Marathi grammar
The grammar of the Marathi language shares similarities with other modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Odia, Gujarati or Punjabi. The first modern book exclusively about the grammar of Marathi was printed in 1805 by Willam Carey.
The principal word order in Marathi is SOV. Nouns inflect for gender, number, and case. Marathi preserves the neuter gender found in Sanskrit, a feature further distinguishing it from many Indo-Aryan languages. Typically, Marathi adjectives do not inflect unless they end in an आ vowel, in which case they inflect for gender and number. Marathi verbs inflect for tense. Verbs can agree with their subjects, yielding an active voice construction, or with their objects, yielding a passive voice construction. A third type of voice, not found in English for example, is produced when the verb agrees with neither subject nor object. Affixation is largely suffixal in the language and postpositions are attested. An unusual feature of Marathi, as compared to other Indo-European languages, is that it displays the inclusive and exclusive we feature, that is common to the Dravidian languages, Rajasthani, and Gujarati.
The contemporary grammatical rules described by Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad and endorsed by the Government of Maharashtra are supposed to take precedence in standard written Marathi. These rules are described in Marathi Grammar, written by M. R. Walimbe. The book is widely referred to students in schools and colleges.
Sanskrit influence
Traditions of Marathi linguistics and above mentioned rules give special status to ‘tatsama’ words borrowed from the Sanskrit language. This special status expects the rules for ‘tatsama’ words be followed as of Sanskrit grammar.Parts of speech
Marathi words can be classified in any of the following parts of speech:| English | Sanskrit |
| Noun | nāma |
| Pronoun | sarvanāma |
| Adjective | vishheshaṇa |
| Verb | kriyāpada |
| Adverb | kriyāvishheshaṇa |
| Conjunction | ubhayanvayī avyaya |
| Preposition | shabdayogī avyaya |
| Interjection | kevalaprayogī avyaya '' |
Nominals
Nouns are primarily divided into three categories – proper nouns, common nouns, and abstract nouns – that are identical in definition to their counterparts in other languages, and are inflected for gender, number and case. They are also often categorized based on their ending vowel, which is especially useful in studying their inflection – those ending in the schwa a are termed akārānta , those ending in the vowel ā are termed ākārānta , those ending in the vowel ī are termed īkārānta , and so on.Gender
There are three genders in Marathi: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Some other modern Indo-European languages have lost these genders, completely, as in English and Persian, or in part, with either neuter and common gender, as in some Northern Germanic languages, or feminine and masculine, as in almost all Romance languages.While there exist no concrete rules for determining the gender of a given noun, certain observations do help speakers in that regard: masculine nouns can only be akārānta or ākārānta, while neuter nouns can only be akārānta, īkārānta, ukārānta ', or ekārānt '.
The grammatical gender of common nouns referring to animated objects corresponds to their natural sex – for example, mulagā is a masculine noun, whereas mulagī is a feminine one. Given the masculine forms of such nouns, the feminine noun can often be determined using a set of rules:
- Some ākārānta nouns have corresponding feminine forms as īkārānta with the same root – mulagā/mulagī, kutrā/kutrī '', ghoḍā/ghoḍī.
- Some akārānta nouns also have their corresponding feminine forms as īkārānta with the same root – hansa/hansī, vānar/vānrī.
- Some nouns use the suffix - īna to form their feminine forms – vāgha/vāghīna, mālaka/mālakīna.
- Some nouns have their feminine forms made out of entirely different words – navarā/bāīko, bāp/āī, rājā/rāṇī.
Case
There are differences of opinion regarding grammatical cases in Marathi. According to one view, there are two cases: direct, which is unmarked and oblique, which is used before adpositions and postpositions. The form of the oblique suffix depends on the gender and the final vowel of the word it is suffixed to.According to this analysis, true postpositions have a wide range of meanings and can be separated form the noun by clitics like . Adpositions, on the other hand, are only used to mark nominal arguments of the verb in terms of their theta roles and cannot be separated from the noun by clitics. Syntactically, the latter behave the same as case markers corresponding to the traditional grammar. In this view, the cases are: nominative, accusative, ergative, which is traditionally called 'instrumental', dative, and genitive/possessive.
The class of true postpositions will then include -hatun 'through', -hu 'from'/ablative, -t locative, -jagi 'in place of' and many more. The genitive markers inflect to agree with the governing noun.
