Features
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Animacy: animacy
Similarly to Gender, animacy is a lexical feature of nouns and inflectional feature of other parts of speech that mark agreement with nouns. It is independent of gender, therefore it is encoded separately in most tagsets (e.g. all the Multext-East tagsets).
Anim: animate
Human beings, animals, fictional characters, names of professions etc. are all animate. Even nouns that are normally inanimate can be inflected as animate if they are personified. For instance, consider a children’s story about cars where cars live and talk as people; then the cars may become and be inflected as animates.
Examples of animate nouns:
- чоловік “man”, кіт “cat”, дитина “child”, комаха “insect”
Inan: inanimate
Nouns that are not animate are inanimate.
Examples of inanimate nouns:
- рік “year”, закон “law”, хустка “kerchief”, озеро “lake”, мільйон “million”
Adjectives and determiners in the accusative case have different fors depending on animacy of the nouns they modify.
For certain Ukrainian word groups it is also possible to use alternative animate flections for inanimate nouns and inanimate flections for animate nouns. This phenomenon is only possible for the accusative case. Sometimes, although not in all situations, this switch (inanimisation or animisation) has a colloquial stylistic effect. Adjectives and determiners agree with such forms. A special layered feature Animacy[gram] is used to record such uses. See ref. for examples.
Aspect: aspect
Aspect is a feature that specifies duration of the action in time, whether the action has been completed etc.
In Ukrainian, aspect is considered a lexical feature of verbs. While many imperfective verbs have morphologically related perfective counterparts, it is not a regular system and the two verbs are represented by different lemmas.
Imp: imperfect aspect
The action took / takes / will take some time span and there is no information whether and when it was / will be completed.
Examples
- пекти “to bake” (Imp); пік хліб “he baked / was baking a bread”
Perf: perfect aspect
The action has been / will have been completed. Since there is emphasis on one point on the time scale (the point of completion), this aspect does not work well with the present tense. Ukrainian morphology can create present forms of perfective verbs but these actually have a future meaning.
Examples
- спекти “to bake” (Perf); спік хліб “he baked / has baked a bread”
There is a small group of verbs, usually borrowed, of the Latin origin, which have the same form for both the perfect and imperfect aspect. It is only possible (although not always) to discern the aspect on the basis of the context they are used in. Verbs that carry two aspectual meanings are called biaspectual in the academic Ukrainian grammar.
Even though originally Ukrainian naturalised such verbs by adding a relevant prefix to the perfective variant, thus creating two lemmas instead of one borrowed verb, there was a period in the language development when prefixed forms were consistently eradicated in prescriptive grammars. Therefore presently one can find prefixed and prefixless perfective forms of the same verbs in different texts, e.g. абонувати “to subscribe” (aspect unclear without a wider context, see examples below) and заабонувати “to subscribe” (perfect).
Examples
- абонувати “to subscribe” (Imp use); Ігор абонував газету протягом трьох останніх років “Igor has been subscribing to the newspaper for the recent three years”
- абонувати “to subscribe” (Perf use); Ігор абонував газету вчора по дорозі додому “Igor subscribed to the newspaper yesterday on his way home”
If the context is sufficient to define the aspect such verbs are used in, the respective one is assigned. In the cases when the context does not suffice (as, for example, in the sentence above used without a temporal expression), according to UD conventions, no value for aspect is assigned.
Case: case
Case is an inflectional feature of nouns and other parts of speech (adjectives, numerals) that mark agreement with nouns. It is also valency feature of prepositions (saying that the preposition requires its argument to be in that case).
Case helps specify the role of the noun phrase in the sentence. For example, the nominative and accusative cases often distinguish subject and object of the verb, while in fixed-word-order languages these functions would be distinguished merely by the positions of the nouns in the sentence.
Ukrainian morphology distinguishes seven cases: Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Ins, Loc, and Voc (this ordering is fixed in the grammar).
