Macedonian grammar

Macedonian grammar refers to the morphology and syntax of the Macedonian language which is, in many respects, similar to the grammar of some other Balkan languages (constituent languages of the "Balkan sprachbund") — especially Serbian and Bulgarian.

It has a number of grammatical features that distinguish it from most other Slavic languages, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article, and the lack of a verb infinitive, among others.

General characteristics

yntax

The canonical word order of Macedonian is AVO (Agent-Verb-Object), but word order is variable. Word order may be changed for poetic effect (inversion is common in poetry).

Nominal morphology

The Macedonian nominal system distinguishes two numbers ("singular" and "plural"), three genders ("masculine", "feminine" and "neuter"), case and definiteness. Definiteness is expressed by three definite articles pertaining to the position of the object ("unspecified", "proximate" and "distal") which are suffixed to the noun.

Definiteness

The article ("определен член") is , as in Bulgarian, Albanian and Romanian. One feature that has no parallel in any other standard Balkan languageStandard Bulgarian has only the unspecified form, although three definite article forms exist in certain Bulgarian dialects, notably the vernaculars of Tran and parts of the Rhodopes ref|stoykov2002a.] is the existence of three definite articles pertaining to position of the object: "unspecified", "proximate" (or "close") and "distal" (or "distant").

Adjective

Adjectives ("придавки") agree with nouns in gender, number and definiteness with their noun and usually appear before it.

Comparison

Adjectives have three degrees of comparison ("споредбни степени") — positive, comparative and superlative. The positive form is identical to all the aforementioned forms. The other two are formed regularly, by prepending the particle "по" and the word "нај" directly before the positive to form the comparative and superlative, respectively, regardless of its comprising of one or two words.

In contrast to other Slavic languages that have the perfect tense, it is almost universally built with the verb "to be" and a past active participle; that is also an option in Macedonian. The older common Slavic form with "сум" ("to be") is predominant in the east of the country, while the form with "to have" is more widespread in the west, but has spread in the younger generations due to the influence of the standard language ref|friedman2001.

The sentence "I have seen" reads:

:I will come.

In this respect, both Macedonian and Bulgarian differ from other Slavic languages. In Macedonian, as in other Balkan Sprachbund languages (Bulgarian, Greek and Albanian) the clitic is fixed, whereas in Serbo-Croatian it inflects for person and number ref|tomic2003. In both cases the clitic is derived from a verb meaning "to want".

Future-in-the-past is expressed by means of the same clitic and a past tense inflected form of the verb:

:He would come/he would have come.

In this respect, Macedonian is different from Bulgarian: Macedonian is consistent in the use of "ќе" as a clitic, whereas the equivalent Bulgarian construction involves the inflection of the clitic for tense, person and number as a regular verb ("щях да дойда", "I would [have] come"; "щеше да дойде", "he would [have] come").

An interesting fact is that a past tense form of the verb can be used in a future sense as well, although this construction is mostly limited to older speakers.

Examples:
* "Те отепав, штом те фатам." ("I have killed you, when I get you")
* "Те фатам ли, те казнив." ("As soon as I grab you, I have punished you")

Orthography

Macedonian orthography ("правопис", pronounced|ˈpravɔpis) encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the Macedonian language. It is based on a combination of and historical principles. While largely phonemic in practice it shows, in some instances, principles that are etymological or analogous to other spellings.

Alphabet

Punctuation

Punctuation ("интерпункција") marks are one or two part graphical marks used in writing, denoting tonal progress, pauses, sentence type (syntactic use), abbreviations, et cetera.

Marks used in Macedonian include full stops (.), question marks (?), exclamation marks (!), commas (,), semicolons (;), colons (:), dashes (–), hyphens (-), ellipses (...), different types of inverted commas and quotation marks ("", ", ‚‘, „“, »«), brackets ((), [] , {}) (which are in syntactical use), as well as apostrophes (',’), solidi (/), equal signs (=), and so forth.

Notes

References

# Стойков, С. (2002) "Българска диалектология", 4-то издание. стр. 127. Also [http://www.promacedonia.org/jchorb/st/index.htm available online] .
# Friedman, V. (2001) "Macedonian" (SEELRC), p.17.
# Friedman, V. (2001) "Macedonian" (SEELRC), p.40.
# Christina E. Kramer (1999), "Makedonski Jazik" (The University of Wisconsin Press).
# Tomić, O. (2003) "Genesis of the Balkan Slavic Future Tenses" in "Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Ottawa Meeting 2003" (Michigan : Michigan Slavic Publications).