Questions & Answers about Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
Why is ребёнок grammatically masculine, even though a child can be a boy or a girl?
In Russian, every noun has a grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). This is a property of the word itself, not of the real person or object.
- Ребёнок is grammatically masculine.
So any verb or adjective that refers to ребёнок will also be in masculine forms:
- маленький ребёнок сидит – a small child is sitting (маленький = masculine)
- уставший ребёнок – a tired child (уставший = masculine)
If you specifically want to say whether the child is a boy or girl, you would normally use мальчик (boy) or девочка (girl), which are also grammatically gendered (masculine and feminine, respectively).
What is the infinitive of сидит, and what does this form tell us about the verb?
The infinitive of сидит is сидеть – to sit, to be sitting.
Form сидит is:
- 3rd person singular
- present tense
- imperfective aspect
So сидит literally means:
- he/she/it sits
or, in natural English: - he/she/it is sitting
In Russian, the simple present (сидит) usually covers both English “sits” and “is sitting”, depending on context.