Examples
- singular nominative мама “mother”, genitive мами , dative мамі, accusative маму, vocative мамо, locative мамі, instrumental мамою
- plural nominative мами, genitive мам, dative мамам, accusative мам, vocative мами, locative мамах, instrumental мамами
The descriptions of the individual case values below include semantic hints about the prototypical meaning of the case. Bear in mind that quite often a case will be used for a meaning that is totally unrelated to the meaning mentioned here. Valency of verbs, adpositions and other words will determine that the noun phrase must be in a particular grammatical case to fill a particular valency slot (semantic role).
Nom: nominative
The base form of the noun, also used as citation form (lemma). This is the word form used for subjects of clauses.
Gen: genitive
Prototypical meaning of genitive is that the noun phrase somehow belongs to its governor; it would often be translated by the English preposition of.
Note that despite considerable semantic overlap, the genitive case is not the same as the feature of possessivity (Poss). Possessivity is a lexical feature, i.e. it applies to lemma and its whole paradigm. Genitive is a feature of just a subset of word forms of the lemma. Semantics of possessivity is much more clearly defined while the genitive (as many other cases) may be required in situations that have nothing to do with possessing.
Examples
- Київ – столиця України. “Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine.”
Dat: dative
This is the word form often used for indirect objects of verbs.
Examples
- Я подарувала м’яч своєму братові. “I gave my brother a ball as a present.” (своєму братові “my brother” is dative and м’яч “ball” is accusative.)
Acc: accusative
Perhaps the second most widely spread morphological case. This is the word form most frequently used for direct objects of verbs.
Ins: instrumental
The role from which the name of the instrumental case is derived is that the noun is used as instrument to do something (as in писати ручкою “to write using a pen”). Many other meanings are possible, for example the instrumental is required by the preposition з “with” and thus it includes the meaning expressed in other languages by the comitative case.
In Ukrainian the instrumental is also used for the agent-object in passive constructions (cf. the English preposition by).
Examples
- Цей закон було схвалено владою. “This bill has been approved by the government.” (Passive example)
Loc: locative
The locative case often expresses location in space or time, which gave it its name. As elsewhere, non-locational meanings also exist and they are not rare. On the other hand, some location roles may be expressed using other cases (e.g. because those cases are required by a preposition).
This is the only Ukrainian case that is used exclusively in combination with prepositions.
Examples
- В липні я був у Швеції. “In July I was in Sweden.”
- Вона при надії. “She is expecting a baby.” Literally: “*She is at hope.” (Non-locational non-temporal example)
Voc: vocative
The vocative case is a special form of noun used to address someone. Thus it predominantly appears with animate nouns (see the feature of Animacy). Nevertheless this is not a grammatical restriction and inanimate things can be addressed as well.
Examples
- Що думаєш, Олю? “What do you think, Olya?”
- Зоре моя вечірняя, зійди над горою […] “My evening star, rise over the mountain […]” (poetic language). Technically only the noun Зоре “star” has a different, vocative form, but the possessive pronoun моя “my” and the adjective вечірняя “evening”, which agree with the noun in gender and number, are treated as vocatives as well.
Definite: definiteness or state
This document is a placeholder for the language-specific documentation
for Definite.
Degree: degree of comparison
Degree of comparison is inflectional feature of some adjectives and adverbs.
Pos: positive, first degree
This is the base form that merely states a quality of something, without comparing it to qualities of others. Note that although this degree is traditionally called “positive”, negative properties can be compared, too.
Examples
- молода людина “young person”
Cmp: comparative, second degree
The quality of one object is compared to the same quality of another object.
Examples
- Цей чоловік молодший, ніж тамтой. “This man is younger than that one.”
Sup: superlative, third degree
The quality of one object is compared to the same quality of all other objects within a set.
Examples
- Це наймолодша людина в нашій команді. “This is the youngest person in our team”
Abs: absolute superlative
The quality of the given object is so strong that there is hardly any other object exceeding it. The quality is not actually compared to any particular set of objects but rather to the abilities of its carriers. In Ukrainian this degree is most often used with adverbs.
Examples
- якнайвище, щонайкраще “very high”, “the best possible / as good as one can”
Gender: gender
Gender is a lexical feature of nouns and inflectional feature of other parts of speech (adjectives, verbs) that mark agreement with nouns. There are three values of gender: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
See also the related feature of Animacy.
