Новый товар лежит на полке в магазине.

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Breakdown of Новый товар лежит на полке в магазине.

• магазин: the store
• новый: new
• на: on

Questions & Answers about Новый товар лежит на полке в магазине.

Why isn’t there an article (like “the” or “a”) before товар in Russian?

Russian doesn’t use definite or indefinite articles. Whether you mean “a new product” or “the new product” is understood from context or added words (e.g. этот товар for “this product,” какой-то товар for “some product”).

Why is товар in the nominative singular, even though it can mean “goods” in English (which is often plural)?

Here товар refers to a single item or a unit of merchandise. It stands as the subject of the sentence, so it’s in the nominative case. In Russian one often uses singular to talk about “merchandise” in general.

What case is полке in, and why?

Полке is in the prepositional (locative) case, singular feminine. After the preposition на, when you talk about location (“on” something), you use the prepositional case.

Why is в магазине using the prepositional case and not the accusative?

The preposition в can govern either accusative (for motion into) or prepositional (for static location). Since the sentence describes where the product lies (it’s not moving), we use prepositional: в магазине = “in the store.”

Why do we use the verb лежит here? Couldn’t we say or instead?