Old Church Slavonic is an inflectional language with moderately complex verbal and nominal systems.
Nouns
The nominal case category distinguishes 7 cases for nouns, 6 for pronouns and adjectives (no vocative):
+ Nominal cases Abbr. Case N Nominative G Genitive D Dative A Accusative V Vocative L Locative I Instrumental
Noun syntax Number Old Church Slavonic has three numbers: singular, dual, and plural.
The dual, and not the plural, is used for nouns that are two. Nouns found in natural pairs, such as eyes, ears, and hands, are only found rarely in the plural. Due to its consistent use in all Old Church Slavonic texts, it appears to have been a living element of the language. The dual affects adjectives and verbs in addition to nouns.
Nominative case The nominative is used for the subject of a sentence, but it is only distinguished from the accusative in the masculine plural and the feminine singular, excluding the -declension. Unlike in most modern Slavic languages, the nominative is also typically used for the complement of verbs meaning "to be". It is also used with verbs of naming and calling, but the accusative is also used for these verbs.
Accusative case The accusative case is used for the direct object of a sentence with transitive verbs. For the masculine declension, the accusative singular for "an adult, healthy, free male person" is often shown by the use of the endings of the genitive singular. The accusative is also used with nouns for a duration of time and a measure of distance. Old Church Slavonic makes more frequent use of the accusative case after negated infinitives and participles than other Slavic languages, and it is unclear if this is an innovation of Old Church Slavonic or an archaism.
Genitive case When used with nouns, the genitive frequently denotes the possessor of another noun or "the whole of which the other noun is a part", among other meanings. It is also used frequently with the numerals after five, and with certain pronouns, in the form of the partitive genitive.
The genitive may be used as the complement of the 'verb to' to denote possession, and it replaces the nominative as the complement of 'to be' in impersonal sentences if the verb is negated. It is also used for the object of negated infinitives or participles, and for the objects of certain verbs. It is used after some adjectives, and for objects of comparison after adjectives in the comparative. When recording a date, the month is typically written in the genitive. Unlike other Slavic languages, there is no genitive of time. Some scholar hypothesize that some morphemes conveying this case originated form a merger with the old Indoeuropean ablative.
Dative case The dative case is used for the indirect object of a sentence. In addition, it is infrequently used to denote the goal of a motion (its original meaning), but this is more typically shown by using the preposition () followed by the dative. It is also used for the objects of verbs of commanding, obeying, favoring, giving, saying, showing, and promising, as well as for verbs meaning "to seem", and "to be similar to". Additionally, it can be used with nouns and adjectives, particularly in impersonal constructions. It can also be used for a "dative of advantage", showing for whom an action was performed, and as an "ethic dative" that shows "emphasis or emotional involvement". Moreover, the dative can also be used to show possession, typically showing a close relationship between the possessor and the thing possessed, in which form it can occur after the verb "to be" or adjoining the noun possessed. The dative is also used for the "dative absolute" construction, a type of subordinate clause, in which a participle, often with a noun subject, are both placed in the dative.
Instrumental case The instrumental case can show the "instrument" by which an action was performed, mark "a part of the body or state of mind accompanying the action", and denote the manner in which something was performed. The instrumental can be used to denote measure following a comparison, how many times an action was performed with numerals, an instrumental of place showing over or through what a movement occurs, to denote the time of an action, to mean "in respect to" when use with verbs, adjectives, or other nouns, and to denote the cause of verb, among other meanings. It is also used to denote the agent in passive constructions.
The instrumental is also found rarely for the complement of the verb "to be". It is not found in this meaning in the oldest Old Church Slavonic texts, the Gospels, and only occasionally in later texts.
Locative case The locative case is used to denote the location in which something occurs. It very rarely occurs without a preceding preposition. Without a preposition, it is only used with place names, as a "locative of place". Due to more frequent use of locatives of place in Old Russian and Old Czech, it is possible that this rarity is caused by Old Church Slavonic following Greek syntax. It is also used, again rarely, for the "locative of time" to denote "in" a certain time. The locative is also used as the object of a small number of verbs; as this construction is extremely rare in other Slavic languages it is most likely an archaic form.
Vocative case The vocative is used instead of the nominative when a noun is used in isolation as an address or exclamation. Due to this case's consistent use in translations from Greek, in which the vocative is often identical to the nominative, it is clear that it was productive part of the spoken language.
-stems
+ Masculine gender ("town") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are generally masculines ending in in the nominative singular (). The only exception are the nouns in that inflect as u-stem masculines.
