Lection 1. The noun in the contrasted languages

1. GENERAL REMARKS

2. GENDER

3. NUMBER

4. CASES

1. General remarks

In this chapter we describe the characteristics of the Ukrainian noun: gender, number, and case; these are followed by an overview of the syntactic properties of the noun (such as case government, occurrence with preposi­tions), and a presentation of the most productive processes of nominal word formation.

2. Gender

All Ukrainian nouns have gender: that is, they are identified as either 'mascu­line', 'feminine', or 'neuter', as is the case in German, Russian, Latin, Greek, et al. Some nouns will be 'masculine' or 'feminine' because they refer to male or female biological entities (such as дочка 'daughter'); this pheno­menon is termed 'natural gender'. A small number can refer to males or to females while being grammatically 'feminine'; compare дитина 'child', людина 'person'. The vast majority of nouns have 'grammatical gender', as they are marked for gender without a biological basis; thus, for example, стіл 'table', is masculine but does not represent a male being. All nouns carry a 'gender marker'; it is the last sound (not necessarily letter) of a word in the nominative case (the 'dictionary' or 'citation form') that will generally indicate to which grammatical gender it is assigned. Some of these markers are unambiguous, such that the gender of the noun in question is immedi­ately clear, while others can signal two possible genders; in the latter instance, semantic clues (if a person is being represented) or particular suffixes can give hints as to which gender is involved (as a rule one gender per suffix).

The gender of a significant number of nouns borrowed from non-Slavonic languages can be opaque: as a rule, those ending in a consonant are mascu­line, while those in -a are feminine; all others, especially those involving final vowels other than -a, vary from instance to instance. All of the possible patterns of gender distribution, including borrowings, are outlined in the following sections.

Nouns ending in vowels other than -o/-e

The number of nouns in Ukrainian that end in vowels other than -а (-я), -о, -е (in other words, -i and -у/-ю) are few indeed; these are all borrowings from other languages and indeclinable. The assignment of gender to such words follows the general guidelines described, for example:

Neuter:

інтерв'ю interview

попурі potpourri

рев'ю revue, review

сарі sari

Masculine (animals):

зебу zebu

какаду cockatoo

колібрі hummingbird

поні pony

Common gender:

рефері referee

парвеню parvenu(e)

комі Komi (a Finno-Ugric people in Russia)

саамі 'Saami' (also known as Lapp(s))

Many words referring to real-specific phenomena, such as forces of nature not occurring in Ukraine, may be assigned to the gender of the nouns which describe those phenomena. Thus, for example, specific kinds of wind will be masculine because вітер 'wind' is masculine (for example, памперо, солано, сироко, торнадо). The same is true of language names that do not fit the Ukrainian adjectival pattern; thus, аймара, бенгалі, навахо, пушту, урду, гінді, гуджарані, саамі (the language, not the people), ідиш, есперанто, can all occur as feminines because they are classified as а мова 'language'. Where there is ambiguity or uncertainty such words will be used together with the classifier мова, thereby clarifying the gender problem. The same is true of many geographic names, which are provided with an unambiguous Ukrain­ian noun, such as ріка Міссурі, озеро Тітікака, атол Бікіні, гора Кіліманджаро, et al.

Very few nouns are assimilated as feminines only; the following are identi­fied as such on the basis of a feminine Ukrainian qualifying noun:

авеню avenue (feminine as Ukr. вулиця 'street' is understood)

штрасе street (see the preceding entry)

закуска-антре snack, bite to eat (here the Ukrainian noun is present in initial position)

3. Number

The vast majority of Ukrainian nouns have 'number'; that is, their endings reflect 'singularity' or 'plurality'. In this respect, Ukrainian is like all Euro­pean languages, from English to French, Polish and Russian to Finnish: 'table' (singular), 'tables' (plural). The exceptions to this pattern are those words of foreign origin which, for reasons outlined in 2.3, are indeclinable; as they cannot take part in the Ukrainian declensional system, they cannot reflect number either. In such nouns it is context alone (an accompanying adjective or verb form) that will indicate whether the given form represents just one or more than one item. Markers of number, singular vs. plural, are described for each noun type in 2.3, in the context of the declensional system as a whole.

4. Cases

THE CASES: BASIC MEANINGS

The noun, adjective, pronoun, and numeral are declined in Ukrainian, as they are in German, Latin, Russian, and many other languages; this means that they have case endings which show the function of a particular word in a sentence (for example, as subject, object, and so on). The basic meanings of the seven cases, listed below in English and Ukrainian ('case' відмінок), are as follows:

nominative - називний The case of the subject (‘I read a book').

accusative - знахідний The case of the direct object (‘I read a book';

'I saw him').

genitive - родовий The case of possession ('the beginning of the

day'; 'Ivan's book').

dative - давальний The case of the indirect object (‘I sent the

letter to Natasha').

locative - місцевий The case of location or 'place where' ('He

lives in Kiev').

instrumental - орудний The case of instrument or accompaniment

('with Ivan', 'by means of X').

vocative - кличний The case used in addressing someone ('Ivan!'

will have an ending here)

Note that in some grammars the locative is termed the prepositional, as it is only used in conjunction with a preposition (compare Russian предлoжный падеж 'prepositional case'); as the Ukrainian name for this case does in fact mean locative (місце 'place', 'location'), we have chosen to retain the corresponding term in English. The use of the cases is described below.