Talk:Ukrainian grammar

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[edit] Inconsistency

Sonant Common Slavic ḷ and ḹ became ov, while word final *lǔ became v. For example, Common Slavic *vḹkǔ becomes vovk in Ukrainian BUT in the Proto-Slavic language article it states: existence of syllabic sonorants in Proto-Slavic is not generally accepted, they may have developed only in individual Slavic dialects (as many believe, no syllabic sonorants were in East Slavic dialects); many scholars postulate the group ъl, ьl, ъr, ьr instead of the syllabic sonorants l̥, ĺ̥, r̥, ŕ̥. -Iopq 12:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Consensus seems to be that there were no sonants. Hence, I have changed the section. Woollymammoth 21:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transcription and Cyrillic

These statements are totally confusing:

  1. Hard Vowels (a, y (from Common Slavic *y), o, and u / а, и (from Common Slavic *ы), о, and у)
  2. Soft Vowels (e, i and y (from Common Slavic *i) / е, і and и (from Common Slavic *и)

It took me quite a while and a lot of thinking before I realized that the same information was being expressed twice, once in Roman letters and once in Cyrillic. The letter-shape y represents different sounds in each alphabet, and Roman-letter "u" in italics u looks practically identical to Cyrillic "и" in italics и. If I had read ahead to the consonant section I would have gotten it quicker, but that shouldn't be necessary. You need to make it clear which are Roman letters and which are Cyrillic, and that the information is indicated twice.

Sorry for the confusion. Hope this is better (It is not ideal). Woollymammoth 23:15, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Nominative?

The article says: 'Another interesting aspect of Ukrainian (and most other Slavic languages) is that in a "negation", nouns that would normally be placed in the nominative case are placed in the genitive case.' Are you sure that the nominative and not the accusative case is meant here? In Polish an object which would be in the accusative case in a positive sentence appears in the genitive in a negative one. Widziałem dziewczynę - I saw a/the girl-ACC Nie widziałem dziewczyny - I didn't see a/the girl-GEN

Pittmirg 07:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Quite True. Corrected. Woollymammoth 15:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Palatalization

The Current phonological changes section erroneously states (in § 1.1 and § 2.1) that г and ґ mutate into ж or з. In reality, ґ mutates into дж or дз (see Літера, за якою тужать in Б. Антоненко-Давидович Як ми говоримо, Київ, «Либідь», 1991, p. 213). Sclerolith (talk) 06:05, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cyrillic Sounds?

I've heard of Cyrillic letters, but what is a Cyrillic sound? The Classification of consonants section classifies the Ukrainian р sound as Cyrillic! Isn't it an alveolar trill?

Also, the opening statement of the section that "a fourfold categorisation of consonants can be made" is confusing. Wouldn't it be easier to say, "consonants can be divided into four categories"? What is a 'fourfold categorization'? At first, it made me think that it meant "consonants can be categorized by four criteria, or in four different ways." Sclerolith (talk) 06:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)