Masc: masculine gender
Nouns denoting male persons are masculine. Other nouns may be also grammatically masculine, without any relation to sex.
Examples
- добродій “gentleman”
- замок “castle”
- чоловік “man”
- пристрій “machine”
- голова “chairman”
- суддя “judge”
Note that the last two nouns above can also function as feminine (technically these are two different lemmas), depending on whether these functions designate men or women, with exactly the same (feminine in this case) morphological paradigm and agreeing with adjectivals and verbal forms in the feminine form, respectively. (Historically they are feminine too, with the typical endings -а or -я .)
Fem: feminine gender
Nouns denoting female persons are feminine. Other nouns may be also grammatically feminine, without any relation to sex.
Examples
- жінка “woman”
- троянда “rose”
- пісня “song”
- кістка “bone”
Neut: neuter gender
This third gender is for nouns that are neither masculine nor feminine (grammatically). Nouns whose nominative suffix is -о or -е (including a large group of deverbative nouns denoting actions) are usually neuter.
Examples
- місто “city”
- море “sea”
- курча “chicken”
- ставлення “attitude”
Mood: mood
Mood is a feature that expresses modality and subclassifies finite verb forms.
Ind: indicative
The indicative can be considered the default mood. A verb in indicative merely states that something happens, has happened or will happen, without adding any attitude of the speaker.
Examples
- Ти навчаєшся в університеті. “You study at the university.”
Imp: imperative
The speaker uses imperative to order or ask the addressee to do the action of the verb.
Ukrainian verbs (except for modal verbs) have imperative forms of the second person singular, first person plural and second person plural.
Examples
- Навчайся в університеті! “Study
Singat the university!” - Навчайтеся в університеті! “Study
Plurat the university!” - Навчаймося в університеті! “Let us study at the university!”
Negative: whether the word can be or is negated
In Ukrainian, negation is done using the particle не which is most often written as a separate word. In some cases, depending on the part of speech and orthographical conventions, it becomes a bound morpheme, mostly with adjectives, adverbs, and some deverbative nouns. Negation is usually unmarked. However, there are several exceptions for verbs (see examples below) where it is used. The affirmative variants, which are prevailing, are not marked for negation at all.
Note that Negative=Neg is not the same thing as PronType=Neg. For pronouns and other pronominal parts of speech there is no such binary opposition as for verbs and adjectives. (There is no such thing as “affirmative pronoun”.)
Neg: negative
Examples
Short forms of some instantenious verbs
- нічичирк the short verb form from чичиркнути “not to produce a single sound”
- нітелень the short verb form from теленькнути “to be silent, not to speak”
Negative existentials
- немає the negative impersonal verb form from мати “there are no / there are not” (It is important to differentiate this form from a similar 3rd person finite verb negative expression не має “(he/she/it) does not have”, where negation is expressed by an independent particle. Their meanings and syntactic behaviour differ.)
- чорт-мало the negative impersonal verb form from чортмати “there were no / there were not” (colloquial expression)
NumType: numeral type
Ukrainian has a complex system of numerals.
From the syntactic point of view, some numtypes behave like adjectives and some behave like adverbs. They are tagged uk-pos/ADJ and
uk-pos/ADV respectively. Thus the NumType feature applies to several different parts of speech:
- uk-pos/NUM: cardinal numerals
- uk-pos/DET: quantifiers
- uk-pos/ADJ: adjectival ordinal and some generic numerals
- uk-pos/ADV: adverbial (e.g. ordinal and multiplicative) numerals
Card: cardinal number or corresponding interrogative / relative / indefinite / demonstrative word
Examples
- один, два, три “one, two, three”
- скільки “how many”
- кілька “several”
- стільки “so many”
Ord: ordinal number
This is a subtype of adjective or adverb.
Adjectival examples
- перший “first”; другий “second”, третій “third”
Adverbial examples
- вперше “for the first time”; вдруге “for the second time”; втретє “for the third time”
Mult: multiplicative numeral
This is a subtype of adverb.
