🗣️ 24. Coordination and subordination

Ukrainian joins words and clauses side by side (coordination, or parataxis) with і/й, та, а, але, або, чи, or with no conjunction at all; and it makes one clause depend on another (subordination, or hypotaxis) with conjunctions such as що, щоб, коли, бо, якщо, хоча, with relative words (chapter 25), or with a converb (дієприслівник): Прочитавши листа, він усміхнувся (Prochytavshy lysta, vin usmikhnuvsia) 'Having read the letter, he smiled'. Two features are characteristic. The choice between і and й, у and в depends on the sounds around the word, by a rule of euphony that the orthography codifies and that writers follow only in part. And the language prefers the side-by-side construction: Smerechynskyi (1932, ch. XXIX) calls parataxis, syndetic and asyndetic, "the greatest and most characteristic feature of the Ukrainian folk language, which penetrates it through and through, from the combination of single words to that of whole sentences". The conditional and the purpose clause share the particle би/б, fused in якби and щоб; the subjunctive is the past form after щоб. This chapter gives the conjunctions with their counts, the conditionals, the converbs, the asyndetic constructions, the punctuation that marks them, and how Mova handles them (it rejects them).

Contents

1. Coordination, subordination, asyndeton
2. Coordinating conjunctions
3. І or й, і or та
4. Correlative pairs
5. Subordinating conjunctions
6. Conditionals and the particle би
7. Purpose, cause, concession, time
8. Converbs
9. Asyndeton and parataxis
10. Punctuation
11. Varieties and styles as deltas
12. Quick reference: coordination and subordination in UD
13. How Mova handles it
14. Sources

Related chapters: complement clauses in 23. Complementation; relative clauses in 25. Relative clauses; agreement with coordinated subjects in 21. Clause structure § 2.3; the conditional and the converb forms in 13. Verbs; discourse relations between sentences in 36. Discourse relations; the discourse uses of а, ну, от, ж in 38. Dialogue and discourse markers; punctuation in 7. Punctuation, capitals, abbreviations and numbers.

Conventions as in chapter 20. Counts: UD 2.18 (IU, counts only; ParlaMint, quoted by sent_id), all splits, awk, 2026-11-06. "Words" excludes punctuation: IU has 99 495 words, ParlaMint 89 858.

1. Coordination, subordination, asyndeton

The share of these types in the treebanks (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06):

Parliamentary speech has more parataxis and complement clauses (я вважаю, що…, прошу, щоб…) and fewer adverbial clauses and converbs than the mixed written genres of IU.

2. Coordinating conjunctions

2.1 The inventory

2.2 Frequencies

The commonest cc words, summing lowercase and capitalised forms (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06; only forms with ten or more occurrences counted):

Three differences between the treebanks are worth noting. Й is frequent in IU (304) and almost absent in ParlaMint (10): the transcribers of the Rada write і by default (§ 3.1). Та is relatively more frequent in writing (909 against 2 002 і) than in the transcripts (515 against 2 190), where it is mostly in fixed procedural phrases (Прошу визначатися та голосувати, ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u132.p2.lang1.s3, 'I ask you to make up your minds and vote'). And the sentence-initial І, А, Але are strong in speech: ParlaMint has 414 І and 133 Але at the start of a sentence against IU's 172 and 106.

2.3 А and але

А joins two clauses or members that are compared or contrasted without contradiction ('and, whereas'): Брат читає, а сестра пише; Їх повноваження визначаються статтею 221 КУпАП, а не 221 (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u131.p2.lang1.s2) 'Their powers are defined by article 221 of the Code of Administrative Offences, not 221'. Але contradicts an expectation ('but'): Він хотів прийти, але захворів. The construction не X, а Y 'not X but Y' always has а. А also opens questions and turns in dialogue (А ти? 'And you?'; chapter 38).

