🗣️ 26. Questions

A Ukrainian question keeps the word order of a statement. There is no inversion and no auxiliary: a yes/no question is made by intonation alone (Ти прийдеш? (Ty pryidesh?) 'Will you come?'), or by an initial particle, above all чи (chy) (Чи ти прийдеш?), with хіба (khiba), невже (nevzhe), а, що and others adding surprise, doubt or an expected answer. A wh-question puts the question word first, usually followed by the verb. Indirect yes/no questions are introduced by чи 'whether', never by якщо 'if'. Tag questions (так?, правда?, еге ж?) are frequent in speech, and the answers так/ні and the echo answer that repeats the verb (Прийдеш? — Прийду.) complete the system. This chapter describes the forms, their meanings and their frequency in written and spoken Ukrainian, and what Mova does with them.

Contents:

1. Overview: question types
2. Polar questions by intonation
3. Polar questions with чи
4. Biased and emotional polar questions: хіба, невже, чи не, а, що, може
5. Alternative questions
6. Wh-questions: the question words
7. Word order in wh-questions
8. Infinitival and verbless questions
9. Indirect questions
10. Tag questions
11. Answers
12. Rhetorical questions and questions as requests
13. Variation: speech, region and contact as a delta over the standard
14. Punctuation
15. Counts in the treebanks and in news
16. Quick reference: questions in UD
17. How Mova handles it
18. Sources

Related chapters: intonation in 3. Syllable, stress and intonation; the pronouns хто, що, який, чий in 12. Pronouns, determiners and numerals; the same words as relatives in 25. Relative clauses; чи as 'or' in 24. Coordination and subordination; negative questions in 27. Negation; focus and word order in 29. Ellipsis, word order and information structure; questions as speech acts in 31. Speech acts; politeness in requests in 32. Politeness and hedging; particles in dialogue in 38. Dialogue and discourse markers.

1. Overview: question types

None of these changes the order of subject and verb. Smal-Stockyj (1913, § 62) notes for German readers that Ukrainian lacks the obligatory inversion of the independent question: Як же ви тут живете? 'How do you live here?' keeps ви before the verb.

2. Polar questions by intonation

2.1 Form

The plain yes/no question is a declarative sentence with question intonation: a sharp rise on the stressed syllable of the word in question, followed by a fall or a low level tail. The word that carries the rise is the focus of the question; moving the rise changes what is asked:

The focused word can also be moved to the front to reinforce the focus: Завтра ти прийдеш? The intonation itself is described in chapter 3; in writing only the question mark shows it.

2.2 Subject drop

The subject pronoun is often dropped, since the verb ending shows the person: Прийдеш? 'Will you come?'; Наполягаєте? 'Do you insist?' A one-word question of this kind is the commonest polar question of conversation. The parliamentary transcripts are full of them, from the chair: Готові голосувати? 'Ready to vote?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u120.p4.lang1.s2); Домовились? 'Agreed?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u197.p10.lang1.s2).

2.3 Frequency

In the spoken treebank, questions without any question word or particle are the majority: of the 372 ParlaMint sentences containing a question mark, 216 (58%) have neither a non-coordinating чи nor an interrogative pronoun or adverb; in the written IU the share is 99 of 266 (37%). (Counts on all splits, UD 2.18, 2026-11-06; a "neither" sentence is mostly an intonation question, but also a tag question, a verbless echo or a question mark inside a quotation.)

3. Polar questions with чи

3.1 Form and meaning

Чи (chy) stands first in the clause and leaves the order unchanged: Чи ти знаєш? 'Do you know?'; Чи можна це зробити? 'Can this be done?' (ParlaMint-UA_2014-03-04-m0.u99.p2.lang1.s2). It is unstressed and may be followed by other particles (чи ж, чи то, чи не).

What чи adds is not grammaticality (the question is complete without it) but explicitness: it marks the sentence as a question from its first word, which suits writing, formal speech, questionnaires and headlines (Чи є життя на Марсі?). Smal-Stockyj (1913, § 58) describes it as giving an independent question "more emphasis" (mehr Nachdruck), and in conversation a чи-question often does sound more insistent or more deliberate than a bare intonation question. The pattern is old and shared with other Slavic languages (Polish czy); it is not a borrowing and needs no stylistic apology.

3.2 Frequency

In written news, чи-questions are a minority: in the 2024 Leipzig news sample (1 million sentences), 10,578 sentences end with a question mark and 1,261 (12%) of them begin with Чи (2026-11-06). In ParlaMint, 22 sentences begin with Чи; IU has 45 question sentences with a non-coordinating чи (some of them indirect questions inside a direct one).

