Ukrainian grammar is complex and characterised by a high degree of inflection; moreover, it has a relatively free word order, although the dominant arrangement is subject–verb–object (SVO).
Ukrainian has seven grammatical cases and two numbers for its nominal declension and two aspects, three tenses, three moods, and two voices for its verbal conjugation.
Other traces of the dual can be found when referring to objects of which are commonly in pairs: eyes, shoulders, ears, e.g. плечима (from плечі).
Like other Slavic languages and Latin, Ukrainian does not have articles, so a word's gender is mainly determined with its ending.
This declension consists of solely neuter nouns that are derived from Common Slavic *ę.
Examples are the words пальто ("coat") and вино ("wine"), which belong to the neuter gender.
These adjectives are derived from the noun лице, describing types of faces, for example, білолиций.
The comparative form is created by dropping ий and adding the ending -(і)ший (less frequently -жчий and -щий).
The first (мій) and second person (твій) singular possessive pronouns are declined similarly as can be seen from the table below.
The third person plural possessive pronoun, їхній, is declined as a normal soft adjective.
Nouns that must agree with a number ending in 2, 3, or 4 are in the nominative plural, but retain the stress of the dual, that is the genitive singular.
An interesting feature is that the past tense is actually made to agree in gender with the subject, for it is the participle in an originally periphrastic perfect formed with the present of быти (modern: бути) /bɨtɪ~bɯtɪ/, "to be".
Most verbs come in pairs, one with imperfective or continuous connotation, the other with perfective or completed, usually formed with a (prepositional) prefix, but occasionally using a different root.
The present tense of the verb бути, "to be", today normally has the form, є used for all persons and numbers.
In the present tense, the verb бути is often omitted (or replaced by a dash "—" in writing), for example, "Мій брат — вчитель" ("My brother is a teacher").
For reflexive verbs, in the third person singular, the ending has its historical -ть restored before the participle -ся/-сь is affixed.
The ending -ать is used after the sibilants ж, ш, щ, or ч. Ukrainian inherited from Indo-European through Common Slavic, the following three athematic verbs.
Class 5 verbs take the first set of endings, but undergo an archaic form of iotation, so that дь becomes ж (rather than дж), for example, їжте < їд+ьте.
Class 3 verbs with stems in к, г, and с undergo iotation (as do their present conjugation).
Most commonly this participle is used as gerund with the form -чи with a meaning approaching the equivalent English construction with -ing.
An example of the gerund is знавши, while a common (dialectical) adjective would be the word бувший (third person singular masculine: був).
Verbs in -ува́ти or -юва́ти (those whose ending is stressed) will replace the у by о and ю by ь/йо (ь if a consonant precedes or й if a vowel), for example, мальо́ваний from малюва́ти.
Note that the verb молоти has the second form мелений, since it derives from *melti in Common Slavonic.
The verbal noun is created by taking the past passive participle, dropping ий, doubling the consonant if permitted by the rules under -ĭjV, and adding a я.
Ukrainian has a rich set of prefixes, both prepositional and adverbial in nature, as well as diminutive, augmentative, and frequentative suffixes.
вхід entrance хід walk, move виходити to exit, to go out ходити to walk, to go захід Закарпаття sunset (in this context) Zakarpattia (region) хід walk, move обов'язковий mandatory from в'язати to bind, to knit продати to sell дати to give додати to add дати to give розходити to diverge ходити to walk, to go першочерговий urgent черговий regular (1) The multitude of forms in Ukrainian for the Common Slavic *sŭ(n) (*съ(н)) and *jǐz- is a result of the fact that their s and z could assimilate (or dissimilate) with the root's initial consonants.
The following are examples of all the given possibilities:[6] In Ukrainian, the normal form is з (роздивлятись, розмова, бездіяти) except before к, п, т, ф and х where the normal form is с (спати, стояти; exception: без-, e.g.
Common Ukrainian subordinations (complementizers) are: The basic word order, both in conversation and the written language, is subject–verb–object (SVO).
However, because the relations are marked by inflexion, considerable latitude in word order is allowed, and all the permutations can be used.
The imperfective form denotes an action that is taking place in the present, is ongoing, is repetitive, or is habitual.