Swedish grammar
Swedish grammar is either the study of the grammar of the Swedish language, or the grammatical system itself of the Swedish language.
Swedish is descended from Old Norse. Compared to its progenitor, Swedish grammar is much less characterized by inflection. Modern Swedish has two genders and no longer conjugates verbs based on person or number. Its nouns have lost the morphological distinction between nominative and accusative cases that denoted grammatical subject and object in Old Norse in favor of marking by word order. Swedish uses some inflection with nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is generally a subject–verb–object language with V2 word order.
Nouns
Nouns have one of two grammatical genders: common and neuter, which determine their definite forms as well as the form of any adjectives and articles used to describe them. Noun gender is largely arbitrary and must be memorized; however, around three quarters of all Swedish nouns are common gender. Living beings are often common nouns, like in en "a cat", en "a horse", en "a fly", etc.Swedish once had three genders—masculine, feminine and neuter. Though the three-gender system is preserved in a number of dialects and traces of it still exist in certain expressions, masculine and feminine nouns have today merged into the common gender in the standard language. A remnant of the masculine gender can still be expressed in the singular definite form of adjectives according to natural gender, in the same way as personal pronouns, and, are chosen for representing nouns in contemporary Swedish.
There is a small number of Swedish nouns that can be either common or neuter gender. The database for Svenska Akademiens ordlista 12 contained 324 such nouns.
There are traces of the former four-case system for nouns evidenced in that pronouns still have subject, object and genitive forms. Nouns make no distinction between subject and object forms, and the genitive is formed by adding to the end of a word. This -s genitive functions more like a clitic than a proper case and is nearly identical to the possessive suffix used in English. Note, however, that in Swedish orthography this genitive -s is appended directly to the word and is not preceded by an apostrophe. This does not cause confusion as it would in English because Swedish does not use an "-s" suffix for plurals.
Swedish nouns are inflected for number and definiteness and can take a genitive suffix. They exhibit the following morpheme order:
Plural forms
Nouns form the plural in a variety of ways. It is customary to classify Swedish nouns into five declensions based on their plural indefinite endings: -or, -ar, -r, -n, and no ending.- Nouns of the first declension are all of the common gender. The majority of these nouns end in -a in the singular and replace it with -or in the plural. For example: en , flickor. A few nouns of the first declension end in a consonant, such as: en , vågor ; en , rosor.
- Nouns of the second declension are also of the common gender, with the exception of ett , fingrar. They all have the plural ending -ar. Examples include: en , armar ; en , hundar ; en , sjöar ; en , pojkar ; en , sjukdomar ; en , främlingar. A few second declension nouns have irregular plural forms, for instance: en , aftnar ; en , somrar ; en or en , mödrar, en jordgubbe, jordgubbar.
- The third declension includes both common and neuter nouns. The plural ending for nouns of this declension is -er or, for some nouns ending in a vowel, -r. For example: en , parker ; ett , museer ; en , skor ; en , fiender. Some third declension nouns modify or shorten their stem vowels due to umlaut in the plural: en , händer ; ett , länder ; en , böcker ; en , nötter.
- All nouns in the fourth declension are of the neuter gender and end in a vowel in the singular. Their plural ending is -n. For example: ett , bin ; ett , äpplen. Two nouns in this declension have irregular plural forms: ett , ögon ; ett , öron.
- Fifth declension nouns have no plural ending and they can be of common or neuter gender. Examples of these include: ett , barn ; ett , djur ; en , lärare. Some fifth declension nouns show umlaut in the plural: en , möss ; en , gäss ; en , män.
Articles and definite forms
The indefinite article, which is only used in the singular, is for common nouns, and for neuter nouns, e.g. en , ett . The definite article in the singular is generally the suffixes -en or -n for common nouns, and -et or -t for neuter nouns. In most dialects, the final -t of the definite neuter suffix is silent. The definite article in the plural is -na for the first three declensions, -a for the fourth, and -en for the fifth: for example flaskorna, bina, breven.
When an adjective or numeral is used in front of a noun with the definite article, an additional definite article is placed before the adjective. This additional definite article is for neuter nouns, for common nouns, and for plural nouns, e.g. den nya flaskan, det nya brevet, de fem flaskorna. A similar structure involving the same kind of circumfixing of the definite article around the words or is used to mean "this" and "that", e.g. den här flaskan, det där brevet as a demonstrative article.
The five declension classes may be named -or, -ar, -er, -n, and null after their respective plural indefinite endings. Each noun has eight forms: singular/plural, definite/indefinite and caseless/genitive. The caseless form is sometimes referred to as nominative, even though it is used for grammatical objects as well as subjects.
Genitive
The genitive is always formed by appending -s to the caseless form. In the second, third and fifth declensions words may end with /s/ in the caseless form. These words take no extra -s in genitive use: the genitive of hus is hus. The invisible genitive suffix may however optionally be represented with an apostrophe in writing: hus’. Morpheme boundaries in some forms may be analyzed differently by some scholars.The Swedish genitive is not considered a case by all scholars today, as the -s is usually put on the last word of the noun phrase even when that word is not the head noun, much like in English usage. This use of -s as a clitic rather than a suffix has traditionally been regarded as ungrammatical, but is today dominant to the point where putting an -s on the head noun is considered old fashioned. The Swedish Language Council sanctions putting the ending after fixed, non-arbitrary phrases ; but otherwise they recommend to reformulate in order to avoid the construction altogether.
Examples
These examples cover all regular Swedish caseless noun forms.First declension: -or
Second declension: -ar
|