’ among newly created Central Asian republics mother tongue. In other words, during L1 and Iran. The new republics enjoyed their own acquisition, each person stores a set of national languages; nonetheless, it seems that information and clichés belonging exclusively Russ ian is going to linger on for quite a long to his/ her mother tongue. As a person sets out time in these countries. to learn a new l anguage, particularly the first Grammatically speaking, Russian language is L2, s/he unconsciously evaluates and regarded as one of the most complex languages of comprehends the L2 in accordance with the the world , a fact which makes its acquisition as a fixed mental clichés and patterns of his/her second language a formidable task. Sad to sa y, mother tongue. Each language possesses unique despite the necessity of comparative works Downloaded from eijh.modares.ac.ir at 10:46 IRST on Tuesday September 28th 2021 features of its own , which are different from between Russian and Persian, few studies have other la nguages. The lack of complete semantic been done in this field. concordance, presence of unfamiliar grammatical Russian possesses a very complicated structures, sociolinguistic differences in the grammar and one of the issues which creates a encoding of messages etc are only some of these lot of difficulties for Iranian students is the case differences to name a few. sy stem and case assignment of the following Based on the above assertion, the noun phrases. comparative s tudies seem to be a common mechanism to reveal some of the obstacles on Discussion of the Problem the way of language learners, and manage to The case system (упр авление глагола ) is of produce worthwhile results. great significance in Russian grammar and is 2 Ahmadi M. one of the issues , which poses a formidable task The verbs “ гoвopит ь - c `азать ” meaning for foreign L2 learners. It should b e noted that “to say and to talk” assign a dative case to its case is not limited to verbs and other categories oblique: such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and numbers Я говорила Ни cе. should agree with the following structures in “man be Nina goftam” one of the complements , which is generally (I to Nina told) known as Case Assignment. This paper deals “I told Nina” only with ver bal case system which refers to the Here the word “Nina” has become a n assigning of an appropriate case ( па деж ) to the oblique (dative case) , which is indicated by the following NP or PP. For example the verb preposition “be” in Persian. (видеть – увидеть ) “to see” assigns an The difficulty that Iranian learners face in accusative case to its oblique . this regard concerns the lack of agreement between the cases in Persian and Russian ; in Вчера я увидела свою старую преподавательницу . Dirooz man ostade ghadimiyam ra didam. other words, a particular verb in Persian may (I saw my former professor yesterday) assign a special case to its oblique whereas in Russian the same verb assigns a different case Here the phrase “свою старую or the verb may require different prepositions преподавательницу ” ( my former professor ) for their oblique. has been a ssigned an accusative case by the As an example, the verbs “поздрав лять – verb (видеть – увидеть ) its counterpart in поздравить ” meaning “T abrik Goftan – To Downloaded from eijh.modares.ac.ir at 10:46 IRST on Tuesday September 28th 2021 Persian is manifested by the use of accusative congratulate ” require an accusative case as marker of {ra}. “ви cител ьны й падеж ” The verb “идти ” (to go) assigns a dative Я поздравляю Вас . (man shoma ra tabrik migoyam)٭ case to its oblique : (I you + accusative marker, congratulate) Я y шeл c Виктором . I congratulate you Man ba Victor raftam. This verb requires th e preposition of “be” in (I went with Victor.) Persian to produce a dative case whereas in In this example the word Victor “B иктор” Russian , as we saw , an accusative case is has been assigned a dative case by the verb “to required “man be shoma tabrik migoyam” go” which is manifested by its relevant marker “c” meaning “with”. 3 Case Assignment in Russian and Persian The verb “ Верить – поверить ” meaning “ nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, to believe in” assigns an accusative case to its instrumental and prepositional cases . One of the complement by th e use of preposition “ B” as cases acts as nominative and the other five “ви cитель ны й падеж ”: cases are oblique. Я веру в вас . There are four cases in modern Persian namely *(man dar shoma eteghad daram) nominative, oblique , genitive and vocative. (man be shoma eteghad daram) The nominative case of Persian corresponds I believe in you with the “именительньґй падеж ” in Russian. The verb “eteghad dashtan” in Persian “ to The oblique case is of two types: accusative believe in ” requires a dative case , which is case , which agrees with “ винительный падеж ” indicated by the prepositi on “be”: in Russian and dative case , which based on the (man be shoma eteghad daram) preposition used in Persian may agree with one of (I believe in you) the following cases in Russian: ( дательный Therefore, there are certain set of verbs in падеж , творительный падеж , предлож ный Persian and Russian , which require different падеж ” and sometimes even with “ родительный cases or prepositions and consequently the падеж ”. language learners as interference from their The genitive cases of Persian , which are of 5 mother tongue habit s, translate the patterns of different categories (possessi ve , exclusi ve , their L1 into Russian producing ungrammatical simile, metaphoric and expressi ve ) correspond and even unintelligible sentences. with родительный падеж ” in Russian. Due to the same reason, in order to produce What we emphasize here is that though Downloaded from eijh.modares.ac.ir at 10:46 IRST on Tuesday September 28th 2021 meaningful and grammatical sentences cases are present in both languages, yet they comprehensible to both readers and listeners, cause difficulty for language learners due to the learner not only should be familiar with the their different distributions a fact which creates meaning, spelling, usage, and verbs problems for L2 learners. conjugation, but should also know the case The cases of Persian are indicated by the “ra” assignment of different verbs. marker, vocative marker, the genitive morpheme Based on their role in a sentence , the words “e” and prepositions while case is shown in can have any of the 6 different cases in Russian Russian by the inflectional endings ( с`лон ение ) (all nouns, adjective s, numbers, pronouns and and prepositions. The same issue also cause s participles) these cases are indicated by the grammatical differences between the two addition of certain endings which include: languages leading to linguistic errors by learners. h Ahmadi M. As an example, let us compare and contrast (dokhtar ) the gir l the different cases of the word girl “ dokhtar “ (e dokhtar) the girl of with its Russian counterpart “ девоч`а” : (be dokhtar ) to the girl (Ba dokhtar) with the girl Она девоч `а. (u dokhtar ast) (she girl is ) she is a girl Отец девоч `и об этом с`азал .