The Category of Case in the First Grammar Books of the Bulgarian Language

The subject of research in this article are three grammar books of the Bulgarian language from the Bulgarian revival – “Bolgarska grammatika” by Neofit Rilski, “Slavenobolgarskoe detovodstvo” by Neofit Bozveli and Emanuil Vaskidovich and “Grammatika slaveno-bolgarska” by Hristaki Pavlovich. The purpose of the study is to trace how the case category is described in them. The initial hypothesis is that in all three grammar books there is a strong influence of Russian grammar books from the 18th and 19th centuries. This is proven in the course of the research, and when describing the case, the authors follow the language patterns in Greek, Church Slavonic and Russian. This classification of cases strongly influenced further grammatical works until the end of the 19th century.