3.3 Чи in UD

The two treebanks tag initial question чи as PART with the relation discourse (ParlaMint: 38 tokens; IU: 58); the subordinating чи of indirect questions is mark (SCONJ or CCONJ by treebank; §9); the 'or' of alternatives is CCONJ cc (IU 147, ParlaMint 114).

4. Biased and emotional polar questions

Several particles make a polar question express an attitude: surprise, disbelief, an expected answer, a suggestion.

Хіба also has an older and dialect meaning 'except, unless' after a negation (Там нема нікого, хіба одна баба 'There's nobody there but one old woman'), which Smerechynskyi (1932, ch. XXVII, type 8) treats among the negative constructions of the folk language; the question use (Хіба ж тобі краще чужа сторона?, a folk song he cites there) is the one current everywhere.

Невже combines easily with negation: Невже не можна зробити адекватний порядок денний для країни? 'Is it really impossible to make a proper agenda for the country?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u74.p1.lang1.s3). With negation, a невже- or хіба-question asserts the positive: the speaker believes it can be done.

Чи не deserves care: Чи не прийшов він? can be a neutral, polite question ('Has he come, by any chance?') or a biased one ('Hasn't he come?'), and the не is not a real negation; the 'yes' answer confirms the positive (Так, прийшов). The parliamentary example Чи не настав час позбавитися такого явища…? 'Isn't it time to get rid of such a phenomenon…?' (ParlaMint-UA_2003-10-14-m0.u40.p1.lang1.s5) is the rhetorical type (§12). In UD the не is still advmod (IU) or advmod:neg (ParlaMint) with Polarity=Neg: the annotation does not see the expletive reading.

The question particles are pragmatic markers as much as syntactic ones; their dialogue functions are in chapter 38.

5. Alternative questions

An alternative question joins the options with чи 'or' (not або, which is 'or' in statements): Ти підеш чи залишишся? 'Will you go or stay?'; Чай чи каву? 'Tea or coffee?'. The first option may also be introduced by чи: Чи ти підеш, чи залишишся?. The yes-or-no alternative is … чи ні?: Ти прийдеш чи ні?; Так чи ні? 'Yes or no?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u112.p1.lang1.s5). Smal-Stockyj (1913, § 60) gives чи as the "or" of two-part questions: Будеш слухати, чи ні? 'Will you obey or not?'.

The same чи … чи appears in statements of alternative 'whether … or': Чи дощ, чи сніг — ми йдемо 'Rain or snow, we're going'; this is a correlative conjunction (chapter 24).

6. Wh-questions: the question words

6.1 Inventory

The distinction between чому 'why, for what reason' and навіщо 'what for, for what purpose' is real and is kept in careful speech: Чому ти прийшов? asks for a cause, Навіщо ти прийшов? for a purpose (and can sound like a reproach). Чого 'why' is the colloquial general word, frequent in speech and in fiction; the treebank count of interrogative чого (15 in IU) includes both 'why' and the genitive 'of what'.

Що + genitive asks for a kind: Що це за людина? 'What kind of person is that?' (що за + nominative, a calque-like construction that is fully established), Що нового? 'What's new?' (partitive genitive).

6.2 Case and prepositions

The question word takes the case of its role and any preposition precedes it: З ким ти говорив? 'Who did you talk to?'; Про що цей закон? 'What is this law about?'; Для кого ми це вдосконалюємо? 'For whom are we improving this?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u110.p2.lang1.s1, with І first). A preposition is never stranded. With який and чий, the whole noun phrase moves: Якого роду коригування? 'What kind of adjustment?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u106.p2.lang1.s1).

6.3 Agreement

Хто takes a masculine singular verb even when it asks about a woman or about many people: Хто прийшов? 'Who has come?', not ✗ Хто прийшла?; agreement with a known female referent occurs in colloquial speech but is not the norm. Що takes a neuter singular: Що сталося?

7. Word order in wh-questions

7.1 The default

The question word stands first, after any coordinating conjunction, particle (а, і, ну) or address. The subject follows or precedes the verb according to its information status:

• Куди ти йдеш? (pronoun subject before the verb: unmarked);
• Куди йде цей потяг? (noun subject after the verb: unmarked when it is part of the rheme);
• Що сказав президент? — Що президент сказав? (both natural; the second treats президент as a given topic).

