🗣️ 13. Verbs

The Ukrainian verb is built on aspect. Almost every verbal meaning comes as a pair of verbs, an imperfective and a perfective (писати / написати pysaty / napysaty 'write'), and the pair decides which tenses exist: the imperfective has a present, a past and a future; the perfective has a past and a future but no present, because its present-tense form is its future. On top of aspect the verb has person and number in the present and future, gender and number (not person) in the past, three moods (indicative, imperative, conditional), a reflexive postfix -ся, an infinitive, a set of participles, two adverbial participles and the impersonal predicative forms in -но, -то (зроблено zrobleno 'it has been done'), which have no counterpart in Russian or English.

The chapter gives the inventory of forms (§1), aspect and how pairs are formed (§2), the two conjugations (§3), the reflexive verb (§4), the present (§5), the past and the pluperfect (§6), the three futures (§7), the imperative (§8), the conditional (§9), the infinitive (§10), the participles (§11), the adverbial participles (§12), the forms in -но, -то (§13); §14 says how Mova handles verbs. The irregular verbs, the consonant alternations of the present and the stress classes are in 14. Irregular verbs, alternations and stress. The syntax of the passive is in 28. Voice and the passive, aspectual prefixes as word formation in 16. Derivation: prefixes.

The norm described is that of the Український правопис (Pravopys 2019 §§115–120), the official orthography of 2019, which also states the inflection of the verb. Older public-domain grammars are cited where they record the living variation the current norm has settled: Smal-Stockyj 1913 (in German), Simovych 1919 and Syniavskyi 1922. Counts are from UD Ukrainian 2.18 (IU and ParlaMint, train + dev + test), from the VESUM dictionary (dict_corp_vis.txt.bz2, release 6.8.6) and from the Leipzig ukr_news_2024 sample (14.2 million words), all made on 2026-11-06. IU and VESUM are under non-commercial licences, so only their counts are given; the examples are constructed unless they carry a ParlaMint sentence id.

Transliteration follows the scholarly system used throughout the manual (x for х, h for г, g for ґ, y for и, i for і, ji for ї, je for є, č, š, ž, šč for ч, ш, ж, щ, c for ц, an apostrophe for ь).

1. The forms of the verb

Simovych (1919 §238) reduces the system to two stems and counts seven simple forms built on them. The infinitive stem (чита-ти, носи-ти, нес-ти) gives the infinitive, the past tense, the past adverbial participle and the passive participle; the present stem (чита-ю, нош-у/нос-иш, нес-у) gives the present (or perfective future), the imperative and the present adverbial participle. Everything else is built from these with auxiliaries and particles.

How the forms are distributed in running text (UD 2.18, VERB and AUX tokens, all three files; 2026-11-06):

The two treebanks differ as their genres do: narrative IU is dominated by the past, parliamentary speech by the present, the first person (2 624 first-person forms against 651 in IU), infinitives after modal verbs and imperatives (голосуйте 'vote', дайте слово 'give the floor').

2. Aspect

2.1 What aspect means

A perfective verb presents an event as a whole, with its boundary reached: прочитав книжку 'read the book (through)', зустрів друга 'met a friend'. An imperfective verb presents a situation without that boundary: in progress (читав, коли ти подзвонив 'was reading when you called'), repeated (щодня читав 'read every day'), as a general fact (читає повільно 'reads slowly'), or simply naming the action (Ти читав «Кобзаря»? 'Have you read the Kobzar?', where the question is whether the action took place at all). Smal-Stockyj (1913 §15) gives exactly this division and adds that "for almost every verbal concept one needs two verbs".

The perfective has no present tense. Its forms with present endings refer to the future: прочитаю 'I will read (through)', побачить 'he will catch sight of'. Smal-Stockyj (1913 §38) explains the reason with побачити 'catch sight of': a single instant cannot be reported as going on now. UD Ukrainian follows this analysis: in both treebanks no perfective verb carries Tense=Pres; the non-past perfective is Tense=Fut.

Share of each aspect among VERB tokens (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06):

By form, perfectives are the majority in the past of IU (2 835 against 2 538 imperfective past tokens), in the future (568 against 126 synthetic imperfective futures in IU), in the impersonal forms (195 of 197 in IU, all 302 in ParlaMint) and among infinitives in ParlaMint (1 972 against 1 337, mostly after хочу, прошу, можемо 'I want, I ask, we can'). Every VERB token in both treebanks carries an Aspect value: the annotation never leaves aspect unspecified.

2.2 How pairs are formed

There are five main patterns.

1. Prefixation (imperfective → perfective). A prefix added to a simplex imperfective makes it perfective, ideally without adding meaning ("empty" or purely perfectivizing prefixes):

Which prefix a verb takes is lexical; it is not predictable from the verb.

2. Secondary imperfectivization (prefixed perfective → imperfective). A prefix that adds meaning (пере- 're-', ви- 'out', від- 'away', за- 'in, behind') makes a new perfective; a suffix then makes its imperfective partner:

The suffix -ува-/-юва- is the productive one (підписати → підписувати 'sign'); verbs that already end in -ува- take -овува- (розрахувати → розраховувати 'calculate', використати → використовувати 'use'). Before -ува- the stem consonant alternates as in the passive participle (Pravopys 2019 §115.6: заморо́жувати, вино́шувати, виї́жджувати).

