Questions & Answers about Мой брат идёт по узкой дорожке.
What is the grammatical role of Мой брат and how does it compare to English possessives?
Мой брат translates as My brother. Here, Мой is a possessive adjective that agrees with брат in gender (masculine), number (singular), and case (nominative). Unlike English, which uses articles and separate possessive pronouns, Russian simply uses the adjectival form without any articles.
Why is the verb идёт used in this sentence instead of ходит?
Russian distinguishes between unidirectional and multidirectional verbs of motion. Идёт (from идти) is the unidirectional form used to denote a specific, ongoing action (he is currently going). In contrast, ходит (from ходить) would imply habitual or repeated movement. Since the sentence refers to one specific instance of movement, идёт is the proper choice.
What tense and person is идёт in, and what does its ending indicate?
Идёт is in the present tense and is the third person singular form of the verb. The ending -ёт confirms that the action is happening now and is performed by a singular subject (in this case, брат).
What case is used in the phrase по узкой дорожке, and why is that case required?
The phrase uses the dative case. The preposition по when indicating movement along a surface requires its noun to be in the dative case. Thus, дорожка becomes , and the adjective is likewise declined to match in dative feminine singular. This structure shows the spatial relationship of moving along the path.