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 and the development of a complex evidential system to distinguish between witnessed and several kinds of non-witnessed information.
Nouns
Bulgarian nouns have the categoriesgrammatical gender, number, case and definiteness. A noun has one of three specific grammatical genders and two numbers. The plural is formed by adding to or replacing the singular ending, most commonly in the following ways:
sing.
plur.
masc.
-conson.
+и +ове
fem.
-а / -я
-и
neut.
-о -е
-а +та
With cardinal numbers and some adverbs, masculine nouns use a separate numerical plural formбройна множествена форма . It is a remnant 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. –
стол → много столове → два стола / десет стола.
Definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun: When the two are combined, the plural ending comes first:
Case system
Old Bulgarian had a system of seven cases, but only three remain intact: the accusative, dative, and nominative; and only in personal and some other pronouns. Though Bulgarian has lost most of its declensions, it retains many remnants of the old, more complex case system. These make up the modern genitive, vocative, and instrumental cases. Being rare, 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 with the genitive below.
the accusative and the dative have mostly merged as an oblique case. The distinction between the two cases is preserved:
* in the personal pronouns – their short forms are in common use, and have distinct forms for accusative and dative – e.g. ме vs. ми, я vs. ѝ. The long form of the dative case is archaic, and accusative constructions with the preposition на are usually used instead.
* in the masculine interrogative pronoun кой, and all of its derivatives – these, however, are only declined when they refer to men:
**кой – кого – кому .
**the words някой and никой follow the same pattern as кой;
**всеки and друг are similar, but extremely rare.
*the relative pronouns който , когото and комуто – again, only declined when referring to men:
**човекът, с когото говоря
**столът, на който седя
the genitive had become involved in restructuring already in late Proto-Slavic, where it replaced the accusative of animate masculine singulars. This form, in -а, was not adopted in Standard Bulgarian. However, the grammarians who standardised the language in the 19th century specified an identical form as the incomplete definite article suffix, contrasting with the complete definite article in -ът; this distinction was artificially invented and did not occur in any Bulgarian dialect of the time. The incomplete definite article is used with definite masculine singular nouns which are not the subject of a sentence, including as objects of verbs and prepositions:
* in social descriptors – e.g. приятел → приятелю, учител → учителю
* There is a tendency to avoid them in many personal names, as the use of feminine name forms in -o 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, Маргарито are today seen as rude or, at best, unceremonious, and declining foreign names as in *Джоне or *Саймъне could only be 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', Перикле, Зевсе, etc.
* Vocative is still in full and regular use for general nouns such as господине, госпожице, госпожо, бабо, майко, сине.
the instrumental'
* mostly for set phrases, such as нощем ; сбогом ; or бегом
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
Bulgarian pronouns vary in gender, number, definiteness and case. The distinguishable types of pronouns include:
personal, possessive, interrogative, demonstrative, reflexive, summative, negative, indefinite and relative.
Verbs
'' Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar. They are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect, voice, nine tenses, five moods and six non-finite verbal forms. Bulgarian verbs are divided into three conjugations.
* e.g. искам да си тук - iskam da si tuk - I want that you are here, I want you to be 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 was
The imperative has its own conjugation - usually by adding -и or -ай to the root of the verb:
e.g. sit - сядам → сядай
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 видях. Lyubomir saw-1pSg It is clear that the subject is "аз" , 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 поздрави Иван. Girls-the greeted-3pSg Ivan. Иван момичетата поздрави. Ivan girls-the greeted-3pSg. Момичетата Иван поздрави. Girls-the Ivan greeted-3pSg. Поздрави Иван момичетата. Greeted-3pSg Ivan girls-the. Поздрави момичетата Иван. Greeted-3pSg 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 поздравиха момичетата. Ivan greeted-3pPl girls-the. Момичетата Иван поздравиха. Girls-the Ivan greeted-3pPl. Иван момичетата поздравиха. Ivan girls-the greeted-3pPl. Поздравиха момичетата Иван. Greeted-3pPl girls-the Ivan. Поздравиха Иван момичетата. Greeted-3pPl Ivan girls-the. The clitic doubling 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... sound-screened the roles. 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 е поздравила Мария. Ivan has greeted-3pSgFem Maria. Maria has greeted Ivan. Мария е поздравил Иван. Maria 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 - add "-ma"
* e.g. 2 chairs - dva stola; 2 brothers - dvama bratya
referring to an approximate number - add "-ina"
* e.g. dvadeset dushi - 20 people; dvadesetina dushi - about 20 people
they are used as common nouns - add the feminine "-ka/-tsa"
Notes:
In Bulgarian, numerals can be used directly before uncountable nouns - e.g. vodа "water" → edna voda "a glass of water".
The word edni can be translated as "some" - e.g. edni tzigari "some cigarettes".
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 to also mean "7/8 men" rather than "around 7/8".
The smaller denomination of the Bulgarian currency - the stotìnka literally mean "hundredths" ; 100 stotinki = 1 lev.