3. The semelfactive suffix -ну- (imperfective → perfective of a single act). сту́кати 'knock' → сту́кнути 'knock once', крича́ти 'shout' → кри́кнути 'give a shout', стриба́ти 'jump' → стрибну́ти, ки́дати 'throw' → ки́нути. Pravopys 2019 §115.8 also notes a small group of unprefixed perfectives with present endings, "most often meaning a single action": гри́мну, ля́жу, пущу́, сту́кну 'I will bang, lie down, let go, knock'.

4. Different stems (suppletion). A few frequent pairs share no stem:

5. Biaspectual verbs. Some verbs, many of them loans in -ува- and -ізува-, serve as both aspects, and context decides: атакува́ти 'attack', телеграфува́ти 'telegraph', жени́ти 'marry off', організува́ти 'organize', використа́ти/використо́вувати is a regular pair, but ліквідува́ти 'liquidate' is biaspectual. VESUM lists 2 269 verb spellings both as imperfective and as perfective lemmas (the figure includes reflexive verbs separately and some homographs; 2026-11-06). The tendency in usage is to give such verbs a prefixed perfective (зорганізувати, проатакувати) or a secondary imperfective (організовувати), so that the pair becomes explicit.

2.3 Verbs without a partner

Some verbs are imperfective only (imperfectiva tantum): states and relations like нале́жати 'belong', ма́ти 'have', коштува́ти 'cost', зна́ти 'know', перебува́ти 'be located', залежати 'depend'. Their prefixed relatives (узнати 'learn', вистояти 'withstand') are separate verbs, not aspect partners. Others are perfective only (perfectiva tantum): опини́тися 'find oneself (somewhere)', стрепену́тися 'start, give a jerk', знадобитися 'come in useful', and the many "accomplishing" verbs with на-...-ся (наї́стися 'eat one's fill'), роз-...-ся (розплакатися 'burst into tears') and по- in its delimitative sense (посиді́ти 'sit for a while', поговори́ти 'have a talk'), which have no imperfective (*посиджувати exists only as an iterative 'sit now and then').

2.4 Verbs of motion

Verbs of motion have two imperfectives: a determinate one for one directed motion (іти́/йти 'go on foot, be going', ї́хати 'ride, drive', нести́ 'carry', везти́ 'convey', бі́гти 'run', летіти 'fly', плисти́/пливти́ 'swim, sail', вести́ 'lead') and an indeterminate one for motion in general, back and forth or repeated (ходи́ти, ї́здити, носи́ти, вози́ти, бі́гати, літа́ти, пла́вати, води́ти). Prefixed with a spatial prefix, the determinate verb becomes perfective and the indeterminate one gives its imperfective: принести́ / прино́сити 'bring', ви́йти / вихо́дити 'go out', прилеті́ти / прилі́тати 'arrive by air', перевезти́ / перево́зити 'transport'. The forms of іти/йти and its compounds (піти, прийти, зайти, вийти, знайти) are in 14 §3.

2.5 Aspect in the other forms

• The imperfective imperative is the neutral one for invitations and for negative commands (Сідайте! 'Do sit down', Не відчиняй вікна 'Don't open the window'); the perfective imperative asks for one completed act (Відчини вікно 'Open the window').
• With negation an imperfective infinitive often replaces the perfective: не треба приходити 'there is no need to come'.
• The present adverbial participle exists only for imperfectives (читаючи); the past one for both, but is mainly perfective (§12).
• The analytic future буду + infinitive takes only imperfectives: буду писати but not *буду написати (Pravopys 2019 §115.8; Simovych 1919 §256.2).

3. The two conjugations

3.1 The endings

The present tense (and the perfective future) falls into two conjugations by its personal endings (Pravopys 2019 §115.2):

The I conjugation has -е- in the endings (and -уть/-ють in the 3rd plural), the II conjugation -и- (and -ать/-ять). The 3rd singular of the I conjugation has no -ть (несе́, пише, чує), unlike Russian несёт; a -ть appears only before the reflexive postfix (несеться, пишеться: §4). A very small group, да́ти, ї́сти, -ві́сти and бу́ти with their compounds, forms its own athematic class (14 §2).

3.2 Which verbs belong where

The infinitive alone does not show the class, but Pravopys 2019 §115.3 gives rules that cover nearly all verbs:

• II conjugation: verbs whose infinitive stem ends in -и-, -і-/-ї-, or in -а- after ж, ч, ш, and which lose that vowel in the 1st singular and 3rd plural: ба́чи-ти — ба́ч-у — ба́ч-ать, сиді́-ти — сидж-у́ — сид-я́ть, крича́-ти — крич-у́ — крич-а́ть; also all verbs in -отіти (бурмоті́ти, цокоті́ти), and боя́тися, стоя́ти, спа́ти, бі́гти.
• I conjugation: everything else, notably monosyllabic stems that keep their vowel (ми́ти — ми́ю, жи́ти — живу́), verbs in -і- that keep it (білі́ти — білі́ю 'turn white', against біли́ти — білю́ 'whiten', II), verbs in -а-/-я- that keep it (чита́ти — чита́ю, сі́яти — сі́ю) or replace it with a consonant change (писа́ти — пишу́), verbs in -ува- that drop -ва- (будува́ти — буду́ю), verbs in -ну- (ки́нути — ки́ну), consonant stems (нести́ — несу́, те́рти — тру), and a few others (жа́ти — жну, хоті́ти — хо́чу, сла́ти — шлю).