2.4 Чи and або

Both mean 'or'. Або is the general disjunction; чи is preferred in questions and in alternatives of the type 'whether … or' (Чай чи каву? 'Tea or coffee?'), and doubles as the question particle and the embedded-question complementiser (chapters 23, 26): Я не знаю, чи він прийде, чи ні. Або … або is exclusive 'either … or'.

3. І or й, і or та

3.1 Euphony: the rule and the practice

The 2019 orthography (§ 24) prescribes і between consonants, after a pause (a punctuation mark) before a consonant, and at the start of a sentence; й between vowels and after a vowel before a consonant; only і when two concepts are opposed (дні і ночі, батьки і діти) and before a word starting with й, є, ї, ю, я (Ольга і Йосип); after a word ending in й, я, ю, є, ї either і or та. It adds that "deviations from these rules occur because of the demands of rhythm or the author's preferences". The treebanks show the practice (the coordinating cc і or й; the last letter of the previous word and the first of the next; UD 2.18, 2026-11-06):

The і side of the rule is kept almost perfectly; the й side is not. Even in IU's edited texts й stands in only 23% of the vowel-before-consonant positions where the rule asks for it, and in the parliamentary transcripts practically never. The rule describes the euphony of careful literary prose and poetry, where й (non-syllabic) also serves the metre; in general writing і is the default, and й a stylistic choice. This is a point where the codified norm is ahead of usage, and where the orthography's own note ("the author's preferences") concedes the variation. The parallel rule for у/в (§ 23) is followed better (chapter 22 § 5.3).

3.2 І and та

Та as 'and' is a stylistic alternative to і and the remedy where і and й would both sound badly (after й, я, ю, є, ї). Smerechynskyi (1932, ch. XXIV), drawing on Syniavskyi, describes the differences:

• та joins members more closely and more expressively: Реве та стогне Дніпр широкий (Shevchenko), where і "would make the line pale";
• та is not repeated: polysyndetic і … і … і cannot become *та … та … та (І дід, і баба у неділю на призьбі вдвох собі сиділи, Shevchenko);
• та й adds a further, often unexpected, item or a consequence: Прийшов та й сів 'He came and just sat down';
• та as 'but' is adversative: Хотів сказати, та не встиг 'He wanted to say it, but didn't manage'.

4. Correlative pairs

Smerechynskyi (1932, ch. XXV) lists the correlative pairs that structure Ukrainian comparisons and alternatives: так — як, як — так, як — як, так — так, і — і, хоч — хоч, що — що, чи — чи: Як посієш, так і збереш 'As you sow, so you reap'; Хоч плач, хоч смійся 'Cry or laugh (it makes no difference)'; Що день, що ніч — однаково 'Day or night, it's the same'. The correlative то opens the main clause after a conditional or temporal clause (Якщо прийдеш, то побачиш 'If you come, you'll see'); ParlaMint has то as mark 84 times, mostly in this function (2026-11-06). The correlative is optional in the standard and frequent in speech.

5. Subordinating conjunctions

5.1 The inventory

The 2019 orthography (§ 43) writes together the compound conjunctions аніж, зате, мовби, начеб, начебто, немов, немовби, неначе, нібито, ніж, отже, отож, причому, проте, себто, тобто, цебто, щоб, якби, якщо, and separately those with би (б), же (ж) and the composite ones: коли б, хоч би, хоча б, або ж, адже ж, але ж, бо ж, дарма що, для того щоб, з того часу як, незважаючи на те що, після того як, так що, тому що, через те що.

5.2 Frequencies

The mark words (all clause types; lowercase + capitalised; UD 2.18, 2026-11-06), and the subset that introduce an advcl:

The rankings separate the registers. Writing (IU) uses як (comparison and time), бо and converbs most; parliamentary speech якщо (conditions of procedure), щоб (appeals) and тому що. The comparative conjunctions мов, наче, ніби belong to fiction (IU); they are absent from ParlaMint above the threshold. Converbs, which introduce a quarter of IU's adverbial clauses (385 of 1 520), are rarer in speech (135 of 858).

