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# Ukrainian: a reference manual for Mova

- [00-introduction.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/00-introduction/) — 0. Introduction
- [01-consonants.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/01-consonants/) — 1. Consonants
- [02-vowels.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/02-vowels/) — 2. Vowels
- [03-syllable-stress-intonation.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/03-syllable-stress-intonation/) — 3. Syllable, stress and intonation
- [04-connected-speech.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/04-connected-speech/) — 4. Connected speech
- [05-writing-system.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/05-writing-system/) — 5. The writing system
- [06-spelling-rules.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/06-spelling-rules/) — 6. Spelling rules and the 2019 orthography
- [07-punctuation-typography.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/07-punctuation-typography/) — 7. Punctuation, capitals, abbreviations and numbers
- [08-national-varieties.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/08-national-varieties/) — 8. Regional varieties, diaspora and surzhyk
- [09-older-ukrainian.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/09-older-ukrainian/) — 9. Older Ukrainian and the old forms alive today
- [10-word-classes.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/10-word-classes/) — 10. Word classes
- [11-nouns.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/11-nouns/) — 11. Nouns
- [12-pronouns-determiners-numerals.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/12-pronouns-determiners-numerals/) — 12. Pronouns, determiners and numerals
- [13-verbs.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/13-verbs/) — 13. Verbs
- [14-irregular-verbs.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/14-irregular-verbs/) — 14. Irregular verbs, alternations and stress
- [15-adjectives-adverbs.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/15-adjectives-adverbs/) — 15. Adjectives and adverbs
- [16-derivation-prefixes.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/16-derivation-prefixes/) — 16. Derivation: prefixes
- [17-derivation-suffixes.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/17-derivation-suffixes/) — 17. Derivation: suffixes
- [18-compounding-conversion-minor.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/18-compounding-conversion-minor/) — 18. Compounding, conversion and minor processes
- [19-lexicon-mwe-register.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/19-lexicon-mwe-register/) — 19. The lexicon: where the words come from, multiword expressions and register
- [20-syntax-overview.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/20-syntax-overview/) — 20. Syntax overview
- [21-clause-structure.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/21-clause-structure/) — 21. Clause structure
- [22-phrases.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/22-phrases/) — 22. Phrases
- [23-complementation.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/23-complementation/) — 23. Complementation
- [24-coordination-subordination.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/24-coordination-subordination/) — 24. Coordination and subordination
- [25-relative-clauses.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/25-relative-clauses/) — 25. Relative clauses
- [26-questions.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/26-questions/) — 26. Questions
- [27-negation.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/27-negation/) — 27. Negation
- [28-voice-and-passive.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/28-voice-and-passive/) — 28. Voice and the passive
- [29-ellipsis-word-order-information-structure.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/29-ellipsis-word-order-information-structure/) — 29. Ellipsis, word order and information structure
- [30-pragmatics-overview.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/30-pragmatics-overview/) — 30. Pragmatics: an overview
- [31-speech-acts.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/31-speech-acts/) — 31. Speech acts
- [32-politeness-and-hedging.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/32-politeness-and-hedging/) — 32. Politeness and hedging
- [33-implicature-and-presupposition.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/33-implicature-and-presupposition/) — 33. Implicature and presupposition
- [34-irony-and-figurative-language.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/34-irony-and-figurative-language/) — 34. Irony and figurative language
- [35-reference-and-coreference.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/35-reference-and-coreference/) — 35. Reference and coreference
- [36-discourse-relations.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/36-discourse-relations/) — 36. Discourse relations
- [37-register-and-variation.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/37-register-and-variation/) — 37. Register and variation
- [38-dialogue-and-discourse-markers.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/38-dialogue-and-discourse-markers/) — 38. Dialogue and discourse markers
- [sources-00-19.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/sources-00-19/) — Sources: chapters 00–19
- [sources-20-38.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/sources-20-38/) — Sources of chapters 20–38

This folder is an open reference grammar of **modern standard Ukrainian**, written for Mova and for anyone who reads Mova's code. It describes the language as it is spoken and written today: the literary standard and its 2019 orthography, the permitted colloquial usage of educated speakers, and, as deltas over the standard, the regional varieties, the older forms that live on, surzhyk and the registers, song among them.