The minimal pairs in -іти are worth noting because only the conjugation separates them: білі́ти 'grow white' (I: біліє) and біли́ти 'make white' (II: білить); синіти 'turn blue' (I) and синити 'dye blue' (II).

Proportion in the dictionary (VESUM, lemmas with a 3rd singular present or perfective future, reflexive verbs counted as separate lemmas, substandard variants excluded; 2026-11-06):

The I conjugation is the larger class and takes new verbs in -ува- (тестувати, моделювати), -ати and -нути (лайкати — лайкнути 'like', VESUM slang) and state verbs in -іти; new verbs in -ити (гуглити — гуглю, апгрейдити — апгрейджу) join the II.

3.3 Consonant changes

In the I conjugation a consonant change, where it occurs, runs through the whole present (Pravopys 2019 §115.4): писа́ти — пишу́, пи́шеш, пи́ше; пекти́ — печу́, пече́ш; могти́ — мо́жу, мо́жеш; хоті́ти — хо́чу, хо́чеш. In the II conjugation it affects only the 1st singular (води́ти — воджу́, во́диш; носи́ти — ношу́, но́сиш), and labial stems insert л in the 1st singular and the 3rd plural (люби́ти — люблю́, лю́бить, лю́блять). The full table, with counts, is in 14 §5.

3.4 Short and long endings

Colloquial speech and songs shorten the 1st plural to -ем, -им (живем, робим, будем). Pravopys 2019 §115.8 admits будем and -мем "rarely" in the future; VESUM tags the short forms of the present as substandard (subst: 22 049 present and 27 312 future forms in -м). In the treebanks they are rare: of present and future 1st-plural forms, IU has 213 in -мо and 7 in -м (живем, поїдем, будем), ParlaMint 986 and 7 (будем five times, зможем, знаходимся). In songs and folk poetry they are ordinary (37. Register and variation). In the II conjugation the 3rd singular in -е (ходе for ходить) is dialectal (south-western and Polissian) and also tagged subst in VESUM.

4. The reflexive verb

The reflexive postfix is -ся (after a vowel also -сь) written together with the verb (Pravopys 2019 §115 Note 2, §118): мити — митися 'wash oneself', сміятися 'laugh', боятися 'be afraid'. In the 3rd singular a -ть is inserted before it in the I conjugation: б'є — б'ється, ллє — ллється, сміється. The form in -сь is a free variant after a vowel (годува́тися / годува́тись, сміявся / сміявсь); after a consonant only -ся is possible (смієшся).

Meanings: reflexive proper (митися 'wash oneself'), reciprocal (зустрічатися 'meet each other'), middle and emotional (турбуватися 'worry', дивуватися 'be surprised'), passive with inanimate subjects (Будинок будується 'The house is being built'), impersonal (Мені не спиться 'I can't sleep'), and reflexiva tantum with no base verb (сміятися, боятися, намагатися 'try').

In running text (UD 2.18, VERB and AUX tokens ending in -ся/-сь; 2026-11-06): IU 2 462, of which 343 in -сь; ParlaMint 1 817, of which 196 in -сь. The longer form dominates, but -сь is far from rare, especially in the past (сміялась, повернувсь) and in fiction.

Historically ся was a free clitic pronoun, as it still is in Polish (się) and in south-western Ukrainian dialects, where it can stand before the verb: я ся бою 'I am afraid', дивити му ся (Simovych 1919 §256 records Galician writers placing it after the future auxiliary, дивити ся му, and calls this incorrect for the Dnieper-based literary language). Simovych still wrote it apart (учить ся, налічуєть ся), as the orthographies of the time did; the modern orthographies write it together (9. Older Ukrainian and the old forms alive today).

5. The present tense

The present belongs to imperfectives only. Besides the actual present (Він зараз пише листа 'He is writing a letter now') it expresses habitual and general truths (Вода кипить при ста градусах 'Water boils at 100 degrees'), the historical present in narrative (Іду я вчора вулицею, аж бачу… 'I'm walking down the street yesterday and I see…'), a scheduled future (Завтра ми їдемо до Львова 'Tomorrow we are going to Lviv') and, in the 2nd person, generic statements (Як посієш, так і пожнеш 'As you sow, so you reap'). Smal-Stockyj (1913, syntax of the future, §§54–56) notes that proverbs prefer the perfective future for the same generic sense, "to indicate that the experience will hold and repeat in the future": Із спання не купиш вола 'Sleeping, one buys no ox'.

The verb бути 'be' has only one present form, є, for all persons, and is mostly omitted as a copula: Він учитель 'He [is a] teacher' (14 §1).

6. The past tense and the pluperfect

6.1 The past

The past tense has no personal endings. It goes back to the old active l-participle, which once combined with the present of бути ("I am having-read"); the auxiliary has been lost, so the past agrees with its subject in gender and number only (Pravopys 2019 §115.9; Simovych 1919 §241; Smal-Stockyj 1913 §42):

The masculine ending -в (pronounced [u̯], the в of the old л) appears after vowels; after consonants the masculine has no ending, and the vowel о, е of the closed syllable becomes і: ніс — несла́, віз — везла́, плів — плела́, мі́г — могла́, пі́к — пекла́; by analogy ліг (from лягти) and запрі́г (from запрягти) (Pravopys 2019 §115.9 Note 1). Stems in т, д lose them before л: класти — клав, кла́ла; вести — вів, вела́.