Examples
- двічі “twice”; тричі “three times”
Frac: fraction
This is a subtype of cardinal numbers. It may denote a fraction or just the denominator of the fraction.
Examples
- пів / половина “half”; третина “one third”; чверть / четвертина “quarter”
Sets: number of sets of things
Morphologically distinct class of numerals used to count sets of things, or nouns that are pluralia tantum.
Examples
- двоє / троє штанів / черевиків “two / three [pairs of] pants / shoes”; as opposed to normal cardinal numbers: дві / три штатини “two / three half-pants”; два / три черевика “two / three shoes”. Note that this form is also used with animate nouns.
Gen: generic numeral
A numeral that is neither of the above.
Examples
- четверо, п’ятеро, десятеро (specific forms of four, five, ten; they are morphologically, syntactically and stylistically distinct from the default forms чотири, п’ять, десять)
- подвійний, потрійний (twofold, threefold; these are morphologically and syntactically adjectives)
- вдвоє, втроє, вчетверо (twofold, threefold, fourfold; these are morphologically and syntactically adverbs)
Number: number
Number is an inflectional feature of nouns and other parts of speech (adjectives, verbs) that mark agreement with nouns.
Sing: singular number
A singular noun denotes one person, animal or thing.
Examples
- старий чоловік прийшов “an old man came”
- молода жінка прийшла “a young woman came”
- мале курча “a small chicken came”
Plur: plural number
A plural noun denotes several persons, animals or things.
Examples
- старі чоловіки (жінки) прийшли “old men (women) came”
Ptan: plurale tantum
Some nouns appear only in the plural form even though they denote one thing (semantic singular); some tagsets mark this distinction. Grammatically they behave like plurals, so Plur is obviously the back-off value here; however, the non-existence of singular form sometimes means that the gender is unknown. In Ukrainian, special type of numerals is used when counting nouns that are plurale tantum (NumType=Sets).
Examples
- ножиці, штани “scissors, pants”
Coll: collective / mass / singulare tantum
Collective or mass or singulare tantum is a special case of singular. It applies to words that use grammatical singular to describe sets of objects, i.e. semantic plural. Although in theory they might be able to form plural, in practice it would be rarely semantically plausible. Sometimes, the plural form exists and means “several sorts of” or “several packages of”.
Examples
- людство “mankind”
Diffs
Ukrainian Dependency Treebank
The UDT tagset does not distinguish Ptan from Plur and Coll from Sing, therefore this distinction is not being made in the converted data.
Person: person
Person is a feature of personal pronouns and of verbs. On verbs it is in fact an agreement feature that marks the person of the verb’s subject. Person marked on verbs makes it unnecessary to always add a personal pronoun as subject and thus subjects are sometimes dropped (Ukrainian is a pro-drop language).
1: first person
In singular, the first person refers just to the speaker / author. In plural, it must include the speaker and one or more additional persons.
Examples
- роблю “I do”
- робимо “we do”
2: second person
In singular, the second person refers to the addressee of the utterance / text. In plural, it may mean several addressees and optionally some third persons too.
Examples
- робиш “you
Singdo” - робите “you
Plurdo”
3: third person
The third person refers to one or more persons that are neither speakers nor addressees.
Examples
- робить “he/she/it does”
- роблять “they do”
Poss: possessive
Boolean feature of pronouns, determiners or adjectives. It tells whether the word is possessive.
While many tagsets would have “possessive” as one of the various pronoun types, this feature is intentionally separate from PronType, as it is orthogonal to pronominal types. Several of the pronominal types can be optionally possessive, and adjectives can too.
Yes: it is possessive
Note that there is no No value. If the word is not possessive, the Poss feature will just not be mentioned in the FEAT column. (Which means that empty value has the No meaning.)
Examples
- possessive personal pronouns/determiners/adverb: мій, твій, його, її, наш, ваш, їх, по-нашому “my, your, his, her, our, your, their, our way”
- possessive reflexive pronoun/determiner/adverb: свій, по-своєму “one’s own, in one’s own way”
- possessive relative or interrogative pronoun/determiner/adverb: чий, по-чиєму “whose, in whose way”
- possessive negative pronoun/determiner: нічий “nobody’s”
- possessive indefinite pronoun/determiner: чийсь “somebody’s”
PronType: pronominal type
This feature typically applies to pronouns, determiners, pronominal numerals (quantifiers) and pronominal adverbs.