7.2 Topics and addresses before the question word

A topic or an address may precede the question word: Шановні колеги, про що цей закон? 'Dear colleagues, what is this law about?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u106.p1.lang1.s1); А ти куди? 'And where are you going?' (with the topic ти first and the verb dropped); Цей закон про що? 'This law — what is it about?' The last order, with the question word late, is colloquial; a question word at the very end is the echo question (Ти поїдеш куди? 'You'll go where?').

Counts (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06; sentences ending with a question mark that contain an interrogative pronoun or adverb): in IU 123 such sentences, of which 61 have the question word first (after an optional conjunction, particle or preposition) and 21 have a comma before it (an address, a topic or a preceding clause); in ParlaMint 129, of which 89 first and 27 after a comma. A question word as the last word before the question mark occurs 5 times in IU and not at all in ParlaMint.

7.3 Multiple wh-questions

Several question words can co-occur, all at the front, usually in the order subject — object — oblique: Хто що сказав? 'Who said what?'; Хто кому що винен? 'Who owes what to whom?'; Коли і де це було? 'When and where was it?' (the last with coordination).

7.4 Questions inside clauses

A question word cannot be extracted out of a finite subordinate clause in the written standard (✗ Кого ти думаєш, що він бачив?); speech uses a parenthetical (Кого, ти думаєш, він бачив?) or a different construction (Як ти думаєш, кого він бачив? 'Who do you think he saw?' — literally 'How do you think, whom did he see?', the normal Ukrainian phrasing).

8. Infinitival and verbless questions

8.1 With the infinitive

A question with an infinitive and no finite verb asks what is to be done, with the doer, if named, in the dative:

• Що робити? 'What is to be done? / What should I do?';
• Куди йти? 'Where to go?';
• Кому вірити? 'Whom to trust?';
• Чи варто чекати? 'Is it worth waiting?';
• Мені піти? 'Shall I go?' (dative subject).

These are the Ukrainian equivalents of English should/shall questions. In UD the infinitive is the root (VerbForm=Inf), the dative is iobj or obl by treebank.

8.2 Without a verb

Verbless questions are normal with a zero copula and with ellipsis: Хто там?; Звідки ви?; Який номер? 'What number?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u181.p17.lang3.s1); А ви і від комітету? 'And you (speak) for the committee as well?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u101.p1.lang1.s1). See chapter 29 for the analysis of such fragments.

9. Indirect questions

9.1 Yes/no: чи

An embedded yes/no question is introduced by чи 'whether', in first position of the clause: Я не знаю, чи він прийде 'I don't know whether he will come'; Спитай, чи можна 'Ask whether it's allowed'; Невідомо, чи вони погодяться 'It's unknown whether they'll agree'. The alternative is чи … чи ні: Не знаю, прийде він чи ні.

The English if in this function is never якщо or коли: ✗ Я не знаю, якщо він прийде is an error of translation from English (or of contact with Russian если), and style guides list it among the commonest. Якщо is conditional only (chapter 24).

9.2 Wh: the question word

An embedded wh-question uses the question word as a connector: Скажи, де ти був 'Tell me where you were'; Я не розумію, чому він мовчить; Подивись, хто прийшов. Embedded multiple questions are possible: Ми не знаємо, хто кому що сказав.

The verb of the embedded question keeps the tense of direct speech (no sequence of tenses): Він спитав, чи я прийду 'He asked whether I would come' (lit. 'whether I will come'). See chapter 24 on reported speech.

9.3 Punctuation and the main clause

The indirect question ends with a full stop, not a question mark, unless the main clause itself is a question (2019 orthography, § 156, note 1): Питав мене, чого зайшла — but Чи знаєте, як високо сокіл під небом літає? The comma before чи and the question word is obligatory.

9.4 In UD

The indirect question is ccomp of the verb of saying or knowing; чи is mark (IU 16 as SCONJ, 1 CCONJ; ParlaMint 10 SCONJ, 7 CCONJ, 1 PART), and a question word keeps its own relation inside the clause (obj, advmod…) with PronType=Int.

10. Tag questions

A statement is turned into a request for confirmation by a short tag after a comma. The tags differ in register:

After a negative statement the tag confirms the negative: Ніхто не наполягає, так? 'Nobody insists, right?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u191.p7.lang1.s3); Не наполягаєте, так? 'You don't insist, right?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u136.p2.lang1.s3).

