Bulgarian grammar
Bulgarian grammar is the grammar of the Bulgarian language. Bulgarian is a South Slavic language that evolved from Old Church Slavonic—the written norm for the Slavic languages in the Middle Ages which derived from Proto-Slavic. Bulgarian is also a part of the Balkan sprachbund, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian and the Torlakian dialect of Serbian. It shares with them several grammatical innovations that set it apart from most other Slavic languages, even other South Slavic languages. Among these are a sharp reduction in noun inflections—Bulgarian has lost the noun cases but has developed a definite article, which is suffixed at the end of words. In its verbal system, Bulgarian is set apart from most Slavic languages by the loss of the infinitive, the preservation of most of the complexities of the older conjugation system (including the opposition between aorist and imperfect) and the development of a complex evidential system to distinguish between witnessed and several kinds of non-witnessed information.
Nouns
Bulgarian nouns have the categories grammatical gender, number (including count form), definiteness and vocative form.
Gender
A noun has one of three specific grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter).
Number
A noun has two numbers (singular and plural), plus a numerical plural form. The plural is formed by adding to or replacing the singular ending, most commonly in the following ways:
| sing. | plur. | |
| masc. | -conson. | +и
+ове (monosyl.) |
| fem. | -а / -я | -и |
| neut. | -о
-е |
-а
+та |
With cardinal numbers and some adverbs, masculine nouns use a separate numerical plural form бройна множествена форма (broyna mnozhestvena forma). It is a vestige of the grammatical dual number, which disappeared from the language in the Middle Ages. The numerical form is used in the masculine whenever there is a precise amount of something, regardless of the actual number, e.g. –
Definiteness
Definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun:
| masc. | fem. | neut. | |
| sing. | -ът / -ят (subject)
-a / -я (object) |
-та | -то |
| plur. | -те | -та | |
The definite article comes before plural ending: [2]
|
|
|
Vocative form
Vocative form is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed.
- for family members – e.g. майка → майко (majka → majko "mother")
- for masculine names – e.g. Петър → Петре (Petar → Petre)
- in social descriptors – e.g. приятел → приятелю (prijatel → prijatelju "friend"), учител → учителю (učitel → učitelju "teacher")
From the first decades of the 20th century, there is a tendency to avoid vocative forms. This is true for many personal names, as the use of feminine name forms in -[ь/й]o[3] and of the potential vocative forms of foreign names has come to be considered rude or rustic. Thus, Иване means 'hey, Ivan', while the corresponding feminine forms Елено ('hey, Elena'), Маргарито ('hey, Margarita') are today seen as rude[3] or unceremonious, and declining foreign names as in *Джоне ('hey, John') or *Саймъне ('hey, Simon') is considered humorous.
The tendency to avoid vocative forms for foreign names does not apply to names from Classical Antiquity, with the source languages having the vocative case as well: cf. Цезаре' ('O Caesar'), Перикле ('O Pericles'), Зевсе ('O Zeus'), etc.
Vocative is still in full and regular use for general nouns such as господине (gospodine "mister"), госпожице (gospožice "miss"), госпожо (gospožo "Mrs"), бабо (babo "grandma"), майко (majko "mother"), сине (sine "son"). [note 2]
Remnants of grammatical cases
Old Bulgarian had an extensive system of declension which included seven grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, instrumental and vocative; of these, only what used to be nominative and vocative cases survives in modern Bulgarian. Though Bulgarian has lost its old declensional system, pronouns still have grammatical case; also, some nouns in indirect cases became fossilized and were reanalyzed as other parts of speech.