Verbs in unstressed -ну- without a semelfactive meaning may drop the suffix in the past (and in the infinitive): зблі́днути — зблід, зблі́дла; посо́хнути / посо́хти — посо́х, посо́хла or посо́хнув, посо́хнула; тягну́ти / тягти́ — тягла́, but тягну́в. Pravopys 2019 §115.9 Note 2 says that usage is not fully consistent here: both sets of forms occur.

Since the past has no person, the subject pronoun is normally expressed: я читав, ти читав, він читав. In the south-western dialects of the Dniester area the old auxiliary survives as a clitic marking person and number, спав=єм 'I slept', ходили=смо 'we walked', and it can move to the first word of the clause (хоч=ім ся вчила 'although I studied'). Fellerer (2022) shows on a corpus sample that these dialects drop the subject pronoun more often than the standard does, and links the pattern to Polish contact. Simovych (1919 §256) records the same clitics (єсь, сьмо, сьте) in Stefanyk and Franko and advises against them in the literary language (8. Regional varieties, diaspora and surzhyk).

6.2 The pluperfect and the particle було

The pluperfect (давноминулий час) is formed from the past of the verb and the past of бути in agreement: ходи́в був, ходи́ла була́, ходи́ли були́ (Pravopys 2019 §115.9). It marks an action earlier than another past event, and often one whose result was later cancelled: Я був пішов, але повернувся 'I had set off, but came back'. Simovych (1919 §255) gives it as a full tense and notes that Russian has none.

A related, more common form is the past with the invariable particle було (from the neuter of бути), which marks an action begun and interrupted, or intended and not carried out: Хвиля кинулась було підгризати спідні плити (Franko, quoted by Simovych 1919 §255) 'The wave was about to start gnawing at the slabs [but…]'; Я хотів було сказати, та змовчав 'I was going to say it but kept silent'. Smal-Stockyj (1913 §58) describes було, бувало with the past as giving "the sense of the pluperfect".

Both are rare in the treebanks. A past of бути directly followed by a past verb occurs 4 times in IU (був жив, були приготовили, були пропали, була ляпнула) and not at all in ParlaMint (2026-11-06; adjacent pairs only, so separated pluperfects are not counted). They live in fiction and in speech, especially in the south-west and in folk narrative.

7. The future: three forms

7.1 Perfective future

The perfective verb's present-tense forms are its future: напишу, зроблю, прийду, скажу. It is the most frequent future (568 tokens in IU, 583 in ParlaMint, against 126 and 71 imperfective synthetic futures, plus the analytic ones below).

7.2 Imperfective future: analytic and synthetic

An imperfective verb has two futures, both standard and both described in Pravopys 2019 §115.8:

The synthetic future is a fusion of the infinitive with the short present of an old verb meaning 'take, begin', яти / имати (иму, имеш…), as Pravopys 2019 says ("the shortened personal forms of the former verb яти, which merged with the infinitive and became verbal endings"). It is one of the features that set Ukrainian apart from Russian, which has only the analytic type; Belarusian and Polish have no synthetic future either. The reflexive postfix goes at the very end: ми́тимуся, боя́тимешся, молитиметься.

The fusion is recent enough that its history is visible in the grammars. Simovych (1919 §256) still explains му as a separate word and writes it apart in his tables (нести му, нести меш), but recommends writing it together "because the forms му, меш, ме never carry stress, like ся". He records the older stage in western dialects and writers: the auxiliary before the infinitive (А Бога не меш боятися? Stefanyk; мете… крутитись, Franko; муть облітати, Fedkovych), and the full forms йму, ймеш (зірниці ймуть світити 'the stars will shine', Fedkovych). Both he calls non-literary. Simovych names the Hutsul dialects among those where the auxiliary precedes the infinitive.

The analytic future can also stand in either order, буду нести or нести буду (Simovych 1919 §256), the second mostly in poetry and songs: Будеш, батьку, панувати, доки живуть люде (Shevchenko).

Which future people use. The choice is a matter of register and rhythm, not of meaning. Counts made on 2026-11-06 (synthetic: imperfective VERB forms in -тиму, -тимеш, -тиме, -тимемо, -тимем, -тимете, -тимуть with or without -ся; analytic: бути in the future, aux, whose head is an infinitive):

Written news prefers the synthetic future, especially with frequent impersonal verbs (матиме 'will have' 917 times, триватиме 'will last' 794, становитиме 'will amount to' 640, матимуть 534), while in spontaneous speech the analytic future dominates (будемо голосувати 'we will vote', буде працювати). The Leipzig analytic figure is an upper bound: the pattern also catches a few non-infinitives such as буде проти 'will be against' (19 cases).

7.3 The future with the l-form (dialectal)

In Galicia, Podillia, Bukovyna and Pokuttia a future of буду + past form is known: буду ходив, будеш робила, будемо несли (Simovych 1919 §256 Note; Smal-Stockyj 1913 §54 gives буду читав beside буду читати). Simovych quotes a Podillian song (Дівчинонько мила, що будеш робила на Вкраїні далекій? 'Dear girl, what will you be doing in far Ukraine?') and advises against the form in the literary language. It is a dialect form today and appears in literature as dialect colour.