6. Conditionals and the particle би

6.1 Real and unreal conditions

The conditional has a single form for present and past reference: Якби я знав, я б прийшов is both 'If I knew, I would come' and 'If I had known, I would have come'; the context decides. A pluperfect-like form with був exists in literary style: Я був би прийшов 'I would have come'; the 2019 orthography (§ 117) has the example він би це давно був зробив.

6.2 The forms of би

The 2019 orthography (§ 117) writes б after a vowel and би after a consonant, always separately: я хотіла б, вона б сказала, я хотів би, він би сказав. In the conjunctions it is written together (якби, щоб, мовби, немовби, нібито). The treebanks attach би/б as aux with Mood=Cnd (108 in IU, 193 in ParlaMint) and as fixed in compounds (11 and 14) (2026-11-06). The euphony rule is not consistently followed in speech (Я би хотів…, chapter 20 § 6.3). The polite хотів би, хотілося б is a hedge (chapter 32): ParlaMint Я би хотів звернути увагу вашу на наступне (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u137.p3.lang1.s1); Тому в першу чергу мали би розглядатися ці закони (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u238.p2.lang1.s3) 'So these laws ought to be considered first'.

6.3 Якби against як би, щоб against що б

The orthography (§ 43, note) distinguishes the conjunction якби 'if' from the adverb як + би by stress: Якби тут був мій товариш, я був би щасливий 'If my friend were here, I would be happy' against Як би краще виконати це завдання! 'How could one best do this task!'; and якщо 'if' from як що (Як що трапиться, нарікай на себе 'If anything happens, blame yourself'). The same contrast holds for щоб and що б (chapter 23 § 6.2).

7. Purpose, cause, concession, time

7.1 Purpose

Щоб (and аби) with the infinitive when the subject is the same, with the past form when it differs: Я прийшов, щоб допомогти 'I came to help'; Я прийшов, щоб ти не був сам 'I came so that you would not be alone'. ParlaMint: Ми очікуємо матеріали від Апарату, щоб правильно зачитати все там (ParlaMint-UA_2022-02-24-m0.u1.p1.lang1.s2) 'We are waiting for the materials from the Secretariat so as to read everything out correctly'. Для того щоб is the emphatic and official variant.

7.2 Cause

Бо is the neutral, mostly postposed causal conjunction ('because, for'): Ми маємо їх послухати, бо без них ми абсолютно безсилі (NSDC_UA_28_Feb2014-413) 'We must listen to them, because without them we are absolutely powerless'. Тому що and через те що are neutral and can be split for focus (Тому я прийшов, що…). Оскільки is bookish and official, often preposed; адже presents the cause as known to the hearer ('after all, since'). Так як in the causal sense ('since') is common in speech and official writing and has been criticised as a calque of Russian так как; the standard alternatives are оскільки, бо, тому що. In UD all these are mark of an advcl, тому що as тому mark + що fixed.

7.3 Concession

Хоча/хоч + indicative, often with the correlative але, проте, все ж in the main clause: Хоча було пізно, ми ще працювали 'Although it was late, we were still working'; Хоч не застав Івана вдома, зате пройшовся (2019 orthography, § 43) 'Although I didn't find Ivan at home, at least I had a walk'. Дарма що is colloquial and literary ('even though'); незважаючи на те що, попри те що are official.

7.4 Time

Коли is the general 'when' (also conditional and relative); як 'when, as soon as' (narrative: Як прийшов, так і сів); поки, доки 'while, until' (Чекай, поки я прийду 'Wait until I come' — with a perfective verb and no negation in the standard; поки не прийду with negation is also common); після того як 'after'; перш ніж, до того як 'before'; щойно, як тільки 'as soon as'.

8. Converbs

8.1 Forms

In the treebanks the perfective converbs are 131 of 426 in IU (31%) and 29 of 160 in ParlaMint (18%) (2026-11-06): speech uses mainly imperfective, often fixed converbs.