Sometimes (but not yet obligatorily, in contrast to later Slavic languages), in the accusative singular, the beginnings of a difference between an animate and inanimate subgender can be seen, as the genitive may occasionally be used instead of the accusative for animate objects ( beside ).
Nouns with the suffix (), for example , also belong to this declension class in the singular, but in the plural they lose the suffix and conform to the consonantal paradigm ( , , , , , , ).
+ Neuter gender ("wine") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are neuters ending in in the nominative singular (). The only exception are the few neuters that are inflected as -stems.
-stems
+ Masculine gender ("knife") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are masculines ending in preceded by a palatal in the nominative singular ().
This paradigm encompasses nouns such as () that don't appear to be ending in a palatal, but are in fact underlyingly combinations like and so undergo this declension ( , ).
Nouns ending in agentive suffixes and also belong to this class (: , , ..., : , , ...).
+ Neuter gender ("sea") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
The -stem declension class encompasses neuters ending in ().
-stems
+ Feminine gender ("hand/arm") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are feminines ending in preceded by a hard, non-palatal consonant ().
Also belonging to this paradigm are the rare masculines ending in ().
-stems
+ Feminine gender ("soul") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Noun belonging to this declension class are feminines ending in preceded by a soft, palatal consonant ().
It includes the -stem subclass, which includes both feminines () and masculines (сѫдии, балии) ending in . Other than in the nominative singular, they do not differ from other -stems.
This paradigm also encompasses feminines ending in () and (), and also masculines ending in preceded by a palatal ().
-stems
+ Masculine gender ("guest") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are masculines ending in preceded by a hard, non-palatal consonant (). The only exception are a limited number of such nouns belonging to the -stem paradigm.
+ Feminine gender ("bone") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to the i-stem feminine declension are feminines ending in in the nominative singular ().
The only exception is the noun () which undergoes -stem (-stem) declension.
-stems
+ Masculine gender ("house") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension are a rather small group of masculines: .
-stems
+ Feminine gender – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to the -stem declension (also known as - declension, or -stem declension) are: (this last form is attested in Psalterium Sinaiticum; older sources list the accusative form кръвь as a lemma).
-stems
+ Masculine gender ("stone") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are the following masculines: .
+ Neuter gender ("tribe") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are the following neuters: .
-stems
+ Neuter gender ("sky/heaven") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
Nouns belonging to this declension class are the following neuters: , as well as the dual forms of .
-stems
+ Neuter gender ("calf") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
The -stem (also known as -stem) paradigm encompasses neuters denoting a young of an animal or human: , etc.
-stems
+ Feminine gender ("mother") – Singular Dual Plural N G D A V L I
r-stem feminines are the nouns and .
Pronouns Personal pronouns +Declension of the personal pronouns Singular 1st person 2nd person Reflexive Nominative — Genitive Dative , , , Accusative Locative Instrumental Dual 1st person 2nd person Reflexive Nominative — Genitive Dative , , , Accusative Locative Instrumental Plural 1st person 2nd person Reflexive Nominative — Genitive Dative , , , Accusative Locative Instrumental
+ Declension of the third personal pronoun Singular Masculine Neuter Feminine Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative , Locative Instrumental Dual Masculine Neuter Feminine Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Locative Instrumental Plural Masculine Neuter Feminine Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Locative Instrumental
Like the first- and second-person pronouns, the third-person pronoun is commonly used only in oblique cases. Nominative singular forms are not attested in the OCS corpus, and are reconstructed. In the East South Slavic dialectal area where OCS originated, a suppletive nominative singular stem of the demonstrative ('that') is used, elsewhere ('that one there, yon'), or very rarely ('this').
By attaching the enclitic particle to the forms of *i one obtains the relative pronoun: ('he who'), ('the (female) one to whom'), ('the two of whom'), etc.
When following prepositions, these pronouns take a prothetic n-, hence ('to them') instead of *imъ, ('on him'), etc. This is a remnant of final -m/n in the PIE prepositions *kom (cf. Latin cum, Sanskrit kám), *sm̥ (cf. Sanskrit sám) and *h₁n̥ that yielded the OCS prepositions , , and and then spread analogically to all the other prepositions.
The reflexive pronoun has only singular oblique forms, which is the state of affairs inherited from PIE *swé. The reflexive pronoun refers to the subject as a whole, and can be translated as English -self (in 'myself', 'yourself', 'himself', etc.).
Relative pronoun Singular Masculine Neuter Feminine Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Locative Instrumental Dual Masculine Neuter Feminine Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Locative Instrumental Plural Masculine Neuter Feminine Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Locative Instrumental