Breakdown of Директор выпил холодный сок.
сок
juice
холодный
cold
директор
director
выпить
to drink (perfective)
Questions & Answers about Директор выпил холодный сок.
Why use выпил here instead of пил?
Выпил is the perfective form of the verb, while пил is imperfective. Since this sentence is about a completed, single action in the past (he drank the juice and finished it), we use the perfective aspect. If we used пил, it would mean he was in the middle of drinking it or drank it regularly.
How is выпил formed from the dictionary verb?
The imperfective verb for 'to drink' is пить. To make it perfective, Russian often adds a prefix, giving us выпить. To make it past tense for a masculine subject (директор), we drop the -ть and add -л, resulting in выпил.
If the juice is the object receiving the action, why hasn't the ending of сок changed to show the accusative case?
It actually is in the accusative case! However, for masculine inanimate nouns like сок (things that are not alive), the accusative form is identical to the nominative (dictionary) form. If the director drank a feminine noun like water (вода), it would change to воду.
Why does the adjective холодный also look like its dictionary form here?
Adjectives must match the noun they describe in gender, number, and case. Because сок is a masculine, inanimate noun in the accusative case, the adjective холодный (cold) must also take the masculine inanimate accusative form. Just like the noun, this specific adjective form looks exactly the same as its nominative form.
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