8.2 The subject of the converb

The norm: the understood subject of a converb is the subject of the main clause (Прочитавши листа, він усміхнувся: he read and he smiled). Simovych (1919, § 390) notes, however, that "in Ukrainian this shortening is used more widely": a converb can depend on a subjectless clause, whose logical subject is a dative or a generic person — Гуляючи, (треба) шматок хліба з'їсти (Shevchenko), Не слід мені, бувши в сьому важному чинові, лишнє слово сказати (Kvitka) 'It is not right for me, being in such an important office, to say a superfluous word', Важко матері, таке згадуючи (Myrnyi) 'It is hard for the mother, recalling such things'. The converb's subject is then the dative experiencer, the person of the predicative, or "one". Constructions in which the converb's subject is neither — Під'їжджаючи до станції, у мене злетів капелюх 'Approaching the station, my hat flew off' — are outside the standard (constructed example; the type is a well-known stylistic error in the East Slavic school tradition).

8.3 Fixed converbs

Many converbs have become prepositions, conjunctions or discourse phrases: незважаючи на 'despite', починаючи з 'starting from', враховуючи 'taking into account', судячи з 'judging by', зважаючи на 'given', м'яко кажучи 'to put it mildly', чесно кажучи 'to be honest', власне кажучи 'strictly speaking', не рахуючи 'not counting'. ParlaMint: Така субсидія надаватиметься щоквартально, починаючи з I кварталу 23-го року (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u139.p5.lang1.s3) 'This subsidy will be granted quarterly, starting from the first quarter of '23'; М'яко кажучи, не дуже (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u35.p2.lang1.s9) 'To put it mildly, not very'. The 2019 orthography (§ 158.15) does not set off with commas converbs inside set phrases (працювати не покладаючи рук) or used as manner adverbs (Не розмірковуючи він кинувся на допомогу), and sets off converb phrases and single converbs of time, cause and condition (Повечерявши, полягали спати).

8.4 Converbs in UD

A converb is VERB VerbForm=Conv, attached as advcl (385 in IU, 135 in ParlaMint), conj (27, 9) or parataxis; fixed converbs that have become discourse phrases are parataxis:discourse (8 in IU) or advmod.

9. Asyndeton and parataxis

9.1 Asyndetic coordination and subordination

Smerechynskyi (1932, ch. XXVIII) devotes a chapter to the asyndeton of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, verbs and prepositions, and treats it as a stylistic resource of the folk language: Ходить, блукає, плаче (verbal asyndeton); Реве, стогне хуртовина — a closer link than Реве та стогне Дніпр широкий, and closer still in a hyphenated pair дзвенить-сміється (the series he quotes from Syniavskyi: дзвенить-сміється — реве, стогне — реве та стогне — стука і б'ється, from the tightest to the loosest). Asyndetic clauses express the same relations as conjunctions:

9.2 Parataxis in UD

UD parataxis covers loosely attached clauses: asyndetic sequences, parenthetical clauses (я так розумію, як кажуть), and in speech the turns that combine an address and a request. ParlaMint has 2 021 parataxis (22.5 per 1 000 words), IU 1 386 plus 226 parataxis:discourse (parenthetical words) and 47 parataxis:rel (2026-11-06). Examples: Тарас Іванович Батенко, я так розумію (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u91.p2.lang1.s1) 'Taras Ivanovych Batenko, I take it'; Пройшла доба, ми не почули жодної відповіді (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u98.p3.lang1.s2) 'A day has passed, we have not heard any answer' — asyndetic, with a concessive or temporal sense.

10. Punctuation

The 2019 orthography's comma rules (§ 158) bear on the structures of this chapter:

• coordinated members joined by a single і, й, та, або, чи take no comma; repeated conjunctions (і … і, ні … ні, або … або) and adversatives (а, але, проте, однак, зате) take one;
• coordinated clauses are separated by a comma, also before і when the clauses have different subjects (Сонце зійшло, і птахи заспівали), but not when they share a secondary member or are both impersonal and short;
• subordinate clauses are set off by commas; with a compound conjunction the comma usually goes before the whole (після того як), but may go inside it for emphasis (після того, як);
• converb phrases are set off, with the exceptions of § 8.3.

