Participial and Verbal-Adverb Phrases

Once you can form a participle or a verbal adverb, the next skill is wiring it into a sentence — building the phrases that let one clause ride inside another without a conjunction. Ukrainian has two such reduced-clause devices. The participial phrase (дієприкметнико́вий зворо́т) is built on a passive participle and modifies a noun, like a compressed relative clause. The verbal-adverb phrase (дієприслівнико́вий зворо́т) is built on a verbal adverb and modifies the main verb, compressing a second same-subject action. Both are powerful, both are comma-bound, and both come with a stylistic warning that defines good Ukrainian: where Russian (and clumsy translated Ukrainian) reaches for an active participle, standard Ukrainian rewrites it as a який-clause. This page is about the syntax — how to attach these phrases, punctuate them, and avoid the dangling error.

Participial phrases: a passive participle + its dependents

A participial phrase is a passive participle together with the words that depend on it (an agent, an object of the agent, modifiers), functioning as one big adjective on a noun. The headline pattern puts the agent in the instrumental — "a book written by a famous author" is кни́га, напи́сана відо́мим а́втором, where the doer а́втором stands in the instrumental case.

The participle agrees with its noun in gender, number, and case, exactly like an adjective. Punctuation depends on position: a participial phrase after its noun is set off by commas (as above); the same phrase before the noun usually is not.

Verbal-adverb phrases: compressing a same-subject clause

A verbal-adverb phrase takes a second action by the same subject and folds it into one comma-set-off chunk attached to the main verb. The aspect of the verbal adverb sets the time relationship:

• Imperfective -ючи / -чи / -ачи = a simultaneous action ("while V-ing"): йду́чи, чита́ючи, слу́хаючи.
• Perfective -вши / -ши = a prior, completed action ("having V-ed"): прочита́вши, зроби́вши, прийшо́вши.

A verbal-adverb phrase is always fenced with commas, wherever it sits in the sentence — at the start (as above), in the middle, or at the end:

The two aspect/time pairings get full treatment on imperfective verbal adverbs and perfective verbal adverbs.

The iron rule: same subject (no dangling)

This is where learners — and careless writers — come unstuck. The doer of the verbal adverb must be the subject of the main clause. A verbal-adverb phrase whose implied subject differs from the main subject is a dangling modifier, exactly as wrong in Ukrainian as "Walking home, the rain started" is in English.

The fix for a dangling verbal adverb is almost always to expand it back into a full subordinate clause — with коли́ ("when/as"), після то́го як ("after"), or тому́ що ("because") — and give it its own subject. When the two actions genuinely have different subjects, the verbal adverb is simply the wrong tool.

The stylistic core: rewrite active participles as який-clauses

Here is the lesson that separates natural Ukrainian from a Russian calque. Russian forms present active participles freely — читающий "(the one) reading", работающий "working", пишущий "writing" — and uses them as compact noun-modifiers. In Ukrainian these forms (чита́ючий, працю́ючий, пи́шучий) sound bookish, bureaucratic, or outright Russified, and standard usage rewrites them as a relative clause with який ("who/which").

So the division of labour is clear: passive participles (напи́саний, зро́блений) and verbal adverbs (чита́ючи, прочита́вши) are alive and welcome; the present active participle is the form to convert into a який-clause. (A few have frozen into ordinary adjectives or nouns — квіту́чий "blooming", блиску́чий "brilliant", керівни́к "manager" — and those are fine.) The reason this matters for phrases specifically is that an active participle almost never travels alone — it drags a whole phrase behind it (an object, an adverb, a place), and the longer that phrase grows, the more leaden the participle sounds. Студе́нти, що отри́мують стипе́ндію ("students who receive a scholarship") reads cleanly as a relative clause; a participial knot built around the same participle is exactly the kind of construction that marks a bad translation. The rule of thumb, then, is not just "avoid чита́ючий" in isolation but "whenever you would build a phrase around a present active participle, build a який-clause instead." This is also why the -но/-то impersonal (напи́сано, зро́блено) is such a prized alternative: where Russian would lean on an active or passive participle to say "it has been done," idiomatic Ukrainian reaches for the subject-free зро́блено — another way the language sidesteps a heavy participial phrase. Full detail on active participles and relative clauses.

Source-language comparison

For an English speaker, the two devices map onto things you know. The participial phrase ≈ "a book written by…", a reduced relative clause — same idea, but the agent goes in the instrumental (а́втором). The verbal-adverb phrase ≈ English "-ing / having -ed" clauses ("Reading the letter…", "Having finished…") — and crucially the same-subject / no-dangling rule is identical to English's. The new habit is mostly punctuation: Ukrainian fences these phrases with commas far more systematically than English does.

For a Russian speaker, the forms are familiar but the style is the trap. Your instinct will be to over-use active participles (читающий → чита́ючий) — flip that instinct and write який-clauses. The passive participle phrase and the verbal adverb transfer with surface adjustments (би/б-free here, just spelling and stress), but the active-participle habit is the single clearest Russification to root out.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Participial phrase (passive participle + dependents) modifies a noun and agrees with it; the agent is instrumental (напи́сана а́втором). Commas when it follows the noun, none when it precedes.
• Verbal-adverb phrase compresses a same-subject second action — imperfective -ючи = simultaneous (йду́чи), perfective -вши = prior (прочита́вши). Always comma-set-off.
• Same-subject rule is iron: the verbal adverb's doer must be the main-clause subject — otherwise it dangles. Fix by expanding to a коли́-clause.
• Rewrite present active participles (чита́ючий) as який-clauses (студе́нт, яки́й чита́є) — the signature of natural, un-Russified Ukrainian.