Ukrainian is at once very conservative and very modern. Old forms (the vocative, the synthetic future in *-му*, the remnants of the dual) are ordinary everyday speech, while the standard follows usage and the dictionaries catch up within years. The manual describes the norm descriptively: what people say and write, how the 2019 orthography codified it, which variants it allows, and where usage is ahead of the code or behind it, with counts ([0. Introduction](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/00-introduction/) §4).

Each chapter states the facts, gives the rules and their exceptions, shows tables and many examples, cites its sources, and says **how Mova handles the point** today: which file implements it, and where Mova does not handle it yet.

**What Mova can do with Ukrainian today is small.** The English tree parser (`en`), trained on a Ukrainian treebank after `en xpos-fill` has mapped its tags to the Penn tag set, gives on UD Ukrainian-ParlaMint (UD 2.18, train → dev, 2026-11-06) LAS 79.28 with its own tags and 81.34 with gold tags, and on UD Ukrainian-IU 73.43 and 78.17; the tag set has no case, and Ukrainian syntax rests on case. Mova's own Ukrainian code is the `kg` crate: a VESUM-based analyser and synthesizer, a seven-case grammar code, a conservative simple-sentence parser and a generator, under a non-commercial dictionary licence. There is no Ukrainian phonology, stress model, transliteration, spelling normaliser or variety model in Mova. The chapters say, construction by construction, what that covers and what it does not.

## How to read it

- Ukrainian is written in Cyrillic, followed on first use by a scholarly transliteration and a gloss: *хата* (xata) 'house'. The transliteration is described in [5. The writing system](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/05-writing-system/) §9.3. Stress is marked with an acute where it matters (*ру́ки* : *руки́*).
- Sounds are in the IPA, phonemes between slashes and pronunciations in square brackets.
- Word classes and forms are named three ways: in traditional Ukrainian terms, in **Universal Dependencies** tags and features (`NOUN`, `Case=Voc`, `Aspect=Perf`, `VerbForm=Conv`) and in the **VESUM** tags (`noun:anim:m:v_kly`, `verb:perf:futr:s:1`). [10. Word classes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/10-word-classes/) has the full table.
- Examples: `ParlaMint-UA_…`: a sentence from UD Ukrainian-ParlaMint 2.18 (CC BY-SA 4.0), quoted sparingly with its `sent_id`; UD Ukrainian-IU 2.18, Brown-UK and VESUM are CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: the chapters count them and quote none of their sentences; the Leipzig Corpora Collection samples *ukr_news_2018*, *ukr_news_2024* and *ukr_wikipedia_2021* (CC BY) are counted, not quoted; unmarked examples are constructed for this manual.
- Measurements carry their date. Counts made for this manual were made on **2026-11-06** over the files named next to them.
- Sources are cited briefly in the text, e.g. *(Simovych 1919 §112)*, *(Pravopys 2019 §74)*, and listed in full, with licences and library paths, in [Sources: chapters 00–19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/sources-00-19/) for chapters 00–19 and in the list of the second half for chapters 20–38. Each chapter also ends with its own short list.