Prs: personal or possessive personal pronoun or determiner
See also the Poss feature that distinguishes normal personal pronouns from possessives. Note that Prs also includes reflexive
personal/possessive pronouns (e.g. себе / свій; see the Reflex feature).
Examples
- я, ти, він, вона, воно, ми, ви, вони “I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they, they, they, oneself”
- мій, твій, його, її, наш, ваш, їх, свій “my, your, his/its, her, our, your, their, one’s own”
Int: interrogative pronoun, determiner, numeral or adverb
Note that possessive interrogative determiners (whose) can be distinguished by the Poss feature.
Examples:
- хто “who”
- що “what”
- який “what kind of”
- котрий “which”
- чий “whose”
- скільки “how many”
- де “where”
- куди “where to”
- коли “when”
- як “how”
- чому “why”
Rel: relative pronoun, determiner, numeral or adverb
Note that this class heavily overlaps with interrogatives.
Examples:
- котрий, що “which, that” (relative but not interrogative pronouns)
- чий “whose” (possessive relative pronoun)
Dem: demonstrative pronoun, determiner, numeral or adverb
These are to some extent parallel to interrogatives.
Examples
- той “this”
- тамтой “that”
- такий “such”
- стільки “so many”
- тут “here”
- там “there”
- тепер “now”
- тоді “then”
- так “so”
Tot: total (collective) pronoun, determiner or adverb
Examples
- кожен “every, everybody, everyone, each”
- все “everything, all”
- всюди “everywhere”
- завжди “always”
Neg: negative pronoun, determiner or adverb
Examples
- ніхто “nobody”
- ніщо “nothing”
- ніякий “no (kind)”
- нічий “no one’s”
- жоден “no, none”
- ніде “nowhere”
- нікуди “(to) nowhere”
- ніколи “never”
- ніяк “no way” (lit. “no-how”)
Ind: indefinite pronoun, determiner, numeral or adverb
Examples
- дехто “somebody”; будь-хто “anybody”; хтось “somebody”
- дещо “something”; будь-що “anything”; щось “something”
- деякий “some kind of”; будь-який “any kind of”; якийсь “some, certain”
- декотрий “some”; будь-котрий “any”; котрийсь “some”
- дечий “someone’s”; будь-чий “anyone’s”; чийсь “someone’s”
- декілька “several”; скільки-небудь “any number of”; багато “many”
- подекуди “somewhere”; будь-де “anywhere”; десь “somewhere”
- кудись “(to) somewhere”; будь-куди “(to) anywhere”
- інколи “sometimes”; будь-коли “anytime”; колись “once (long ago)”
- якось “somehow”; будь-як “anyhow”
Reflex: reflexive
Boolean feature of pronouns or determiners. It tells whether the word is reflexive, i.e. refers to the subject of its clause. Unlike in Czech, the reciprocal and reflexive meanings in Ukrainian are carried by the special reflexive verbal postfix *ся, thus the reflexive pronoun is much less loaded semantically and functionally.
Reflexive pronouns function as reflexive object of a verb, which means that the object is the same entity as the subject: Ігор купив собі машину. = “Igor bought himself a car” vs. Ігор купив йому машину. = “Igor bought him [someone else] a car”
Reflexive possessives indicate that the subject of the clause is the possessor:
- Ігор продав свою машину. “Igor sold his [own] car.”
- Ігор продав його машину. “Igor sold his [someone else’s] car.”
Yes: it is reflexive
Note that there is no No value. If the word is not reflexive, the Reflex feature will just not be mentioned in the FEAT column. (Which means that empty value has the No meaning.)
Examples
- reflexive personal pronouns: себе, собі, собою, *се, *си, *ся (occurs in various cases but not in nominative and vocative; does not distinguish Number; the forms with the asterisks are dialectal)
- reflexive possessive pronoun: свій
Tense: tense
Tense is a feature that specifies the time when the action took / takes / will take place, in relation to the current moment or to another action in the utterance.
Past: past tense
The past tense denotes actions that happened before the current moment. Past tense in Ukrainian is expressed by a special past form, historically derived from the past participle (also called active participle or l-participle – which is why past is the only tense that also varies in gender). In the pre-past version of the past tense the same form is accompanied by a past auxiliary verb. The past tense form can also be used to form present (or past, depending on the tense of the auxiliary verb) conditional. Since both pre-past and conditionals are formed analytically, they do not receive any morphological tags.
Examples
- Я пішов додому. “I
Maschave gone home.” - Я пішла додому. “I
Femhave gone home.” - Я пішло додому. “I
Neuthave gone home.” - Ти пішов додому. “You
Maschave gone home.” - Ти пішла додому. “You
Femhave gone home.” - Ти пішло додому. “You
Neuthave gone home.” - Він пішов додому. “He has gone home.”
- Вона пішла додому. “She has gone home.”
- Воно пішло додому. “It has gone home.”
Pres: present tense
The present tense denotes actions that are happening right now or that usually happen. Only imperfective verbs can have present forms in Ukrainian. Morphologically present forms of perfective verbs have actually a future meaning and are marked Tense=Fut, see the last example below.
Examples
- Ходжу додому. “I come home.” (Ходити is an imperfective verb.)
- Приходжу додому. “I keep/am coming home.” (Приходити is an imperfective verb.)
- Йду додому. “I go / am going home.” (Йти is an imperfective verb.)
- Прийду додому. “I will come home.” (Прийти is a perfective verb and it has a future meaning on the contrary to the imperfective forms above.)
Fut: future tense
The future tense denotes actions that will happen after the current moment. It is formed in Ukrainian in one of three ways, partly depending on the aspect of the verb:
- Perfective verbs use present declension patterns to form future tense.
- The verb бути “to be” has a set of distinct future forms. They combine a future stem буд- with present endings.
Although these forms are morphologically very close to the present forms, they are tagged
Tense=Futbecause the same lemma has also present forms and the feature must distinguish the two. - Synthetic future forms are one of distinctive features of Ukrainian among other Slavic languages. They use the infinitive stem and endings being historically shortened future forms of the auxiliary verb мати “to have”. The future synthetic forms of мати “to have”: матиму, матимеш, матиме, матимемо, матимете, матимуть. The future synthetic forms of робити “to do”: робитиму, робитимеш, робитиме, робитимемо, робитимете, робитимуть.
- Note that all the imperfective Ukrainian verbs, with the exception of бути “to be” itself, can also form a periphrastic future, consisting of the future form of the auxiliary бути, _ and the infinitive of the content verb. Only the auxiliary will have
Tense=Fut, while there will be no tense information at the infinitive.
Examples
- Прийду додому. “I will come home.” (Прийти is a perfective verb.)
- Йтиму додому. “I will be coming home.” (Йти is an imperfective verb, here the syntheic future form is used.)
- Буду йти додому. “I will be coming home.” (Йти is an imperfective verb, the future tense is formed periphrastically here.)
VerbForm: form of verb or deverbative
Even though the name of the feature seems to suggest that it is used exclusively with verbs, it is not the case. The Part value can be used also with adjectives. It distinguishes participles from other verb forms, and participial adjectives from other adjectives.
Fin: finite verb
Rule of thumb: if it has non-empty Mood, it is finite. In Ukrainian this applies to indicative and imperative forms, and to the special conditional forms of the auxiliary verb бути.
