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.
Bulgarian nouns have the categories grammatical gender, number (including count form), definiteness and vocative form.
A noun has one of three specific grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter).
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:
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 is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun:
The definite article comes after plural ending:
Vocative form is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed.
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 and of the potential vocative forms of foreign names has come to be considered rude or rustic. Thus, Любомире means 'hey, Lyubomir', while the corresponding feminine forms Елено ('hey, Elena'), Маргарито ('hey, Margarita') are today seen as rude 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").
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.
Personal pronouns still have different subject, direct object and indirect object forms.
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.
Interrogative, indefinite, negative, relative and universal pronouns have different subject and object forms, but only if some conditions are met:
Otherwise, the subject and object pronouns are the same. The complete declension is summed up in the table below:
*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.
The grammarians who standardised the Bulgarian literary language introduced the subject definite article (пълен член) -ът/-ят and the object definite article (кратък член) -a/-я. This distinction was artificial and did not occur in any Bulgarian dialect of the time. 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).
Adverbs: сутрин, вечер, зимъс, днес, нощес, есенес, пролетес, лятос, вред.
Adverbs and prepositions:
Personal pronouns:
masc
fem
neu
Adverbs: снощи, отстрани, довечера, отръки, допъти.
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, денем, кръгом, гърбом, редом, тихом, мигом, ребром, цифром, числом, словом.
Adverbs and prepositions: горе, отгоре, долу, отдолу, зиме, лете, утре, вкратце, есени, пролети, върху, срещу, между.
A Bulgarian adjective agrees in gender, number and definiteness with the noun it is appended to and is usually put before it. The comparative and the superlative form are formed with the (hyphenated) prefixes по- and най- respectively.
Nicolova distinguishes the following types of Bulgarian pronouns:
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 Lyubomir" can be expressed thus:
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 – Lyubomir greeted the girls:
Theoretically all permutations are possible but the last one sounds rather odd.
The girls greeted Lyubomir:
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:
but
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:
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.
Bulgarian employs clitic doubling, mostly for emphatic purposes. For example, the following constructions are common in colloquial Bulgarian:
The phenomenon is practically obligatory in the spoken language in the case of inversion signalling information structure (in writing, clitic doubling may be skipped in such instances, with a somewhat bookish effect):
Sometimes, the doubling signals syntactic relations, thus:
This is contrasted with:
In this case, clitic doubling can be a colloquial alternative of the more formal or bookish passive voice, which would be constructed as follows:
Clitic doubling is also fully obligatory, both in the spoken and in the written norm, in clauses including several special expressions that use the short accusative and dative pronouns such as "играе ми се" (I feel like playing), студено ми е (I am cold), and боли ме ръката (my arm hurts):
Except the above examples, clitic doubling is considered inappropriate in a formal context.
Questions in Bulgarian which do not use a question word (such as who? what? etc.) are formed with the particle ли after the verb; a subject is not necessary, as the verbal conjugation suggests who is performing the action:
While the particle ли generally goes after the verb, it can go after a noun or adjective if a contrast is needed:
A verb is not always necessary, e.g. when presenting a choice:
Rhetorical questions can be formed by adding ли to a question word, thus forming a "double interrogative" –
The same construction +не ('no') is an emphasized positive –
The verb съм /sɤm/ – 'to be' is also used as an auxiliary for forming the perfect, the passive and the conditional:
Two alternate forms of съм exist:
The impersonal verb ще (lit. 'it wants') is used to form the (positive) future tense:
The negative future is formed with the invariable construction няма да /ˈɲamɐ dɐ/ (see няма below):
The past tense of this verb – щях /ʃtʲax/ is conjugated to form the past conditional ('would have' – again, with да, since it is irrealis):
The verbs имам /ˈimɐm/ ('to have') and нямам /ˈɲamɐm/ ('to not have'):
In Bulgarian, there are several conjunctions all translating into English as "but", which are all used in distinct situations. They are но (no), ама (amà), а (a), ами (amì), and ала (alà) (and обаче (obache) – "however", identical in use to но).
While there is some overlapping between their uses, in many cases they are specific. For example, ami is used for a choice – Не това, ами това. (ne tova, ami onova) – "not this one, but that one" (compare Spanish sino), while ама (ama) is often used to provide extra information or an opinion – Казах го, ама сгреших. (kazah go, ama sgreshih) – "I said it, but I was wrong". Meanwhile, а (a) provides contrast between two situations, and in some sentences can even be translated as "although", "while" or even "and" – Аз работя, а той блее. (az rabotya, a toy blee) – "I'm working, and he's daydreaming".
Very often, different words can be used to alter the emphasis of a sentence – e.g. while pusha, no ne tryabva and pusha, a ne tryabva both mean "I smoke, but I shouldn't", the first sounds more like a statement of fact ("...but I mustn't"), while the second feels more like a judgement ("...but I oughtn't"). Similarly, az ne iskam, ama toy iska and az ne iskam, a toy iska both mean "I don't want to, but he does", however the first emphasizes the fact that he wants to, while the second emphasizes the wanting rather than the person.
Ala is interesting in that, while it feels archaic, it is often used in poetry and frequently in children's stories, since it has quite a moral/ominous feel to it.
Some common expressions use these words, and some can be used alone as interjections:
Bulgarian has several abstract particles which are used to strengthen a statement. These have no precise translation in English. The particles are strictly informal and can even be considered rude by some people and in some situations. They are mostly used at the end of questions or instructions.
These are "tagged" on to the beginning or end of a sentence to express the mood of the speaker in relation to the situation. They are mostly interrogative or slightly imperative in nature. There is no change in the grammatical mood when these are used (although they may be expressed through different grammatical moods in other languages).
These express intent or desire, perhaps even pleading. They can be seen as a sort of cohortative side to the language. (Since they can be used by themselves, they could even be considered as verbs in their own right.) They are also highly informal.
These particles can be combined with the vocative particles for greater effect, e.g. ya da vidya, be (let me see), or even exclusively in combinations with them, with no other elements, e.g. hayde, de! (come on!); nedey, de! (I told you not to!).
Bulgarian has several pronouns of quality which have no direct parallels in English – kakav (what sort of); takuv (this sort of); onakuv (that sort of – colloq.); nyakakav (some sort of); nikakav (no sort of); vsyakakav (every sort of); and the relative pronoun kakavto (the sort of ... that ... ). The adjective ednakuv ("the same") derives from the same radical.
Example phrases include:
An interesting phenomenon is that these can be strung along one after another in quite long constructions, e.g.
An extreme, albeit colloquial, example with almost no intrinsic lexical meaning – yet which is meaningful to the Bulgarian ear – would be:
—Note: the subject of the sentence is simply the pronoun "taya" (lit. "this one here"; colloq. "she").
Another interesting phenomenon that is observed in colloquial speech is the use of takova (neuter of takyv) not only as a substitute for an adjective, but also as a substitute for a verb. In that case the base form takova is used as the third person singular in the present indicative and all other forms are formed by analogy to other verbs in the language. Sometimes the "verb" may even acquire a derivational prefix that changes its meaning. Examples:
Another use of takova in colloquial speech is the word takovata, which can be used as a substitution for a noun, but also, if the speaker doesn't remember or is not sure how to say something, they might say takovata and then pause to think about it:
In Bulgarian, the numerals 1 and 2 are inflected for gender.
Furthermore, cardinal numerals take special endings when:
Notes: