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Questions & Answers about Кто тебя провожает?
Since this lesson is about departure verbs like уходить, how does провожает fit in?
While verbs like уходить describe the person who is actually leaving, провожать is used for the person who accompanies the traveler to the door, train station, or airport to say goodbye. It translates to seeing someone off.
Why do we use тебя instead of ты here?
In this sentence, Кто (who) is the subject doing the action, so it is in the nominative case. The person being seen off is the direct object receiving the action, which requires the accusative case. The accusative form of ты is тебя.
Why does the object тебя come before the verb?
Russian word order is very flexible. It is highly common to place object pronouns like тебя directly before the verb. You could also say Кто провожает тебя?, but the word order shown here flows a bit more naturally in conversational Russian.
Is провожает imperfective or perfective?
It is imperfective, coming from the infinitive провожать. It is used here for an ongoing action or present fact (Who is seeing you off?). The perfective pair is проводить, which you would use to ask about a completed future result, like Кто тебя проводит? (Who will see you off?).