The grammar of Macedonian is, in many respects, similar to that of some other Balkan languages (constituent languages of the Balkan ), especially Bulgarian. Macedonian exhibits 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, the lack of an infinitival verb, and the constructions with ima/nema formed with the auxiliary "to have", among others.
Orthography The Macedonian orthography (правопис, pravopis) encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the Macedonian language.
Alphabet
In 1880, self-taught grammarian Georgi Pulevski made the first attempt at a Macedonian grammar. The modern Macedonian alphabet was developed by linguists in the period after the Second World War, who based their alphabet on the phonetic alphabet of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, though a similar writing system was used by Krste Misirkov in the late 19th century. The Macedonian language had previously been written using the Cyrillic with local adaptations from either the Serbian or Bulgarian alphabets. The first grammar of the Macedonian language was written by linguist Krume Kepeski in 1946, while linguist Horace Lunt has been credited with writing the first scholarly grammar of the language.
The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Macedonian alphabet, along with the IPA value for each letter:
CyrillicIPAА аБ бВ вГ гД дЃ ѓЕ еЖ жЗ зЅ ѕИ иCyrillicIPAЈ јК кЛ л/ɫ/, Љ љМ мН нЊ њО оП пР рС сCyrillicIPAТ тЌ ќУ уФ фХ хЦ цЧ чЏ џШ ш
The cursive version of the alphabet is slightly different:
Punctuation Punctuation (интерпункција, interpunkcija) 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 periods (.), question marks (?), exclamation marks (!), commas (,), semicolons (;), colons (:), dashes (–), hyphens (-), ellipses (...), different types of inverted commas and quotation marks ( ‚‘, „“), brackets ((), [], {}) (which are for syntactical uses), as well as apostrophes (',’), solidi (/), equal signs (=), and so forth.
Syntax The canonical word order of Macedonian is SVO (subject–verb–object), but word order is variable. Word order may be changed for poetic effect (inversion is common in poetry).
Generally speaking, the syntactic constituents of the language are:
sentence or clause – the sentence can be simple and more complex. noun phrase or phrase – one or more words that function as single unit. complex sentence – a combination of two sentences and clauses. text – a set of sentences that are syntactically and semantically linked.
Morphology
Words, even though they represent separate linguistic units, are linked together according to the characteristics they possess. Therefore, the words in Macedonian can be grouped into various groups depending on the criteria that is taken into consideration. Macedonian words can be grouped according to the meaning they express, their form and their function in the sentence. As a result of that, there are three types of classification of the Macedonian words: semantic, morphological and syntactic classification.
According to the semantic classification of the words, in the language there are eleven word classes: nouns, adjectives, numbers, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections and modal words.
Nouns, adjectives, numbers, pronouns and verbs belong to the open word class, whereas the prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, particles, interjections and modal words belong to the closed word class. This is the morphological classification of the words. Finally, there are two large groups according to the syntactic classification. The larger part of the words belong to group of lexical words, and such words are: nouns, adjectives, numbers, pronouns, verbs, adverbs and modal words. The prepositions, conjunctions, particles and interjections belong to the group of function words.
Nouns Macedonian nouns (именки, imenki) belong to one of three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and are inflected for number (singular and plural), definiteness, and marginally for case.
Gender
Noun gender is easily predicted from a word's final letter in its singular form:
Feminine nouns usually end in -а, e.g. сестра (sestra, 'sister'), книга (kniga, 'book'). Some feminine nouns, however, end in a consonant. Most of these are abstract nouns ending in -ст, e.g. радост (radost, 'joy'), вест (vest, 'news'). A few other irregular feminine nouns refer to times of the day or year, e.g. ноќ (noḱ, 'night'), вечер (večer, 'evening'), есен (esen, 'fall'), пролет (prolet, 'spring').
Masculine nouns almost always end in consonants, e.g. брат (brat, 'brother'), град (grad, 'city'). Very rarely, masculine nouns end in -о or -а, e.g. татко (tatko, 'father'), колега (kolega, 'colleague').
Neuter nouns almost always end in -о or -е, e.g. место (mesto, 'place'), дете (dete, 'child').
Number
As in English, plural nouns are formed using a suffix; whereas English simply adds -s to each noun, in Macedonian suffixes vary by gender:Kramer 26–28, 45-47
Plural formation of regular Macedonian nouns Gender Singular ending Plural ending Examples Masculine (one syllable) consonant -ови градови (gradovi, 'cities'), паркови (parkovi, 'parks') Masculine (multiple syllables) -и студенти (studenti, 'students'), наставници (nastavnici, 'teachers') Feminine -а жени (ženi, 'women'), куќи (kuḱi, 'houses') Neuter -о, -це, -ие, -ште, -ње -а села (sela, 'villages'), јајца (jajca, 'eggs') -е -иња кучиња (kučinja, 'dogs'), кафиња (kafinja, 'coffees')
Definiteness The article (член, člen) is postfixed, as in Bulgarian, Albanian and Romanian. In Macedonian there is only the definite article. 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 . is the existence of three definite articles pertaining to position of the object: medial and/or unspecified, proximal (or close) and distal (or distant).