## Contents

### Sounds and writing

| file | what it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [0. Introduction](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/00-introduction/) | What Ukrainian is: family, history in brief, typological profile, the standard and how it moves (conservative and modern at once), variation as deltas over the standard, the vocabulary; the notation of the manual; what Mova does with Ukrainian today |
| [1. Consonants](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/01-consonants/) | The 32 consonant phonemes; hard and soft dentals; hushing consonants and affricates; *г* and *ґ*; *в* as [u̯]; no final devoicing; long consonants; frequencies |
| [2. Vowels](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/02-vowels/) | The six vowels; *и* and *і*; weak reduction; the iotated letters; *і/и* in loans; the *о, е ~ і* alternations; prothesis; frequencies |
| [3. Syllable, stress and intonation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/03-syllable-stress-intonation/) | The syllable; free mobile stress: minimal pairs, paradigm stress types, variant stresses, codified stress and common deviations; clitic groups; intonation in outline |
| [4. Connected speech](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/04-connected-speech/) | Euphony: *у/в*, *і/й*, *з/із/зі/зо*, *б/би*, *ж/же* with counts; assimilation of voice and softness; cluster simplification; consonant alternations |
| [5. The writing system](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/05-writing-system/) | The 33 letters and their names; *ь*, the apostrophe, *ґ*; *є, ї, ю, я, щ*; stress marks; the national, ISO 9 and scholarly transliterations; the history of the script |
| [6. Spelling rules and the 2019 orthography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/06-spelling-rules/) | The 2019 orthography: principles, vowels and consonants, prefixes and suffixes, writing together or apart, loans and foreign names, endings, the variants it allows; the earlier orthographies; where usage stands against the code |
| [7. Punctuation, capitals, abbreviations and numbers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/07-punctuation-typography/) | Punctuation by the 2019 code with treebank counts; quotation marks and direct speech; apostrophe, hyphen and dash characters; capitals; abbreviations; numbers and dates; how the tokenizer treats them |
| [8. Regional varieties, diaspora and surzhyk](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/08-national-varieties/) | The dialect groups and regional colour in the standard as deltas over it; the Galician and Dnieper norms; the diaspora; surzhyk as a contact variety; songs; Rusyn |
| [9. Older Ukrainian and the old forms alive today](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/09-older-ukrainian/) | Old East Slavic heritage, Middle Ukrainian, Zyzanii and Smotrytskyi, the new literary language; older spellings; the vocative and other old forms alive today |

### Forms and words

| file | what it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [10. Word classes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/10-word-classes/) | The ten parts of speech of Ukrainian grammar, UD and VESUM side by side; predicatives; words in several classes |
| [11. Nouns](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/11-nouns/) | Gender, animacy, number; the seven cases and the vocative; the four declensions; stem alternations; the masculine genitive *-а/-у*; the 2019 changes and usage; indeclinables; plural-only nouns |
| [12. Pronouns, determiners and numerals](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/12-pronouns-determiners-numerals/) | Personal pronouns and *н-* after prepositions; possessives and *свій*; demonstratives, interrogatives, negatives, indefinites; numerals and their government; collective and fractional numerals; ordinals |
| [13. Verbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/13-verbs/) | Aspect pairs; the two conjugations; *-ся*; the three futures; imperative; conditional; pluperfect; participles, adverbial participles and the *-но/-то* forms |
| [14. Irregular verbs, alternations and stress](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/14-irregular-verbs/) | *бути, дати, їсти, -вісти, іти/йти*; stem-changing verbs; consonant alternations in conjugation; stress patterns; a reference table with counts |
| [15. Adjectives and adverbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/15-adjectives-adverbs/) | Hard and soft adjectives; short and uncontracted forms; possessive adjectives; comparison and the compared term; intensive suffixes; adverbs; predicatives |
| [16. Derivation: prefixes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/16-derivation-prefixes/) | Verbal prefixes, aspect and modes of action; stacked prefixes; noun and adjective prefixes; the spelling of *з-/с-*, *роз-*, *без-*, *пре-/при-/прі-*, *пів* |
| [17. Derivation: suffixes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/17-derivation-suffixes/) | Agent nouns; feminine personal nouns and measured usage; diminutives and augmentatives of every class; abstract and action nouns; adjective and verb suffixes; productivity |
| [18. Compounding, conversion and minor processes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/18-compounding-conversion-minor/) | Compounds and linking vowels; hyphenated compounds; stump compounds and abbreviations; substantivised adjectives; univerbation; clipping, blends, reduplication, onomatopoeia |
| [19. The lexicon: where the words come from, multiword expressions and register](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/19-lexicon-mwe-register/) | The layers of loans; purism and measured usage; russianisms and anglicisms; war vocabulary; registers from official to slang, surzhyk and song; multiword expressions and idioms |