Remnants of grammatical cases in pronouns
Personal pronouns still have different subject, direct object and indirect object forms.
| Personal pronouns | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Person | subject
(nominative case) |
direct object
(accusative case) |
indirect object
(dative case) |
with preposition | ||||
| long | short | long,
obsolete |
long | short | |||||
| Singular | First | аз | мене / мен | ме | мене | на мене / на мен | ми | с мене / с мен | |
| Second | ти | тебе / теб | те | тебе | на тебе / на теб | ти | с тебе / с теб | ||
| Third | Masculine | той | него | го | нему | на него | му | с него | |
| Feminine | тя | нея | я | ней | на нея | ѝ* | с нея | ||
| Neuter | то | него | го | нему | на него | му | с него | ||
| Plural | First | ние | нас | ни | нам | на нас | ни | с нас | |
| Second | вие | вас | ви | вам | на вас | ви | с вас | ||
| Third | те | тях | ги | тям | на тях | им | с тях | ||
The set of pronouns in italic is obsolete and is nowadays substituted by на + long direct object pronouns: на мен/на мене, на теб/на тебе, на него, на нея, на него, на нас, на вас, на тях. [note 3]
Interrogative, indefinite, negative, relative and universal pronouns have different subject and object forms, but only if some conditions are met:
- they are different only for masculine singular pronouns;
- only if pronoun refers to a male human being: e.g. човекът, с когото говоря /tʃoˈvɛkɐt, s koˈɡɔto ɡoˈvɔrjɐ/ 'the man that I'm talking to'; note that когото can be replaced with който in spoken language; but e.g. столът, на който седя /ˈstɔɫɐt, nɐ ˈkɔjto sɛˈdjɐ/ 'the chair that I'm sitting on'.
- only if the pronoun is used alone, not attributively.
Otherwise, the subject and object pronouns are the same. The complete declension is summed up in the table below:
| masculine singular pronouns | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronoun
type |
subject
(nominative case) |
direct object
(accusative case) |
direct object
(accusative case)* |
indirect object
(dative case) |
indirect object
(dative case)* |
indirect object
(dative case), obsolete |
| interrogative | кой | кой | кого | на кой | на кого | кому |
| indefinite | някой | някой | някого | на някой | на някого | някому |
| negative | никой | никой | никого | на никой | на никого | никому |
| relative | който | който | когото | на който | на когото | комуто |
| universal | всеки | всеки | всекиго | на всеки | на всекиго | всекиму |
*These sets of pronouns are falling out of use, especially in spoken language. Instead of object forms, the subject ones tend to be used in more instances, e.g. на кой is used instead of на кого and кой instead of кого and so on.
Single-word indirect object pronouns are obsolete.
Definite article
The grammarians who standardised the Bulgarian litterary language introduced the subject definite article (непълен член) -ът/-ят and the object definite article (непълен член) -a/-я. This distinction was artificial and did not occur in any Bulgarian dialect of the time.[4] The subject definite article is used with definite masculine singular nouns which are the subject of a sentence, otherwise the object definite article is used.
e.g. стол (stol "a chair") → столът (stolat "the chair", subject) → под стола (pod stola "under the chair", object).
In spoken language, there is no difference in pronuciation of subject and object definite articles.
Remnants of the accusative case
Adverbs: сутрин, вечер, зимъс, днес, нощес, есенес, пролетес, лятос, вред.
Remnants of the dative case
Adverbs and prepositions:
Remnants of the genitive case
Adverbs: снощи, отстрани, довечера, отръки, допъти.
Remnants of the instrumental case
Adverbs and prepositions: нощем (noštem "during the night", from нощ (nošt "night"); сбогом (sbogom "farewell" – lit. "with God", from с + бог s + bog); бегом (begom "while running" from бяг (byag – running), посредством, пешком, пълзешком, силом, бегом, нощем, денем, сбогом, кръгом, гърбом, редом, тихом, мигом, ребром, цифром, числом, словом.
Remnants of the locative case
Adverbs and prepositions: горе, отгоре, долу, отдолу, зиме, лете, утре, вкратце, есени, пролети, върху, срещу, между.
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.