8. The imperative

8.1 Endings

The imperative has synthetic forms for the 2nd singular and the 1st and 2nd plural (Pravopys 2019 §116):

The vowel endings appear (1) when stressed (бери́, живи́, печи́), (2) in prefixed verbs with stressed ви- whose simplex has final stress (ви́бери, ви́беріть), (3) after a consonant + -ну- (кри́кни, сту́кніть), (4) after a consonant + л, р (підкре́сли, прові́тріть). Otherwise the ending is zero: after vowels (грай, купу́й, стій), after labials, hushing sounds and р (сип, сип-мо; не горбся), and after the other consonants with a soft sign (сядь, сядьте).

Consonant changes follow the present: біжи́ (бігти), ляж (лягти), печи́ (пекти), кажи́, пиши́ (Pravopys 2019 §116 Notes 1–2). Їсти has їж, ї́жмо, ї́жте; дати has дай; -вісти verbs normally use the imperfective (розповідай 'tell', not *розповіж).

8.2 The first person plural

The synthetic 1st plural is a living form, used in speeches, songs and everyday invitations: Ходімо! 'Let's go', Скажімо 'Let's say', Почнімо 'Let's begin', Будьмо! 'Cheers (let us be)'. Its short form -ім is common in speech and verse (ходім, ідім); VESUM also has -імте (ходімте), tagged substandard. Counts (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06):

The most frequent 1st-plural imperative in both treebanks is скажімо 'let's say', used as a discourse marker (38. Dialogue and discourse markers). Speakers also form a 1st plural analytically with давай / давайте + infinitive or + 1st plural future (Давайте працювати, Давайте проголосуємо 'Let's vote'). Grammars give only the synthetic form (Pravopys 2019 §116); the analytic one belongs to speech: давай / давайте occur 131 times in ParlaMint and 8 times in IU (2026-11-06).

8.3 Third person and other periphrases

The 3rd person is analytic: хай or нехай + present or future: Нехай він прийде 'Let him come', Хай живе! 'Long live…!'. Smal-Stockyj (1913 §58) derives нехай, хай, най from нехати 'let'; най is the south-western form (Най буде так 'Let it be so'). The infinitive serves as a brusque command (Сидіти! 'Sit!', Не палити 'No smoking'), and the conditional as a polite one (Ти б відпочив 'You should rest').

9. The conditional

The conditional is the past form with the particle би (after a consonant) or б (after a vowel), written separately (Pravopys 2019 §117): я хоті́в би, він би сказа́в, я міг би взя́ти; я хоті́ла б, вона б сказа́ла, я б про це розпові́в. The particle can stand anywhere in the clause, usually after the first stressed word: Я б сказав / Я сказав би. It enters the conjunctions якби 'if (counterfactual)', щоб 'in order that', аби 'so that, if only', which carry the conditional mood themselves: Якби я знав, я б прийшов 'If I had known, I would have come'.

A past conditional combining the conditional with the pluperfect is old and literary: він би це давно був зробив 'he would have done it long ago' (Pravopys 2019 §117's own example); Simovych 1919 §257 calls it the past of the "possible mood": я пас би був. Today the plain conditional serves for both present and past unreal conditions.

UD Ukrainian marks the particle, not the verb, with Mood=Cnd. Counts: IU б 68, би 40; ParlaMint би 91, б 39 (2026-11-06). The spelling rule is phonological and the distribution follows from it, but writers do not apply it mechanically: б after a consonant (міг б) and би after a vowel (хотіла би) also occur (4. Connected speech).

10. The infinitive

The infinitive ends in -ти (Pravopys 2019 §118): жи́ти, нести́, пекти́, розумі́ти, ходи́ти; reflexive -тися or -тись. In speech and, with stylistic effect, in fiction and verse a short infinitive in -ть occurs after a vowel stem: брать, каза́ть, ки́нуть, ходи́ть (Pravopys 2019 §118 Note 1). Simovych (1919, remarks on shortened forms after §70, with §242) called it unnecessary "except perhaps in verse". VESUM lists 47 155 short infinitives (inf:short). UD marks them Variant=Short: IU has none; ParlaMint, transcribing speech, has 15 (сказать 11 times, передать 3, голосувать 1) out of 3 309 infinitives (2026-11-06). The -ть infinitive is also a feature of surzhyk and of Russian, which makes it socially marked in some contexts and simply colloquial or rhythmic in others (08, 37).

Two further groups belong here. Diminutive infinitives of nursery speech, спатки, їстки (Simovych 1919 §115), ходитоньки, спатоньки (VESUM tags them dimin), are part of the expressive morphology of 17. Derivation: suffixes. Infinitives of the type пекти́, могти́, лягти́, берегти́ (stems in к, г) end in stressed -ти́ and show the stem consonant in the infinitive that alternates elsewhere (печу, можу, ляжу, бережу).

11. Participles

11.1 Active participles

The active present participle in -учий/-ючий (I conjugation) and -ачий/-ячий (II) is the most discussed form of the Ukrainian verb. Pravopys 2019 §119 states the present norm: active present participles in -чий are "used mainly in the meaning of adjectives and nouns" (квіту́чий 'blossoming', живу́чий 'tenacious', лежа́чий 'lying', стоя́чий 'standing'), and "rarely" as participles proper (вико́нуючий, зроста́ючий, працю́ючий 'performing, growing, working').