### Syntax and pragmatics

| file | what it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [20. Syntax overview](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/20-syntax-overview/) | Syntax in the Universal Dependencies frame |
| [21. Clause structure](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/21-clause-structure/) | The simple clause |
| [22. Phrases](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/22-phrases/) | Noun, adjective, adverb and prepositional phrases |
| [23. Complementation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/23-complementation/) | Complementation |
| [24. Coordination and subordination](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/24-coordination-subordination/) | Coordination and subordination |
| [25. Relative clauses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/25-relative-clauses/) | Relative clauses |
| [26. Questions](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/26-questions/) | Questions |
| [27. Negation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/27-negation/) | Negation |
| [28. Voice and the passive](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/28-voice-and-passive/) | Voice and the passive |
| [29. Ellipsis, word order and information structure](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/29-ellipsis-word-order-information-structure/) | Ellipsis, word order and information structure |
| [30. Pragmatics: an overview](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/30-pragmatics-overview/) | Pragmatics and discourse: overview |
| [31. Speech acts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/31-speech-acts/) | Speech acts |
| [32. Politeness and hedging](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/32-politeness-and-hedging/) | Politeness and hedging |
| [33. Implicature and presupposition](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/33-implicature-and-presupposition/) | Implicature and presupposition |
| [34. Irony and figurative language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/34-irony-and-figurative-language/) | Irony and figurative language |
| [35. Reference and coreference](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/35-reference-and-coreference/) | Reference and coreference |
| [36. Discourse relations](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/36-discourse-relations/) | Discourse relations and coherence |
| [37. Register and variation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/37-register-and-variation/) | Register and variation: literary, permitted colloquial, surzhyk, song |
| [38. Dialogue and discourse markers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/38-dialogue-and-discourse-markers/) | Dialogue, discourse markers and reported speech |

The form chapters (00–19) link to these where a point belongs to syntax or pragmatics.

### Sources

- [Sources: chapters 00–19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/sources-00-19/): every source cited in chapters 00–19, with its licence and slug in the research library; the sources of chapters 20–38 are listed by the second half.

## Mova's Ukrainian at a glance

| point | where it lives | chapter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| tokenization (apostrophe inside words, hyphens, abbreviations) | `en/src/tok.rs` (with `en tok-eval`); `kg/src/uk.rs` (`tokenize`) | [07](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/07-punctuation-typography/) |
| normalisation (apostrophe variants, stress marks, invisible characters) | `kg/src/morph.rs` (`norm`, `invisible`) | [03](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/03-syllable-stress-intonation/), [05](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/05-writing-system/) |
| tag mapping UD → Penn for the `en` parser | `en/src/main.rs` (`xpos_fill`, `xpos_of`) | [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/10-word-classes/) |
| morphology: analysis and synthesis | `kg/src/morph.rs` over VESUM `dict_corp_vis.txt.bz2` | [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/11-nouns/)–[15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/15-adjectives-adverbs/) |
| grammar code (7 cases, gender, aspect, animacy…) | `kg/src/gram.rs` (`Gram`, `Gram::from_vesum`) | [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/10-word-classes/), [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/11-nouns/), [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/13-verbs/) |
| simple sentence → fact, government from VESUM | `kg/src/uk.rs` | [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/11-nouns/), [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/12-pronouns-determiners-numerals/), [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/13-verbs/) |
| fact → sentence | `kg/src/textgen.rs` | [04](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/04-connected-speech/) |
| Wiktionary counts | `tools/wikt-count` (`uk` mode) | [03](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/03-syllable-stress-intonation/) |

## Licence

The text of this manual is ours, under the Elamur Cosmic License ([Elamur Cosmic License](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/LICENSE/)). Short quotations and examples from other works keep their own licences, named in the source lists: sentences from UD Ukrainian-ParlaMint (CC BY-SA 4.0) are quoted sparingly, never carried in bulk; UD Ukrainian-IU, Brown-UK and VESUM (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) are used for measurement only ([Data and model licences](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/licence/DATA/)). The 2019 orthography is an official document and not protected by copyright.

*The Elamur team*

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