The following is an overview of the grammar of the Slovene language.
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There are four types of inflexion related to the grammatical number in Slovene. The future tense shall be used to demonstrate its usage. The future tense is formed with the verb to be in the future tense plus the l-participle of the full lexical verb. For example, a table of the English expression "I will see" ("Jaz bom videl") when including gender for he ("on") and she ("ona") without it ("ono") can be written as:
Singular | Dual (Semi) | Plural |
I will see | We (both/two) will see | We (all) will see |
You will see | You (both/two) will see | You (all) will see |
He/She will see | They (both/two) will see | They (all) will see |
can be translated into Slovene as:
Singular with M/F gender | Dual with M/F gender | Plural with M/F gender |
Jaz bom videl/Jaz bom videla | Midva bova videla/Medve bova videli | Mi bomo videli/Me bomo videle |
Ti boš videl/Ti boš videla | Vidva bosta videla/Vedve bosta videli | Vi boste videli/Ve boste videle |
On bo videl/Ona bo videla | Ona (or onadva) bosta videla/Oni (or onidve) bosta videli | Oni bodo videli/One bodo videle |
Not only does Slovene have singular and plural, but it also has the rare dual grammatical number, or a separate form of every noun used when there are only two such items (except for natural pairs, such as trousers, eyes, for which plural is used). Dual grammatical number, when an ambiguity between dual and plural forms exists, can be rendered into other languages in various ways; comparatively often, there is no ambiguity and the dual is extraneous. (This explains the relatively early disappearance of the dual in most languages). Dual grammatical number was a feature of the Proto-Slavic language which has been retained by Slovene. An example of dual grammatical number would be "onadva sta" ("The two are") which refers to two objects or subjects in the masculine gender or "onidve sta" ("The two are") which refers to the same concept, but in the feminine gender. However "oni so" ("They are ") refers to more than two objects or subjects in the masculine gender while "one so" ("They are") does the same the feminine gender. Dual grammatical number is also preserved in gender. The dual is used consistently in Slovene but the younger generations tend to use plural when dual should be used (leading to incorrect grammar).
The first phrase sounds much more romantic and intimate to a Slovene, a style that is impossible to translate into English with its lack of dual grammatical number.
In Slovenian, nouns are marked for case and number. There are 6 cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental) and 3 numbers (singular, dual, and plural). Slovenian nouns are divided into 3 genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). Each gender has different declension patterns giving a total of 10 declension forms.
In Slovenian, the verbs are conjugated for 3 persons and 3 numbers. There are 4 tenses (present, past, pluperfect, and future), 3 moods (indicative, imperative, and conditional) and 2 voices (active and passive). Verbs also have 4 participles and 2 verbal nouns (infinitive and supine). Not all combinations of the above are possible for every case.
A gerund is a noun formed from a verb, designating an action or a state. The standard substantive in Slovenian ends in -anje or -enje:
For example:
The adjective expresses three main ideas: quality (qualitative adjectives, kakovostni pridevniki), relation (relational adjectives, vrstni pridevniki) and possession (possessive adjectives, svojilni pridevniki).
Adjectives in Slovenian can serve in three syntactical functions: left attributes (levi prilastek), predicate articles (povedkovo določilo) and predicate attributes (povedkov prilastek).
The majority of adjectives are of the first kind. These express any qualities and properties of personal and impersonal nouns. Such adjectives are gradable either in the two- or three-step comparison, depending if they are relative to another, opposite adjective (three-step) or not (two-step or three-step). (lep - grd (beautiful - ugly) vs bolan (ill)).
Relational adjectives express type, class or numerical sequence of a noun. For instance: kemijska in fizikalna sprememba (chemical and physical change), fotografski aparat (photographic device (=camera)).
Possessive pronouns define possession, ownership or belonging. For example: barvin sijaj (the colour's shine), Karmenina torbica (Karmen's handbag), delavska halja (workers' overall).
Some adjectives expressing properties next to masculine nouns imply definiteness ('relation') or indefiniteness ('quality') of nouns.
For an exactly defined noun or a specific type thereof:
For nouns which are not exactly defined, either being mentioned for the first time or generic:
Adjectives ending in -i and all possessive pronouns do not have special indefinite forms. There are two special adjectives which have special definite and indefinite forms for all genders and all cases, namely majhen (small) and velik (big) (the definite forms are mali and veliki respectively).