The older grammars are stricter. Simovych (1919 §§187, 240) says that the participle in -чий "was once a separate verbal form" but that "the feeling for this form has been lost", so that surviving words (робучий 'hard-working', співучий 'melodious', летючий 'flying, volatile') are adjectives, and new participles cannot be formed at will; the same for the present passive in -мий (видимий 'visible', знайомий 'acquaintance', невгасимий 'inextinguishable'), which survives only in adjectives. Syniavskyi (1922 §66) writes that the present active participle "is in a state of disappearing". Smal-Stockyj (1913 §§38, 57) treats the "active participles" as the indeclinable forms in -чи (our adverbial participles, §12), used only adverbially. Behind this lies the observation that Ukrainian folk speech never developed the Church Slavonic and Russian participial adjectives in -щий, and that it expresses the meaning with a relative clause (той, що працює 'the one who works'), a noun (працівник 'worker', завідувач 'head', against завідуючий) or an adjective (чинний закон 'the law in force', not діючий закон; наявний 'available, existing', not існуючий).

The dictionary and the corpora show that this is a norm that usage contests.

• VESUM (release 6.8.6) has 4 574 adjective lemmas tagged as active participles (adjp:actv); 3 542 of them (77%) are tagged bad, VESUM's mark for non-normative forms. Almost all imperfective ones are: бажаючий, головуючий, діючий, завідуючий, знаючий, існуючий, керуючий, оточуючий, працюючий, співаючий all carry bad, while lexicalized adjectives such as блискучий, квітучий, колючий, лежачий, стоячий, сидячий are plain adjectives. The 2019 orthography admits виконуючий, працюючий "rarely"; VESUM rejects them: the two codifications do not agree.
• In UD (2026-11-06) active present participles are few: 38 tokens in IU, 27 in ParlaMint. The ParlaMint ones are the vocabulary of parliamentary procedure and administration: існуючої / існуючих (10), діючий / діючі / діючої (7), головуючий 'presiding', виступаючий / виступаючого 'the speaker', виконуючий 'acting', керуючими, контролюючих, регулюючих, правлячий 'ruling'.
• In the Leipzig news sample (14.2 M words, 2026-11-06) the recommended forms win, but the participles are not marginal: the six case forms counted of існуючий occur 193 times against 683 of наявний; of діючий 176 times against 841 of чинний.

The description, then: active present participles in -учий/-ючий are formed and used in administrative, technical and journalistic prose and in parliamentary speech, much less in fiction; the codified norm accepts the lexicalized ones and tolerates a few others; the dictionary that most software uses marks the rest as errors. Where a native alternative exists (чинний, наявний, головувач/головуючий), careful writers prefer it. Babych (2019), extending the VESUM lexicon from news and Wikipedia, finds new participial forms such as озоноруйнуючих 'ozone-destroying' among the words the static dictionary lacks: technical prose keeps coining them.

The active past participle in -лий is normative but limited to intransitive, mostly perfective verbs of change of state: пожо́вклий 'yellowed', зме́рзлий 'frozen', почорні́лий 'blackened', осі́лий 'settled', нави́слий 'overhanging', мину́лий 'past', зів'я́лий 'withered' (Pravopys 2019 §119.1; Syniavskyi 1922 §73). VESUM tags 1 121 of its active participles as perfective, nearly all of this type and none of them bad. The participle in -ший/-вший (бувший, згорівший) is not Ukrainian: Simovych (1919 §245, with §240) notes that "folk Ukrainian does not know" it, and the norm replaces it with -лий adjectives (згорі́лий), a relative clause or the adjective колишній 'former' (for бувший).

11.2 Passive participles

The passive participle is formed from transitive verbs, mostly perfective, with -ний or -тий (Pravopys 2019 §119.2):

Doublets in -тий/-ний exist for verbs in -ну- (ки́нутий / ки́нений, за́мкнутий / за́мкнений, розви́нутий / розви́нений) and in -оло-, -оро- (ко́лотий / ко́лений, по́ротий / по́рений, мо́лотий and rarer ме́лений). Before -ен- the stem consonant alternates as in the 1st singular (но́шений, кру́чений, во́жений, ви́їжджений, пу́щений), and labials add л (зро́блений, ку́плений) (Pravopys 2019 §§15–18, §115.6).

Passive participles are frequent: UD tags 1 239 of them in IU and 914 in ParlaMint (2026-11-06; VerbForm=Part, Voice=Pass, UPOS ADJ), against 81 and 80 active ones. They decline as hard adjectives (15) and form the passive with бути: Закон був ухвалений 'The law was adopted' (28).

12. Adverbial participles

The adverbial participle (дієприслівник, UD VerbForm=Conv) is an indeclinable verbal form that heads a subordinate predication with the same subject as the main verb (Pravopys 2019 §120):

• Present (simultaneous action), from the present stem of imperfectives: -учи/-ючи for the I conjugation (беру́ть → беручи́, іду́ть → ідучи́, ка́жуть → ка́жучи, виробля́ють → виробля́ючи), -ачи/-ячи for the II (ба́чать → ба́чачи, летя́ть → летячи́, сидя́ть → си́дячи, сплять → сплячи́). Labial stems add л (лю́блячи, ро́блячи).
• Past (preceding action), from the masculine past: -вши after a vowel (брав → бра́вши, купи́в → купи́вши), -ши after a consonant (прині́с → прині́сши, спік → спі́кши). It is formed mainly from perfectives, but imperfectives also have it (бра́вши, чита́вши; VESUM lists such forms for imperfective verbs as well).
• Reflexive verbs take -сь, rarely -ся: сміючи́сь, узя́вшись; сміючи́ся, узя́вшися.