Pronouns
Nicolova distinguishes the following types of Bulgarian pronouns:
- personal;
- reflexive;
- possessive;
- reflexive possessive;
- demonstrative;
- universal;
- interrogative;
- relative;
- negative;
- indefinite.
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. saw-1pSg Lyubomir Любомир (го) видях. Lyubomir (him) saw-1pSg
It is clear that the subject is "аз" ("I") (it has been dropped), because the verb "видях" is in the first person singular.
Other examples - Ivan greeted the girls:
Иван поздрави момичетата. Ivan greeted-3pSg girls-the. Момичетата (ги) поздрави Иван. Girls-the (them) greeted-3pSg Ivan. Иван момичетата поздрави. Ivan girls-the greeted-3pSg. Момичетата Иван (ги) поздрави. Girls-the Ivan (them) greeted-3pSg. Поздрави Иван момичетата. Greeted-3pSg Ivan girls-the. Поздрави (ги) момичетата Иван. Greeted-3pSg (them) girls-the Ivan.
Theoretically all permutations are possible but the last one sounds rather odd.
The girls greeted Ivan:
Момичетата поздравиха Иван. Girls-the greeted-3pPl Ivan. Иван (го) поздравиха момичетата. Ivan (him) greeted-3pPl girls-the. Момичетата Иван поздравиха. Girls-the Ivan greeted-3pPl. Иван момичетата (го) поздравиха. Ivan girls-the (him) greeted-3pPl. Поздравиха момичетата Иван. Greeted-3pPl girls-the Ivan. Поздравиха (го) Иван момичетата. Greeted-3pPl (him) Ivan girls-the.
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. Ivan him greeted-3pSg Maria. Maria greeted Ivan. Мария я поздрави Иван. Maria her greeted-3pSg Ivan. Ivan greeted Maria.
but
Ролите озвучиха артистите... Roles-the sound-screened-3pPl artists-the... The artists...(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. Ivan (him) has greeted-3pSgFem Maria. Maria has greeted Ivan. Мария (я) е поздравил Иван. Maria (her) has greeted-3pSgMasc Ivan. Ivan has greeted Maria.
The above two examples sound a bit odd without the doubling, unless it is a case of topicalization and special stress is put on the first word.
Other
Numerals
In Bulgarian, the numerals 1 and 2 are inflected for gender.
Furthermore, cardinal numerals take special endings when:
- referring to men (2-6 and 10, and 20-100) - add "-ma"
- e.g. 2 chairs - dva stola; 2 brothers - dvama bratya
- referring to an approximate number (10-100 and, rarely, 5-9) - add "-ina"
- e.g. dvadeset dushi - 20 people; dvadesetina dushi - about 20 people
- they are used as common nouns - add the feminine "-ka/-tsa" [5]
| № | Cardinal numerals | numbers relating to men | "roundabout" numbers | ordinal numbers | as a common noun | notes / other |
| 1 | edìn (masc) - ednà (fem)
ednò (neut) - ednì (plur.) * |
pruv / pùrvi (masc), purva (fem), etc. | edinìtsa | vednazh - once | ||
| 2 | dva (masc) - dve (fem/neut) | dvama | vtori | dvòyka | polovin(ka) - half | |
| 3 | tri | trima | treti | tròyka | ||
| 4 | chètiri | chetirima | chetvùrti | chetvòrka | chètvurt(in(k)a) - quarter | |
| 5 | pet | petíma | péti | petìtsa | ||
| 6 | shest | shestima | shesti | shestìtsa | ||
| 7 | sèdem | * | sedmi | sedmitsa | ||
| 8 | òsem | osmi | osmitsa | |||
| 9 | dèvet | (devetina) | deveti | devyàtka (devètka) | ||
| 10 | dèset | desetima | desetina | deseti | desyàtka (desètka) | |