In ParlaMint, sentence-final tags after a comma occur 14 times: , так? 7, , да? 5, , ні? 2 (all splits, 2026-11-06). The use of Russian-origin да? by the chair in the 2022 sessions (Михайла Віталійовича немає, да? 'Mykhailo Vitaliiovych isn't here, right?', ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u116.p2.lang1.s1; Чотири хвилини, Микита Русланович, да? 'Four minutes, Mykyta Ruslanovych, right?', ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u138.p6.lang1.s4) shows how spoken parliamentary Ukrainian keeps contact features that edited text removes; the second example also has a nominative address where the standard requires the vocative Микито Руслановичу (see chapter 32).

11. Answers

11.1 Так and ні

The answer particles are так 'yes' and ні 'no'. Ні is the stressed, free-standing negative; не is the unstressed negation of a word (Smal-Stockyj 1913, § 58, compares the pair to French non : ne): Чи так, чи ні? — Ні, не так. 'Is it so or not? — No, not so.'

Emphatic affirmatives: авжеж, атож, аякже 'of course', written as one word (2019 orthography, § 44, 2.2); звісно, звичайно, безумовно; colloquial ага, еге. Emphatic negatives: та ні, аж ніяк 'not at all', нізащо 'not for anything'.

11.2 The echo answer

Ukrainian often answers a polar question by repeating the verb (or the focused word), with or without так/ні:

• Прийдеш? — Прийду. 'Will you come? — I will.'
• Ти був там? — Був. 'Were you there? — I was.'
• Ти це бачив? — Не бачив. 'Did you see it? — I didn't.'
• Завтра? — Завтра. 'Tomorrow? — Tomorrow.'

The echo answer is neutral and frequent in conversation and literature; a bare так can sound curt by comparison.

11.3 Answers to negative questions

After a negative question, так agrees with the negative proposition and ні contradicts it, but the system is unstable and speakers add the verb to avoid ambiguity: Ти не прийдеш? — Ні, прийду 'You won't come? — Yes, I will' (contradicting); — Так, не прийду or — Ні, не прийду 'No, I won't' (confirming; both occur). The safe answer is the echo with the polarity spelled out: Прийду / Не прийду.

12. Rhetorical questions and questions as requests

12.1 Rhetorical questions

A rhetorical question has the form of a question and the force of an assertion of the opposite polarity, and is often marked by ж/же, хіба, невже, чи не, or by a negation:

• Хто ж цього не знає? = 'Everyone knows it.'
• Хіба ж тобі краще чужа сторона? = 'A foreign land is not better for you.' (folk song, cited by Smerechynskyi 1932, ch. XXVII)
• Що ж тут скажеш? = 'There's nothing to say.'
• Чи не настав час…? = 'It is time…' (§4)

Political speech uses them as a matter of course; the parliamentary questions Хто з цим не впорався? 'Who failed to cope with it?' (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u172.p2.lang1.s5) and Чому ми ще на рік переносимо? 'Why are we postponing for another year?' (…s6) are accusations, not requests for information. The 2019 orthography allows ?? and ?! for heightened question intonation (§ 156, notes 2–3).

12.2 Questions as requests

Polite requests are commonly phrased as questions about ability or permission: Можна вас попросити…?; Ви не могли б…? 'Could you…?' (with a negative and the conditional, the most polite); Чи не могли б ви…?; Дайте, будь ласка… is the imperative alternative. See chapters 31 and 32.

13. Variation: speech, region and contact as a delta over the standard

The grammar of questions is the same across varieties; the differences are in a handful of words and in prosody. The table lists them as changes against the literary standard.

Notes on the entries:

• Hentschel (2023, hentschel-2023-surzhyk-lexicon), working on a large field corpus of surzhyk from central Ukraine and the Black Sea coast, finds that the affirmative reply particle da is used almost consistently in surzhyk where standard Ukrainian has tak, as in Russian; he adds that da also occurs in central Ukrainian dialects, which may have helped its adoption. The parliamentary да? of §10 fits this picture: it appears in spontaneous speech of speakers otherwise using standard Ukrainian.
• Шо is a widespread colloquial pronunciation, strongest in the east and south; on its own it does not mark surzhyk (it occurs once as a lemma in IU).
• Dialect question forms are left to the varieties chapter (chapter 8); the treebanks contain no dialect questions to count.

14. Punctuation

• A direct question ends with a question mark; a question inside a sentence (a parenthetical question) also takes one: …то в управі так шмагали, що — вірите? — шкура полопалася (2019 orthography, § 156, 2; the example there is from Honchar).
• An indirect question takes no question mark (§9.3).
• ?! marks a question with exclamation, ?? or ??? a heightened question (§ 156, notes 2–3).
• Tags are separated by a comma: Ти прийдеш, правда?
• The particle чи is not followed by a comma (Чи ти прийдеш?), but може, мабуть as parentheticals are: Може, не будемо ставити? (ParlaMint-UA_2022-01-25-m0.u132.p1.lang1.s2).