Stress usually follows the 3rd plural of the present (ка́жуть → ка́жучи, несу́ть → несучи́), but not always: сидя́ть → си́дячи (Pravopys 2019 §120). Stress classes are in 14 §6.

Counts (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06):

The -ачи/-ячи forms (II conjugation) are a fifth of the present ones despite the II conjugation's share of the lexicon, because the commonest II verbs make frequent fixed phrases: виходячи з 'proceeding from' (11 in ParlaMint, 3 in IU), судячи з 'judging by', дивлячись на 'considering', говорячи 'speaking'. Several adverbial participles have become prepositions or adverbs: незважаючи на 'despite', починаючи з 'starting from' and враховуючи 'taking into account' work as prepositions; сидячи, стоячи, лежачи, мовчки 'sitting, standing, lying, silently' are adverbs of manner. VESUM has 27 314 imperfective and 18 725 perfective adverbial-participle forms, plus 49 846 reflexive ones.

The adverbial participle is the native counterpart of the active participle: where Russian says работающий человек, Ukrainian prefers людина, що працює, but працюючи 'while working' is fully normal. It is common in the written standard and in songs, rarer in casual speech.

13. The impersonal forms in -но, -то

13.1 Form

From the stem of the passive participle Ukrainian builds an indeclinable form in -о: написаний → написано, зроблений → зроблено, взятий → взято, битий → бито, забутий → забуто. It is used only as the predicate of a subjectless clause, and the logical object stays in the accusative:

• Хату вже побілено. 'The house has already been whitewashed.' (lit. 'house-ACC already whitewashed')
• Листа написано вчора. 'The letter was written yesterday.'
• Рішення прийнято. 'The decision has been adopted.'
• Пшеницю витоптано, хліба ще не покошено (Syniavskyi 1922 §76's example) 'The wheat has been trampled, the grain not yet mown.'

Tense is shown, if needed, by було (past) or буде (future): Роботу було зроблено вчасно 'The work was done on time', Усе буде зроблено 'Everything will be done'. Without an auxiliary the form describes a present result of a past event. VESUM tags these forms impers (14 236 forms); UD gives them Person=0 and, in IU, Tense=Past.

13.2 Use and norm

The construction has no counterpart in Russian or English, and Ukrainian grammarians have long treated it as a mark of idiomatic style. Syniavskyi (1922 §76) calls it "the most noteworthy" of Ukrainian subjectless sentences: of participial origin but "with full verbal force", predicative only, like the past tense. He distinguishes it from the two-member sentence with a passive participle (Хата не заметена 'The house [is] unswept', descriptive) and criticizes the replacement of the impersonal form by a Russian-style passive (він був призначений на комісара for його призначено комісаром 'he was appointed commissar'). On the agentive instrumental (листа писано мною 'the letter was written by me') he is permissive: unknown in folk speech, but "this foreign element should not be neglected; it enriches the language", e.g. Головніші правила правопису встановлено Академією Наук 'The main rules of spelling were established by the Academy'. Present-day handbooks generally advise against the agent in the instrumental and recommend an active sentence instead.

Lavrinets (2025), studying six Ukrainian news channels on Telegram (January–August 2025), finds more than 160 pairs of the same root used as a passive participle and as a -но/-то form (атакований — атаковано, збитий — збито, підписаний — підписано, госпіталізований — госпіталізовано, скасований — скасовано). Channels, and sometimes one channel, report the same event now one way and now the other; she concludes that writers use the two as synonyms without distinguishing their grammatical nature. She also records non-normative constructions with the -но/-то forms, and, as a positive trend, the spread of two-member active sentences naming the agent and of indefinite-personal sentences (Ракету збили 'They shot down the missile') as alternatives.

Counts (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06):

ParlaMint's -то forms are almost all прийнято 'adopted', in the chair's formula after a vote: Рішення прийнято 'The decision is adopted'. The impersonal form is thus a fixed part of official speech as well as of literary prose.

14. How Mova handles verbs

The en parser reads Ukrainian through English tags. en xpos-fill (xpos_of in en/src/main.rs) maps UD UPOS and FEATS to Penn tags. For Ukrainian verbs this means (counts on the IU train file after filling, 2026-11-06):

The English tag set has no aspect, no gender in the past, no conditional and no adverbial participle; so the perfective future looks like a present, the impersonal зроблено like a plural present, and читаючи like a finite verb. The FEATS column, which carries all of this, is not used by the tagger. With these tags the parser reaches LAS 73.43 on UD Ukrainian IU dev (78.17 with gold tags) and 79.28 on ParlaMint dev (81.34 with gold tags) (UD 2.18, train → dev, binary of 2026-10-22, two runs identical, 2026-11-06); the tagger is 92.96% accurate on IU dev (83.74% on unknown words, which are 23.6% of the tokens) and 95.97% on ParlaMint dev. The common confusions are nominal (NN/NNS), not verbal.