The definite articles Singular PluralMasculineFeminineNeuterMasculineFeminineNeuterMedial −от (−ot) −та (−ta) −то (−to) −те (−te) −те (−te) −та (−ta)Proximal −ов (−ov) −ва (−va) −во (−vo) −ве (−ve) −ве (−ve) −ва (−va)Distal −он (−on) −на (−na) −но (−no) −не (−ne) −не (−ne) −на (−na)
Examples: Јас го видов човекот (Jas go vidov čovekot, 'I saw the man', medial): the subject, 'man', is either close to the interlocutor or its position is unspecified; Јас го видов човеков (Jas go vidov čovekov, 'I saw this man', proximal; "and only this man"): the subject, 'man', is close to the speaker (and possibly the interlocutor(s) as well); Јас го видов човекон (Jas go vidov čovekon, 'I saw that man', distal; "and only that man"): the subject, 'man', is far from both the speaker and the interlocutor(s).
In the masculine singular, −от/−ов/−он is used after a consonant, −та/−ва/−на after −а (e.g. судијата 'the judge'), and −то/−во/−но after a vowel other than −а (e.g. таткото 'the father').
Vocative case Macedonian lost the traditional (Slavic) grammatical cases during its development and became an analytic language. The case endings were replaced with a complex system of prepositions; however, there are still some traces left of the vocative case in contemporary Macedonian. The vocative case is formed by adding the endings '–o' or '–e' (for feminine nouns), '–u' (for masculine monosyllabic nouns), and '–e' (for masculine polysyllabic nouns). For example, пријател ('friend') takes the form of пријателе ('friend!').Compare with other languages in the Balkan sprachbund; Bulgarian: приятел and приятелю; Serbo-Croatian: prijatelj and prijatelju; Greek: φίλος and φίλε; Romanian: prieten and prietene. The vocative is used almost exclusively for singular masculine and feminine nouns.
Pronouns
Macedonian pronouns decline for case ('падеж'), i.e., their function in a phrase as subject (ex. јас 'I'), direct object (него 'him'), or object of a preposition (од неа 'from her').
Based on their meaning and their function in a sentence, pronouns fall into one of the following categories:
Types of pronouns Examples Demonstrative pronouns ова (ova, 'this'), она (ona, 'that'), овде (ovde, 'here'), таму (tamu, 'there') Indefinite pronouns некој (nekoj, 'somebody'), нешто (nešto, 'something') Interrogative pronouns кој (koj, 'who'), кого/ кому (kogo/ komu, 'whom'), што (što, 'what') Personal pronouns јас (jas, 'I'), ти (ti, 'you'), тој (toj, 'he'), таа (taa, 'she'), тоа (toa, 'it'), ние (nie, 'we') Possessive pronouns мој (moj, 'my'), твој (tvoj, 'your'), нејзин (nejzin, 'her'), негов (negov, 'his'), наш (naš, 'our') Relative pronouns кој (koj, 'who'), којшто (kojšto, 'which'), што (što, 'that'), чиј (čij, 'whose'), чијшто (čijšto, 'whose') Reflexive pronounand reciprocal pronouns себе (sebe, 'himself, herself'), сe (se, 'self') Universal pronouns сите (site, 'all'), секој (sekoj, 'everybody', 'each'), сѐ (se, 'everything'), секаде (sekade, 'everywhere')
Verbs
Macedonian has a complex system of verbs (глаголи, glagoli). Generally speaking Macedonian verbs have the following characteristics, or categories as they are called in the Macedonian studies: tense, mood, person, type, transitiveness, voice, gender, and number.
According to the categorization, all Macedonian verbs are divided into three major subgroups: a-subgroup, e-subgroup and i-subgroup. Furthermore, the e-subgroup is divided into three more subgroups: a-, e- and i-subgroups. This division is done according to the ending (or the last vowel) of the verb in the simple present, singular, third person.
The Macedonian simple verb forms are: Present tense (сегашно време) Imperfect (минато определено несвршено времe, 'past definite incomplete tense') Aorist (минато определено свршено време, 'past definite complete tense') Imperative (заповеден начин) Verbal l-form (глаголска л-форма) Verbal adjective (глаголска придавка) Verbal noun (глаголска именка) Verbal adverb (глаголски прилог)
The Macedonian complex verb forms are: Perfect of imperfective verbs (минато неопределено несвршено време, 'past indefinite incomplete tense') Perfect of perfective verbs (минато неопределено свршено време, 'past indefinite complete tense') Past perfect tense (предминато време) Future tense (идно време) Future-in-the-past (минато-идно време) Future perfect tense (идно прекажано) Potential mood (можен начин) Have-construction (има-конструкција) Be-construction (сум-конструкција) To-construction (да-конструкција)
Aspect Verbal aspect, which expresses how a given action extends over time, is a fundamental feature of Macedonian grammar. Almost every verb is categorized as either imperfective, suggesting an action which is figuratively ongoing, or perfective, suggesting an action which is bounded (with a clear beginning and end).Kramer (2011), 96-99 A verb's aspect can be marked in many different, somewhat regular ways. Together, imperfective and perfective verbs with corresponding meanings form aspect pairs.
Imperfective verbs are used to emphasize that an action is ongoing ("I am reading now"), repeated or habitual ("Every day I read"), or a general fact ("I like to read"). Because the present is understood to be an ongoing state, statements in the present tense must include an imperfective verb. Imperfective verbs sometimes take the suffix -ува, e.g. impf. кажува / pf. каже (kažuva / kaže, 'say, tell') Imperfective and perfective verbs sometimes have the same length but differ by a key vowel and/or consonant, e.g. impf. се враќа / pf. се врати (se vraḱa / se vrati, 'return'), impf. прима / pf. прими (prima / primi, 'receive')