Bulgarian grammar

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Bulgarian grammar is the grammar of the Bulgarian language. The Bulgarian language is a South Slavic language that also is one of the members of the Balkan sprachbund. As such, it shares several grammatical innovations with the other southwest Balkan languages that set it apart from other Slavic languages. These include a sharp reduction in noun inflections; most Bulgarian nouns and adjectives are inflected for number and gender, but have lost noun cases. Bulgarian also has a suffixed definite article, while most other Slavic languages have no definite article at all. Bulgarian has also lost the verb infinitive, while otherwise preserving most of the complexities of the Old Bulgarian verb conjugation system, and has further developed the proto-Slavic verb system to add verb forms to express nonwitnessed, retold, and doubtful (irrealis) actions.

Bulgarian is a part of the Balkan linguistic union, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian and Torlakian dialect of the Serbian language. Most of these languages share some of the above-mentioned characteristics.

Contents

[edit] Nouns

Main article: Bulgarian nouns

Bulgarian nouns have the categories grammatical gender, number, case (only vocative) and definiteness. A noun has one of three specific grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular and plural), With cardinal numbers and some adverbs, masculine nouns use a separate count form. Definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun.

-a/-я and -ът/-ят (masculine singular) -та (feminine singular) -то (neuter singular)

-те (masculine plural) -те (feminine plural) -та (neuter plural)

[edit] Case remnants

See also: Bulgarian Language - Case

While Bulgarian has largely lost its declensions, some remnants of the old cases do still exist. Due to their rarity, however, they are no longer seen as case endings, but are rather considered to be part of some completely different phenomenon, such as being a subcategory of the definite article or of the plural, as in the first two examples:

  • the accusative and the dative (rare - masculine only) still survive -
    • in the personal pronouns - eg. mene (me), neya (her); nèmu (to him);
    • in the masculine interrogative pronoun кой (koy) "who" and its derivatives.
    • in some other related words in the masculine - eg. vseki (everyone), vsekigo (acc.), vsekimu (dat.)
  • the genitive case is preserved in the masculine tense (as it is used in all other Slavic languages) -
    • in the numerical plural (broyna mnozhestvena forma):
      • stol (chair) → mnogo stolove (many chairs) → dva stola (two chairs - etymologically "two of chair")
      • kon (horse) → kone (horses) → dva konya (two horses)
    • in the incomplete definite article suffix (nepulen chlen). This is used when the noun is the object of a sentence:
      • stol (a chair) → stolat (the chair, subject) → pod stola (under the chair - object)
      • kon (a horse) → konyat (the horse, subject) → na konya (on the horse - object)
    • the vocative -
      • for family members - eg. майка → майко (maika → maiko - "mother")
      • for masculine names - eg. Перър → Петре (Petar → Petre)
    • the instrumental -
      • mostly for set phrases, such as noshtem (during the night, from nosht), "sbogom" (farewell - lit. "with God", from s + bog), or "begom" ("while running" from byagam - to run)

[edit] Adjectives

Main article: Bulgarian adjectives

A Bulgarian adjective agrees in gender, number and definiteness with the noun it is appended to and is put usually before it. The comparative and the superlative form are formed analytically.

[edit] Pronouns

Main article: Bulgarian pronouns

Bulgarian pronouns vary in gender, number, definiteness and case. The distinguishable types of pronouns include the following: personal, possessive, interrogative, demonstrative, reflexive, summative, negative, indefinite and relative.

[edit] Verbs

Main articles: Bulgarian verbs and Bulgarian conjugation.

Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar. They are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect (perfective and imperfective), voice, nine tenses, five moods and six non-finite verbal forms. Bulgarian verbs are divided into three conjugations.

[edit] Voice

The voice in Bulgarian adjectives is presented not through the auxiliary verb, as it is in English ("I have eaten" - active; "I was eaten" - passive), but rather by the ending on the past participle; the auxiliary remains съм ("to be"):

  • Active - ударил съм... - udaril sum... - I have hit...
  • Passive - ударен съм - udaren sum - I have been hit

[edit] Mood

Mood in Bulgarian is expressed not through verb endings, but through the auxiliary particles че (che) and да (da) (which both translate as the relative pronoun that). The verbs remain unchanged.[1] Thus:

  • Indicative - че -
    • eg. знам, че си тук - znam, che si tuk - I know that you are here;
  • Subjunctive - да -
    • eg. искам да си тук - iskam da si tuk - I want you here (lit. "I want that you are here")

The inferential is formed in exactly the same way as the perfect, but with the omission of the auxiliary:

  • Perfect - той е бил - toy e bil - he has been
  • Inferential - той бил - toy bil - he (reportedly) was

The imperative has its own conjugation - usually by adding -и or -ай (-i or -ay) to the root of the verb:

  • eg. sit - сядам → сядай (syadam → syaday – imperfective), or седна → седни (sedna → sedni – perfective).