Example:
The adjective matches the subject or the predicate article to which it is ascribed. If it describes two singular nouns or one dual noun, the adjective should be in the dual. If it describes a plural or one singular and one non-singular noun, the adjective should be in the plural. Although gender should match the group, sometimes the gender of the adjacent noun is used with the appropriate grammatical number. For declension patterns of adjectives, see the section on nouns (the fourth declension is always adjectival). Some adjectives, however, are never declined, for example bež (beige), poceni (cheap), roza (pink), super (super), seksi (sexy), and some other loanwords.
Possessive adjectives for masculine and neuter possessed nouns add -ov (or -ev if the possessive noun ends in c, č, ž, š and j ("preglas")) to the possessive noun. Feminine possessed nouns always take -in. Possessive nouns can include proper names, in which case they are written capitalised.
Negative adjectives are formed by prefixing the negative ne-, which is almost always a proper form, even though sometimes a Latin prefix is an alternative.
The comparative is formed by adding the ending -ši (-ša, -še), -ejši (-ejša, -ejše) or -ji (-ja, -je) to an adjective, or using the word bolj (more) in front of an adjective in case of stressing, and also when the adjective in question cannot be formed by adding an ending, such as when dealing with colours, or when the adjective ends in such a sound that it would be difficult to add the appropriate ending.
For instance:
The superlative is formed by prepending the word naj directly in front of the comparative, whether it comprises one or two words.
The adverb in Slovene is always the same as the singular neuter form of any given adjective if derived from an adjective.
—> "Imeli smo se lepo." (literally, "We had ourselves nicely.", the meaning is 'We had a nice time.')
—> "Govorili so lepo." (They spoke nicely.)
Other types of adverb are derived from nouns (doma (at home), jeseni (in autumn)), prepositional constructions (naglas (aloud), pozimi (in winter), potem (then)), verbs (nevede (unknowingly), skrivoma (secretly), mimogrede (by the way)) or numerals (see adverbial numeral).
In essence, there are four main types of adverb: adverbs of time (danes (today), večno (perpetually)), adverbs of place (domov (towards home, homewards)), adverbs of manner (grdo (uglily), povsem (entirely)) and adverbs of cause and reason (nalašč (on purpose)).
Adverbs are, much like adjectives, normally gradable.
An interjection is ordinarily an uninflected word expressing mental states, encouragement towards actions, greetings or mocking of sounds and voices.
Interjections may be inflected; however, in spite of the words' being the same, such use calls for a different word class (part of speech), this most frequently being nouns.
The nominative case defines a subject of a sentence; all other cases define an object as either direct or indirect.
Case | Slovene (Semi) | English |
Nominative | Moj stol je v sobi | My chair is in the room |
Genitive | Mojega stola ni v sobi | My chair is not in the room |
Genitive | Košček papirja mi je ostal v dlani | A piece of paper remained in my palm |
Genitive | Tipkovnica računalnika je vhodna enota | A computer's keyboard is an input device |
Dative | Beraču je dal denar | He gave money to a beggar |
Accusative | Vidim zvezde | I see the stars |
Locative | Mnogo je rečenega o novem sodniku | A lot is being said about the new judge |
Instrumental | Na sprehod grem s svojim psom | I am going for a walk with my dog |
In a sentence, there can only be four types of constituent, the order of which is seldom crucial:
By changing the order, the stressed part changes. It may also serve to create poetic sentiment, for inversion is common in poetry.
This is a sentence which does not have a predicate.
See also the section on inverted commas.
Punctuation marks are one or two part graphical marks used in writing, denoting tonal progress, pauses, sentence type (syntactic use), abbreviations, et cetera.
Marks used in Slovene include full stops (.), question marks (?), exclamation marks (!), commas (,), semicolons (;), colons (:), dashes (–), hyphens (-), ellipses (...), different types of inverted commas and quotation marks ("", '', ‚‘, „“, »«), brackets ((), [], {}) (which are in syntactical use), as well as apostrophes (',’), solidi (/), equal signs (=), and so forth.
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