The dash and the colon of asyndetic sentences are in §§ 160–161 (chapter 21 § 9.2 for the dash between subject and predicate).

11. Varieties and styles as deltas

12. Quick reference: coordination and subordination in UD

13. How Mova handles it

Mova does not parse coordination or subordination in Ukrainian. The fact extractor kg/src/uk.rs (chapter 20 § 12) handles simple sentences only, and its gates in fn parse reject:

• any sentence containing a word on the CONJ list — the coordinators і, й, та, а, але, або, чи, ані, зате, проте, the subordinators що, щоб, коли, якщо, бо, ніж, адже, хоча, хоч, поки, доки, як, наче, ніби, мов, неначе, тому, аніж, the relative and question words де, куди, чому, навіщо, звідки, хто, який, яка, яке, які, чий, чия, чиє, чиї, котрий, and the predicatives треба, потрібно, можна, слід, варто, необхідно, неможливо (Reject::Conj);
• any punctuation other than . ! — – - … (Reject::Punct), so every comma-separated clause or converb phrase;
• sentences over eight words (Reject::TooLong).

The kg — the Mova knowledge graph lists the consequence among its limits: "coordinated members, questions and complex sentences are rejected", and "no AI fallback path for rejected sentences: a teacher that rewrites them into simple ones is not built or measured".

The conditional particle би passes the gates: it becomes a particle member, and the predicate keeps its past tense (no conditional mood is represented in kg/src/gram.rs). A converb (advp in VESUM, value 11 in POS_NAMES) is not taken by any rule, so a sentence with one is not covered.

13.1 Measured (kg at the worktree's commit, CPU, 2026-11-06)

Over all 49 test sentences of chapters 20–24, 25 parsed; the rejections were 16 "not covered", 4 "conjunction", 2 "punctuation ," and 2 "ambiguous" (one run, 2026-11-06).

13.2 Not yet

• No coordination: neither coordinated members (which would give several facts or a plural member) nor coordinated clauses.
• No subordination: no adverbial, complement or relative clauses; no conditional mood; no converbs.
• No euphony check (і/й, у/в) and no register labels for так як, у разі якщо, шоб.
• The planned rewrite of complex sentences into simple ones by a teacher model is not built (kg — the Mova knowledge graph, Limits).
• No Ukrainian UD parser, no tools/mova-parse model; no Ukrainian discourse-relation labels in prag/.

14. Sources

• Smerechynskyi, Serhii. 1932. Нариси з української синтакси. Kharkiv. Ch. XXIV (і, та, та й), ch. XXV (correlative pairs), ch. XXVI (аби and щоб), ch. XXVIII (asyndeton), ch. XXIX (parataxis). smerechynskyi-1932-narysy-z-ukrainskoi-syntaksy (public domain in UA/EU)
• Simovych, Vasyl. 1919. Граматика української мови для самонавчання та в допомогу шкільній науці. § 390 (converbs in subjectless clauses). simovych-1919-hramatyka-ukrainskoi-movy-dlia (public domain)
• Український правопис. 2019. § 23 (у/в), § 24 (і/й), § 43 (conjunctions, якби/як би, щоб/що б), § 117 (би/б), § 158 (comma), §§ 160–161 (colon, dash). ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019 (official text)
• Universal Dependencies 2.18: UD_Ukrainian-IU (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; counts only), UD_Ukrainian-ParlaMint (CC BY-SA 4.0; quoted by sent_id); counted 2026-11-06, all splits.
• Shevchenko, Taras: Реве та стогне Дніпр широкий; І дід, і баба у неділю… (as cited by Smerechynskyi); public domain.
• Mova: kg/src/uk.rs (CONJ, fn parse, Reject), kg/src/gram.rs (POS_NAMES, TENSE_NAMES), kg — the Mova knowledge graph (Limits).

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