Examples
- несу, несеш, несе, несемо, несете, несуть “I carry, you carry, he/she/it carries, we carry, you carry, they carry”
- матиму, матимеш, матиме, матимемо, матимете, матимуть (the future synthetic forms of мати “to have” in different genders and numbers)
- робитиму, робитимеш, робитиме, робитимемо, робитимете, робитимуть (the future synthetic forms of робити “to do” in different genders and numbers)
- ніс, несла, несло, несли “carried” (past tense forms in different genders and numbers)
- неси, несімо, несіть “carry” (imperative in different persons and numbers)
- є, *єси the present form of “be”, (*the form with asterisk is archaic)
- буду, будеш, буде, будемо, будете, будуть “I will be, you will be, he/she/it will be, we will be, you will be, they will be”
- би, б, *бим, *бис, *бисми, *бисте “would, I would, you would, we would, you would” (*the forms with asterisks are dialectal)
- будь, будьмо, будьте “be” (imperative in different persons and numbers)
Inf: infinitive
Infinitive is the citation form of verbs. It is also used with the auxiliary бути to form periphrastic future tense, and it appears as the argument of modal and other verbs.
Examples
- нести “to carry”
- бути “to be”
Imps: impersonal
Impersonal form ending with -но/-то. In Slavic languages other than Ukrainian and Polish this form coincides with the neutral passive adjectival participle, but in those two languages the participle has a different ending: -не in Ukrainian and -ne in Polish, which is why it is treated as a separate verbal form.
Examples
- несено “(it was/somebody) carried” (passive impersonal form), cf. also писане правило “a written rule” vs писано правило “a rule was/is written”.
Part: participle
The adverbial participle, also called transgressive, is a non-finite verb form that shares properties of verbs and adverbs.
- Imperfective verbs form present adverbial participle, meaning “while doing”.
- Perfective verbs form past adverbial participle, meaning “having done”.
The adjectival participle is a non-finite verb form that shares properties of verbs and adjectives. It inflects for Gender and Number but not for Person. Ukrainian has two types of participles: - Passive adjectival participle is used to construct passive voice. It is also used separately as an adjective: ношений, драний “carried, torn/ragged”. Their meaning is almost identical but the usage slightly varies. Both groups can be used in nominal predication with copula. Only true participles can be used to form the passive voice but it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them from copula constructions, see AUX. On the other hand, the deverbal (participial) adjectives inflect for case and thus can modify nouns. - Active participle (it is considered ungrammatical but still used occasionally, which is why it is encoded).
Examples
- несучи, нісши “carrying” (present and past adverbial participles)
- принісши “having brought” (past adverbial participle)
- несений, несена, несене, несені “carried” (passive adjectival participle in different genders and numbers)
- несучий, несуча, несуче, несучі “carrying” (present adjectival participle in different genders and numbers)
Voice: voice
Voice is a feature of verbs that helps map the traditional syntactic functions, such as subject and object, to semantic roles, such as agent and pacient.
Act: active voice
The subject of the verb is the doer of the action (agent), the object is affected by the action (pacient).
All finite verb forms and the adverbial participle are tagged Voice=Act.
Examples
- Ми читали цю книгу. “We read this book
Acc.” (the active past tense form читали can be also used to form conditional mood; here it is used in its original past meaning.)
Pass: passive voice
The subject of the verb is affected by the action (patient). The doer (agent) is either unexpressed or it appears as an object of the verb.
Passive voice is formed periphrastically in Ukrainian. The most typical passive construction consists of the finite verb forms of the auxiliary verbs бути “to be” (optional for the present forms) and the present or past passive adjectival participle. The grammatical subject in such constructions, being the semantic object, or patient, is in the nominative case. The semantic subject in such constructions is optional, it is expressed by the instrumental case. Note that the adjectival participles, sharing most morphological features with adjectives (with the exception of aspect and voice which are inherited from verbs), are treated as a special type of adjectives in Ukrainian. An alternative passive construction, also periphrastic, is more specific and both of its parts belong to the verb. The semantic object is expressed by the accusative case, similarly to the prototypical active construction. The semantic subject is also optional and expressed by the instrumental case. It also uses finite verb forms of the auxiliary verbs бути “to be” (optional for the present forms). The lexical meaning is presented by the Impersonal verb form, which also receives the tag Voice=Pass.
Examples
- Ця книга прочитана нами. “This book
Nomwas read by us.” (The adjectival passive participle прочитана conveys the passive meaning.) - Цю книгу прочитано нами. “This book
Accwas read by us.” (The impersonal verb form прочитано conveys the passive meaning.)