The six case endings are nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, and locative. The language has no definite article. Verbs have three major conjugations distinguishing first, second, and third persons, singular and plural. Subject pronouns are often omitted unless they are emphatic. In syntax, main verbs agree in person and number with their subjects.
Adjectives agree in person, gender and case with the noun they modify.
Word order is grammatically free with no particular fixed order for constituents marking subject, object, possessor, etc. The inflectional system takes care of keeping clear grammatical relations and roles. Constituents with old information precede constituents with new information, or those that carry most emphasis. Slovak has six sets of long and short vowel phonemes, and a consonantal system of twenty-eight phonemes. It has distinctive palatalization.