pády

Pády is the term used in Czech and Slovak linguistics to refer to the grammatical cases of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. The pády constitute a system of inflection that marks the syntactic and semantic role of a word in a sentence. Because the endings change to reflect pády, the basic word order in these languages can be relatively flexible without losing meaning.

In Czech and Slovak, there are seven grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, and instrumental. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and numerals typically decline for these pády, with endings that vary according to gender, number, and declension class. Each pády expresses different functions: nominative marks the subject, accusative the direct object, genitive denotes possession or quantity, dative indicates the indirect object, instrumental expresses means or manner, locative is used with certain prepositions to indicate location or topic, and vocative is used for direct address.

Beyond descriptive grammar, the concept of pády is essential to understanding and learning Czech and Slovak. They influence syntax, agreement with adjectives and numerals, and the overall flexibility of sentence structure. The term also appears in linguistic descriptions of other inflected languages and in discussions of language pedagogy and grammar reference materials.