The kg crate has a real Ukrainian verb model. kg/src/morph.rs loads VESUM analyses; kg/src/gram.rs packs a verb form into the 4-byte Gram: tense or form (infinitive, present, future, past, imperative, impersonal), aspect (imperfective, perfective), person, number, gender. kg/src/uk.rs uses it to find the predicate of a simple sentence and to check agreement (present and future: person and number; past: gender and number, agrees). What it does and does not cover:

• Finite predicates are present, future, past and imperative forms (finite). The synthetic future (писатиму) is one finite word and parses. The analytic future (буду писати) does not: бути is in the copula list, not in the modal list (MODAL), and an infinitive after a non-modal predicate makes the parser give up (kg — the Mova knowledge graph, "an infinitive after the predicate"). The same holds for давайте + infinitive.
• Impersonal -но/-то forms are tagged impers in Gram but are not finite, so a sentence whose only predicate is зроблено finds no predicate and is rejected. Predicatives with an infinitive (треба, можна, слід, варто) are listed among the words that make v2 skip a sentence.
• The conditional particle б/би is a particle member of the fact; Gram has no mood, so він би прийшов and він прийшов differ only by that member.
• Adverbial participles (VESUM advp) have no rule: a sentence containing one is rejected.
• VESUM's markers of register and norm, bad (most active participles), subst (ходе, робим), short (-ть infinitives), rev (reflexive), adjp:actv/pasv, are dropped by Gram::from_vesum. The generator (kg/src/textgen.rs) chooses among the forms of a (lemma, grammar) pair by corpus frequency, so it can produce a form VESUM marks as non-normative if that form is frequent.
• Gold: the manual sample kg/examples/gold-v1.tsv (30 Tatoeba sentences, verdicts of 2026-09-24: 19 right, 2 half right, 9 wrong) and the held-out heldout-v2.tsv; no figure for verb forms specifically. VESUM is CC BY-NC-SA, so kg is a research and test path, not part of a release.

Not yet: no Ukrainian conjugator or lemmatizer in the en crate; no aspect-pair table (the pairs of §2 are not linked in any Mova data); no treatment of the analytic future, the pluperfect or the було-construction; no norm layer that would say which of two variants (-ся/-сь, -мо/-м, -ти/-ть, діючий/чинний) belongs to which register. A first step would be an aspect-pair list derived from VESUM and Wiktionary (CC BY-SA, for learning and tests), checked against UD's Aspect.

Sources for this chapter

• Український правопис (2019), §§15–18 (consonant alternations), §115 (indicative: conjugations, future, past and pluperfect), §116 (imperative), §117 (conditional), §118 (infinitive), §119 (participles), §120 (adverbial participles). Official document, not protected by copyright. Library books/u/uk/ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019 (uk-gram-pravopys-2019); archive.org/details/6032727-Ukr-Pravopys-2019
• Smal-Stockyj, Stephan. 1913. Ruthenische Grammatik. Berlin–Leipzig: Göschen. §§15 (aspect), 38–41 (conjugation), 42, 54 (future), 55, 57 (active participles, було). Public domain. Library books/s/st/stockyj-1913-ruthenische-grammatik (uk-gram-smal-stockyj-1913); archive.org/details/ruthenischegramm00smaluoft
• Simovych, Vasyl'. 1919. Граматика української мови для самонавчання та в допомогу шкільній науці. Kyiv–Leipzig. §§187, 233–260 (verb), esp. §240 (lost participles), §241 (past), §245, §255 (pluperfect), §256 (future), §257 (conditional). Public domain. Library books/s/si/simovych-1919-hramatyka-ukrainskoi-movy-dlia (uk-gram-simovych-1919).
• Syniavskyi, Oleksa. 1922. Порадник української мови. Kyiv–Leipzig. §66 (participles), §73, §76 (-но, -то). Public domain. Library books/s/sy/syniavskyi-1922-poradnyk-ukrainskoi-movy-praktychnyi (uk-gram-syniavskyi-poradnyk-1922); archive.org/details/Poradnyk1
• Lavrinets, O. Ya. 2025. Співвідношення між синтаксичними конструкціями із предикативними пасивними дієприкметниками і формами на -но, -то в українських новинних телеграм-каналах. Українська мова 2025/4: 3–26. Library card CC BY 4.0; the article prints CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, so paraphrased only (lavrinets-2025-no-to); doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2025.04.003
• Fellerer, Jan. 2022. Subject pro-drop and past-tense auxiliary clitics in South-Western Ukrainian. Russian Linguistics 46(3): 201–216. CC BY 4.0 (fellerer-2022-pro-drop-sw).
• Babych, Bogdan. 2019. Unsupervised induction of Ukrainian morphological paradigms for the new lexicon. BSNLP 2019. CC BY 4.0 (babych-2019-unsupervised-induction-ukrainian-morphological-paradigms); aclanthology.org/W19-3701
• UD Ukrainian IU 2.18 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, counts only) and ParlaMint 2.18 (CC BY-SA 4.0), ud-treebanks-v2.18; Shvedova, Lukashevskyi & Rysin 2025 for ParlaMint (shvedova-2025-developing-universal-dependencies-treebank-ukrainian, CC BY 4.0).
• VESUM (dict_uk, release 6.8.6), dict_corp_vis.txt.bz2, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: counts only.
• Leipzig Corpora Collection, ukr_news_2024 1M sentences, CC BY (Goldhahn, Eckart & Quasthoff 2012): counts.
• Mova: en/src/main.rs (xpos_fill, xpos_of, parse_eval, tag_eval); kg/src/gram.rs, kg/src/morph.rs, kg/src/uk.rs, kg/src/textgen.rs, kg — the Mova knowledge graph.

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