Traditional grammar
In traditional analyses which follow the pattern of Sanskrit grammatical tradition, case suffixes are referred to as विभक्ति प्रत्यय. There are eight such विभक्ती in Marathi. The form of the original word changes when such a suffix is to be attached to the word, and the new, modified root is referred to as saamaanya ruup of the original word. For example, the word घोडा gets transformed into घोड्या- when the suffix वर- is attached to it to form घोड्यावर. The nominal suffixes are tabulated below.| Sanskrit Ordinal Number | English Ordinal Number | Sanskrit Case Description | English Case Description | Singular Suffixes | Plural Suffixes | Notes |
| prathamā | First | kartā | Nominative case | - | – | The nominative case uses the unmarked singular or plural form. The unmarked form may also mark certain direct objects. |
dwitīyā | Second | karma | Accusative case | -lā,-sa | Nnā, nvsa- | -sa and -te are not typically used. Direct objects may also be unmarked in some situations. |
| trutīyā | Third | karaṇa | Instrumental case | - Nē ने | -nnī | -shī is not typically used as an instrumental, and never for the ergative case. |
| caturthī | Fourth | sampradāna | Dative case | -lā, sa, | -nna,''nvsa, | |
| pancamī | Fifth | apādāna | Ablative case | -ūna, -hūna | -ūna, -nvhūna | -hūna is used when the noun ends in a vowel. |
| shhashhthī | Sixth | sambandha | Genitive case | -cā, -cī, -ce | -ce, -cyā, -cī | The specific suffix used depends on the gender of the noun. |
| saptamī | Seventh | adhikarana | Locative case | -ta, -i'', -ā | -nta, -ī, -ā | The specific suffix used depends on the morphology of the noun and the connotation desired. |
| sambhodana | Vocative case | आ | -nno | The vocative case cannot be used in the singular |
English Case Description | Singular | Case Ending Used | Plural | Case Ending Used |
| Nominative case | – | – | विद्यार्थी अभ्यास करतात | – |
| Accusative case | घराला रङ्ग दिला | घरान्ना रंग दिला | ||
| Accusative case | त्याने संस्थेला देणगी दिली | त्यांनी संस्थेन्ना देणगी दिली | ||
| Instrumental case | विद्यार्थी लेखणीने चित्र काढतो | विद्यार्थी लेखण्यान्नी चित्र काढतात | ||
| Instrumental case | मुलगा दाराशी उभा होता | -shī | मुले दाराशी उभी होती | shī |
| Dative case | मी विद्यार्थ्याला ओळखतो | मी विद्यार्थ्यान्ना ओळखतो | ||
| Dative case | मी मुलास ओळखतो | मी मुलान्ना ओळखतो | ||
| Ablative case | मुलगा घरून निघाला | मुले घरून निघाली | ||
| Ablative case | मुलगा गावाहूनी आला | मुले गावाहून आली | ||
| Genitive case | घराचा दर्वाजा सुन्दर आहे | -cā | घरांचे दरवाजे सुंदर आहेत | |
| Genitive case | मुलांची तब्येत सुधारली आहे | मुलांच्या तब्येती सुधारल्या आहेत | ||
| Genitive case | मुलाचे प्रगती पत्रक मिळाले | मुलाञ्ची प्रगती पत्रके मिळाली | ||
| Locative case | मुलगा घरात होता | मुले घरात होती | ||
| Locative case | मुलगा घरी होता | मुले घरी होती | ||
| Locative case | गाय घरी परतली | गायी घरा परतल्या | ||
| Vocative case | – | – | मुलान्नो शान्तित बसा | -nno |
Split Ergativity
Marathi is considered a split ergative language, i.e. it uses both nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive alignment. In the latter type, the subject of a transitive verb takes the ergative marking instead of having the same form as the subject of an intransitive verb. This change also results in the verb agreeing with the unmarked noun instead of its subject, as it would in nominative-accusative situations:Note that it is possible for the unmarked noun to be a direct object despite Marathi having an accusative case: Marathi exhibits Differential object marking for direct objects, and the accusative declension is used in the case of definite or animate objects.
In case there is no unmarked noun, the verb shows neutral agreement:
As in many Indo-Aryan languages, the ergative split in Marathi is primarily aspect-based, specifically triggered by the perfective for transitive verbs, as seen in the examples above. Furthermore, subjects of intransitive verbs in the obligative subjunctive mood are also marked as ergative, as are third-person subjects in the optative:
Differential object marking
Marathi, like many Indo-Aryan languages, exhibits differential object marking. Direct objects are marked according to definiteness, with unmarked objects representing indefinite nouns. As such, accusative case markings are not universally required.Sentences with both unmarked direct objects and unmarked subjects must follow the unmarked SOV word order. Since the nominative case is typically unmarked, the only time this does not occur is when the subject is a pronoun or in the ergative case, allowing for the usage of marked word orders for emphasis:
An alternate analysis of this situation is that Marathi does not mark the accusative case at all, rather the -ला marker is shared between the dative case and definite differential object marking.