[edit] Word order

Although Bulgarian has almost no noun cases its word order is rather free. It is even freer than the word order of some languages that have cases, for example German. This is due to the agreement between the subject and the verb of a sentence. So in Bulgarian the sentence "I saw Lubomir" can be expressed thus:

  • Видях Любомир.
  • Любомир (го) видях.

It is clear that the subject is "аз" ("I"), because the verb "видях" ends in x.

Other examples - Ivan greeted the girls:

  • Иван поздрави момичетата.
  • Момичетата (ги) поздрави Иван.
  • Иван момичетата поздрави.
  • Момичетата Иван (ги) поздрави.
  • Поздрави Иван момичетата.
  • Поздрави (ги) момичетата Иван.

Theoretically all permutations are possible but the last one sounds rather odd.

The girls greeted Ivan:

  • Момичетата поздравиха Иван.
  • Иван (го) поздравиха момичетата.
  • Момичетата Иван поздравиха.
  • Иван момичетата (го) поздравиха.
  • Поздравиха момичетата Иван.
  • Поздравиха (го) Иван момичетата.

The clitic doubling (го/ги) is obligatory only when the subject and the object are both in third person, and they are either both singular or both plural, but when the meaning is clear from the context it can be omitted. Examples:

  • Иван го поздрави Мария. - Maria greeted Ivan.
  • Мария я поздрави Иван. - Ivan greeted Maria.

but

  • Ролите озвучиха артистите... - The artists...(enumerating their names) sound-screened the roles. (They made the soundtrack for the film.)

In the compound tenses, when a participle is used, and when the subject and the object are of different gender or number, the clitic doubling can also be left out. So the first two of the above examples can be expressed in a compound tense thus:

  • Иван (го) е поздравила Мария. - Maria has greeted Ivan.
  • Мария (я) е поздравил Иван. - Ivan has greeted Maria.

Although they sound odd without the doubling, the meaning is clear.

[edit] Other

[edit] Numbers

In Bulgarian, the numbers 1 and 2 take gender.

Furthermore, numbers take special endings when:

  • referring to men (2-6 and 10 and sometimes 20-100) - add "-ma"
    • eg. 2 chairs - dva stola; 2 brothers - dvama bratya
  • referring to a roundabout number (10-100 and sometimes 5-9) - add "-ina"
    • eg. dvadeset dushi - 20 people; dvadesetina dushi - about 20 people


№ Cardinal Numbers numbers relating to men "roundabout" numbers ordinal numbers notes / other
1 edín (masc) - ednà (fem)

edno (neut) - edni (plur.) *

 pruv / pùrvi (masc), purva (fem), etc vednazh - once
2 dva (masc) - dve (fem/neut) dvama vtori polovin(ka) - half
3 tri trima treti
4 chètiri chetirima chetvùrti chètvurt(in(k)a) - quarter
5 pet petíma petína péti
6 shest shestima shestina shesti
7 sèdem sedmina sedmi
8 òsem osmina osmi
9 dèvet devetina deveti
10 dèset desetima desetina deseti
11 edinàdeset (edinayset) (edinadesetìma / edinaysetima) edinadesetìna (edinaysetina) edinàdeseti (edinays(e)ti) from "edin-na-deset" - "one-on-ten", etc
20 dvàdeset (dvayset) (dvadesetìma / dvaysetima) dvadesetìna (dvaysetina) dvàdeseti (dvaysetima) "dva-deset" - "twice ten"
21 dvadeset i edno (dvayset i edno) dvadeset i purvi/-a/-o
100 sto stotíma stotína stótni nyàkolkostotin... - several hundred...
200 dvesta [okolo 200 - "around 200"] 400-900 - chetiri stotin, etc
1,000 hilyàda hilyàdni 2,000 - dve hilyadi, etc
0 nùla (nulni) nikolko - none


Cardinal numbers

Note: The word edni can be translated as "some" (comp. Spanish unos/unas)

  • When counting, the neuter numbers are taken - edno, dve, tri....
  • Fractions are the same as the ordinal numbers, and are done in the feminine 1/5 - edna peta, 2/5 - dve peti, etc.

[edit] References

  1. ^ In ordinary sentences, the imperfective aspect is most often used for the indicative, and the perfective for the subjunctive, but any combination is possible, with the corresponding change in meaning.
    • eg iskam da stanesh (perfective) / iskam da stavash (imperfective) - i want you to get up.
    The latter is more insisting, since the imperfective is the more immediate construction.

[edit] External links