15. Counts in the treebanks and in news

UD 2.18, all splits, counted with awk over the CoNLL-U files, 2026-11-06. A "question sentence" is a sentence whose # text contains a question mark.

Interrogative words (PronType=Int, all sentences): IU що 65, хто 26, як 23, чого 15, який 14, чому 11, навіщо 5, коли 5, де 5, куди 4, звідки 3, чом 2, скільки 2, шо 1; ParlaMint що 54, чому 31, як 20, хто 20, який 14, де 10, навіщо 4, чого 2, скільки 2, коли 2.

The difference in чому (11 vs 31) and чого (15 vs 2) is a register difference: parliamentary speech asks "why" in the standard word, fiction and dialogue in the colloquial one.

Leipzig news 2024 (1M sentences, CC BY): 10,578 sentences end with a question mark; 1,261 begin with Чи; the word хіба occurs 363 times and невже 76 times in the whole sample.

16. Quick reference: questions in UD

17. How Mova handles it

17.1 The fact extractor rejects questions

The Ukrainian fact extractor in kg/src/uk.rs checks punctuation before anything else: a question mark rejects the sentence as question (Reject::Question), as kg — the Mova knowledge graph lists it among the constructions that "are not yet simple sentences". Independently, the words чи, хто, що, який, чий, котрий, де, куди, коли, чому, навіщо, звідки, як are on the CONJ list, so an indirect question is rejected as conjunction even without a question mark.

Measured with kg parse (CPU, worktree at commit ac9a23149, VESUM, empty proper-name list; 2026-11-06):

The control shows that the same words in a statement are read; the question mark alone decides. An intonation question written without a question mark (as in some transcripts) would be read as a statement, which is the one way the gate can be wrong.

17.2 Questions in Mova's pragmatics

Mova's pragmatic sentence labels (prag/src/schema.rs) include the sentence form (decl, q, wh, imp, excl, frag, intj, other) and the act, with indirect requests marked; all labellers and witnesses behind them read English. Nothing labels a Ukrainian sentence's form, distinguishes a хіба-question from an information question, or reads a rhetorical question as an assertion.

17.3 Not yet

• No Ukrainian parser (no model in tools/mova-parse; langseg has no Cyrillic table) and no Ukrainian UD baseline in What every language gets, as of 2026-11-06.
• No question-to-fact mapping (a polar question as a fact with an open truth value, a wh-question as a fact with an open member), though the kg fact format could represent an open member as it represents the implicit subject (ø).
• No reading of question particles or tags, no answer resolution (Прийдеш? — Прийду.), no detection of the contact tag да? as a register signal.
• The generator (kg/src/textgen.rs) produces declaratives only.

18. Sources

• Smal-Stockyj, Stephan. 1913. Ruthenische Grammatik. Berlin/Leipzig: Göschen. § 58 (чи in independent and dependent questions; ні vs не), § 60 (чи "or" in two-part questions), § 62 (no inversion in questions). stockyj-1913-ruthenische-grammatik (public domain).
• Smerechynskyi, Serhii. 1932. Нариси з української синтакси. Ch. XXVII (negative constructions; хіба after negation; the rhetorical хіба-question of folk song). smerechynskyi-1932-narysy-z-ukrainskoi-syntaksy (public domain in UA/EU).
• Український правопис. 2019. § 44 (writing of авжеж, атож, аякже), § 156 (question mark: indirect questions, ??, ?!). ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019 (official document).
• Hentschel, Gerd. 2023. Ukrainian and Russian in the lexicon of Ukrainian Suržyk: reduced variation and stabilisation in central Ukraine and on the Black Sea coast. hentschel-2023-surzhyk-lexicon (CC BY 4.0).
• Shvedova, Maria, Arsenii Lukashevskyi, and Andriy Rysin. 2025. Developing a Universal Dependencies Treebank for Ukrainian Parliamentary Speech. UNLP 2025. shvedova-2025-developing-universal-dependencies-treebank-ukrainian (CC BY 4.0).
• UD Ukrainian ParlaMint 2.18 (CC BY-SA 4.0): sentences cited by sent_id; counts. UD Ukrainian IU 2.18 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): counts only. Leipzig Corpora Collection, Ukrainian news 2024 (CC BY): counts. All 2026-11-06.
• Mova: kg/src/uk.rs, kg/src/textgen.rs, kg — the Mova knowledge graph, prag/src/schema.rs, What every language gets.

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