| 11 | edinàdeset (edinàyset) | (edinadesetìma / edinaysetima) | edinadesetìna (edinaysetina) | edinàdeseti (edinays(e)ti) | edinàdesetka (edinàyska) / edinadesetìtsa (edinays(e)tìtsa) | from "edin-na-deset" - "one-on-ten", etc. |
| 12 | dvanàdeset (dvanayset) | (dvanadesetìma / dvanaysetima) | dvanadesetìna (dvanaysetina) | dvanàdeseti (dvanays(e)ti) | dvanàdesetka (dvanàyska) / dvanadesetìtsa (dvanays(e)tìtsa) | |
| 20 | dvàdeset (dvàyset) | (dvadesetìma / dvaysetima) | dvadesetìna (dvaysetina) | dvàdeseti (dvaysetima) | dvàdesetka (dvàyska) / dvadesetìtsa (dvays(e)tìtsa) | "dva-deset" - "twice ten" |
| 21 | dvadeset i edno (dvayset i edno) | dvadeset i purvi/-a/-o | dvadeset (dvayset) i edinitsa | |||
| 22 | dvadeset i dve (dvayset i dve) | dvadeset i vtori/-a/-o | dvadeset (dvayset) i dvoyka / (dvàys-dvòyka) | (...'23' - dvàys-tròyka, etc.) | ||
| 30 | trideset (triyset) | trideseti/-a/-o (triys(e)ti/-a/-o) | trìdesetka (trìyska) / tridesetitsa (triys(e)titsa) | |||
| 100 | sto | stotíma | stotína | stótni | stotìtsa | nyàkolkostotin... - several hundred... * |
| 200 | dvèsta | (okolo 200 - "around 200") | (dvestni) | - | 300 - trìsta | |
| 400 | chetiristòtin | (chetiristòtni) | - | 500-900 - same pattern | ||
| 1,000 | hilyàda | hìlyadni | hilyadàrka | 2,000 - dve hilyadi, etc. | ||
| 0 | nùla | nulev | nula | nikolko - none |
Notes:
- In Bulgarian, numerals can be used directly before uncountable nouns - e.g. vodа "water" → edna voda "a glass of water" (the quantifier 'glass of' is inferred from the context - comp. English 'a beer').
- The word edni can be translated as "some" - e.g. edni tzigari "some cigarettes" (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.
- The words for men can be used by themselves, without a noun following - e.g. simply "vidyah dvama" - I saw two men, or even colloquially "edni dvama..." - these two men...
- Irregularly, "sedmina" and "osmina" can be used (archaically, poetically) to also mean "7/8 men" rather than "around 7/8".
- The smaller denomination of the Bulgarian currency - the stotìnka (pl. stotìnki) literally mean "hundredths" (diminutive); 100 stotinki = 1 lev.
Notes
- See Bulgarian nouns#Count form for more details.
- See Bulgarian nouns#Usage for more usage notes
- See Bulgarian pronouns#Personal pronouns for more details.
References
- The forms the words take in the numerical plural and in the incomplete definite are often identical to each other – e.g. dva stola/pod stola, as above, or dva konya/na konya - "two horses/on the horse", but not always – e.g. grad (city) → dva gràda (two cities), but v gradà (in the city), or svyat (world) → dva svyàta (two worlds), but na svetà (in the world).
- When a noun is accompanied by one or more modifiers and/or determiners, only the first element of the noun phrase takes the definite article suffix - e.g. priyatelite (the friends) → dobrite priyateli (the good friends) → moite dobri priyateli (my good friends).
- Кръстев, Боримир, 1992. Граматика за всички. Стр.61.
- Wahlström, pp. 45--46.
- Less commonly - "-orka" (e.g. shestorka, sedmorka); or else the masculine "-ak", but only to the numbers 6-8 and 10-100 - shestàk, stotàk, etc.
External links
- Bulgarian Wiktionary
- Notes on the Grammar of the Bulgarian language - 1844 - Smyrna (now Izmir) - Elias Riggs