The Seven-Case System in Serbian

Serbian features a robust synthetic *Seven-Case Declension System (Padežni sistem)*. Every noun, adjective, pronoun, and numeral changes its inflectional ending depending on grammatical role and prepositional government:

1. 1. Nominativ (Ko? Šta? / Who? What?): Grammatical subject of the clause (Student čita knjigu). 2. 2. Genitiv (Koga? Čega? / Of whom? Of what?): Expresses possession, separation (od, do, iz, bez), partitive quantities (malo vode), and paucal counting (dva studenta). 3. 3. Dativ (Kome? Čemu? / To whom? To what?): Marks the indirect recipient, direction towards a goal (k / ka), and personal feelings (Meni se sviđa). 4. 4. Akuzativ (Koga? Šta? / Whom? What?): Direct object of transitive verbs, and directional movement into a place (Idem u grad). 5. 5. Vokativ (Hej! / Direct Address): A distinct vocative form used for calling or addressing people (Brate!, Profesore!, Ana!). 6. 6. Instrumental (S kim? Čime? / With whom? By what means?): Tool/instrument (pišem olovkom), companionship (sa prijateljem), and spatial location (pod, nad, pred, za, među). 7. 7. Lokativ (O kome? O čemu? / About whom? Where?): Used strictly with prepositions (u, na, o, po, pri) to denote static location (Bavim se u Beogradu) and topic of discussion (Pričamo o filmu).

Note: In modern Serbian, Dativ and Lokativ share identical morphological endings (and also share the plural ending -ima/-ama with Instrumental), but differ in syntactic function and prepositional usage.