Questions & Answers about Над кроватью висит небольшая лампа.
What does the preposition над mean in this sentence?
Над means “above” or “over.” It indicates that something is positioned at a higher level relative to another object. Here it tells us the lamp is hanging over the bed, not on it.
Why is кроватью in the instrumental case?
The preposition над always governs the instrumental case when expressing location. The noun кровать (bed) is feminine and ends with a soft sign, so its instrumental singular form is кроватью.
Which word is the subject, and why is лампа in the nominative case?
The verb висит (“hangs”) is intransitive and describes what the lamp is doing. Since лампа (“lamp”) is the doer of the action, it appears in the nominative singular as the grammatical subject.
What part of speech is небольшая, and why does it have that ending?
Небольшая is an adjective meaning “small” or “not large.” It modifies лампа, and in Russian adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in gender (feminine), number (singular), and case (nominative), hence the ending -ая.
Could I say Небольшая лампа висит над кроватью instead? Would the meaning change?