Adjectives
Adjectives typically precede the noun and are divided into declinable and indeclinable categories. Declinable adjectives end in the vowel -ā and must be declined for the gender, number and case of the nouns they qualify. Declining adjectives for case is easier compared to declining nouns, since a single ending applies to all cases; a complete table listing the different endings is given below, with the masculine nominative singular as the citation form.Possessive
Possessive adjectives in Marathi are slight modifications to the personal pronouns, suffixed with the genitive/possessive case markers – चा/ची/चे , for masculine, feminine and plural subjects respectively. However, in the first and second-person singular the case marking is different, as shown below. Possessive adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they modify; for plural nouns, the markers change from चा/ची/चे to चे/च्या/ची, with a similar transformation for the first and second-person singular adjectives.Demonstrative
The adjectives हा and तो serve as demonstrative adjectives and are always declined for the gender and number of the noun that follows them.| Adjective | Singular | Plural |
| this/these | ||
| that/those |
Pronouns
There are three grammatical persons in Marathi. There is gender distinction in the first- and second-persons when the pronouns act as agreement markers on verbs; as independent pronouns this distinction in lost.| English | Sanskrit | Singular | Plural |
| First Person | प्रथम पुरुष | मी “I” | आम्ही “we” आपण “we” |
| Second Person | द्वितीय पुरुष | तू “you” | तुम्ही “you” आपण “you” |
| Third Person | तृतीय पुरुष | तो “he” ती “she” ते “it” | ते “they” or हे त्या “they” ती “they” |
Verbs
Verb stems can end in a vowel or a consonant and are declined for person, gender and number. They are usually listed in dictionaries in their infinitive forms, which consist of the verb stem with the suffix – ṇe ; for example खाणे, बोलणे, चालणे. Verbs are fairly regular, although the copula and other auxiliaries are notable exceptions.The verbal system, much like in other Indo-Aryan languages, revolves around a combination of aspect and tense – there are 3 main aspects and 3 main tenses. Tenses are marked using conjugations, while aspects are marked using suffixes and by adding conjugations of a copula/auxiliary verb.
Copula
The verb असणे is an irregular verb that acts as the copula / auxiliary for all tenses and for the perfect and imperfect aspects; its conjugations are shown below.The habitual aspect uses a different set of conjugations of the same auxiliary verb ; for present-tense and past-tense these conjugations are shown below. In future tense a different auxiliary verb, जाणे, is typically used.
Causatives
Causatives are created from existing verb stems and typically follow the set of patterns listed below.- Attaching 'व' to the stem of the verb; in modern literature 'व' is often replaced by 'वि'. So हसणे → हसवणे/हसविणे ; चालणे → चालवणे/चालविणे.
- * For verbs with stems that have single syllables, attach 'ववि' instead of 'व'. Thus, खाणे → खावविणे ; देणे → देवविणे.
- Root vowel change: a → ā, u/ū → o, i/ī → e ; sometimes also accompanied by the root final consonant change 'ṭ' → 'ṛ'. So तुटणे → तोडणे ; गळणे → गाळणे.
Imperatives
The imperative form of a verb is formed by applying a simple set of rules to the stem of the verb, and has second-person singular and second-person plural forms.- For akārānta verbs, the informal imperative form is the verb stem itself. The formal imperative is formed by utilizing the transformation a → ā to the stem vowel.
- For ākārānt verbs, the imperative form is the verb stem itself.
- For īkārānt and ekārānt verbs, the informal imperative is the verb stem itself. The formal imperative is formed by transforming the final vowel to the semi-vowel या.
- Negative imperative forms are constructed by adding the suffix -ऊ to the verb stem, and then by adding a separate negative particle नकोस/नको or नका.
| Verb | Second-person singular | Second-person singular / Second-person plural | |
| – | |||
| Negative | |||
| – | |||
| Negative | |||
| Negative |
Voice
Traditional grammar distinguishes three grammatical voices in Marathi.Active voice refers to a sentence construction in which the verb changes according to the subjectPassive voice refers to a sentence construction in which the verb changes according to the objectBhāve prayoga refers to a sentence construction in which the verb does not change according to either the subject or the object. This is used for imperatives.Sentence structure
A Marathi sentence generally has three parts: subject, object , and verb. While there is no real restriction on word order, SOV is most commonly used. Poetry like Powada often play with the word order for emphasis or to fit the meter or rhyme.See also: