The Russian language has six cases that express certain roles of nouns in sentences: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional. One of the oblique cases in Russian is the dative case. It occupies a special place compared to other indirect cases, as it is opposed to them by having its own semantics.
The dative case indicates the object to which the action is directed, the addressee (for example, write to the sister, help parents), the object (for example, rejoice at the birth, belong to the child), the object of the state and properties (for example, fidelity to what was said, devotion to the owner). It expresses the attitude that determines the purpose of the object (hymn to labor), is used in impersonal sentences to convey the state of the subject (the child was unwell, he wanted to sleep). The dative case answers the question (you can sometimes mentally substitute the word “give”) “to whom?”, “What?”, “Where?”, “Where?”.
The dative case, compared to other indirect cases, can be used with fewer primitive prepositions ("to" and "to"). In the conditional position, the dative case inin Russian with the preposition "to" can perform the function of an informative-filling form (refer to the most famous sayings), have an objective meaning (respect for parents), have a definitive meaning (by place: approach the door; by time: warming by noon; by purpose and purpose: food for dinner).
In the non-verbal position, the dative case with the preposition "to" has the meaning of a predicative feature (ability to sing), an objective meaning in determination (something bright is missing from this dress), attributive and adverbial meanings of place and time (to warmer in the evening). When using the preposition "by" in a prepositional position, the dative case has the following meanings: object (knock on wood, miss your brother), attributive with the meanings of place (to walk along the road), time (sleep at night), reason (to say by mistake), targets (call on verification). In the non-verbal position, these are the values of the predicative sign (sickness for the parental home), the subjective meaning (everyone is left with a book), and the defining meaning (the store is closed on Sundays).
The dative case is combined with such non-primitive prepositions: in contrast to (what was said), thanks to (mother), contrary to (himself), following (company), contrary to (fate), in relation to (professor), according to (contract), in accordance with (goals), judging by (quantity). When declensing nouns, it is especially worth paying attention to the dative case, the endings in which depend on the type of declension of the noun itself. Nouns Ideclensions (masculine and feminine that end in "-a", "-ya") in the dative case endings have "-e", "-i" in the singular (for example, mom, wall, history, aunt) and " -am", "-yam" - in the plural (for example, mothers, uncles).
Nouns of the second declension (masculine and neuter with a zero ending and ending in "-o") singular endings have "-u", "-u" (for example, window, table) and plural - "-" am", "-yam" (for example, windows, tables) in the dative case. The nouns of the third declension (ending in a soft sign) in the dative case of the ending have “-i” in the singular (for example, by night, on fabric) and “-am”, “-yam” in the plural (for example, at night, on fabrics).
