Breakdown of Директор подписывает документы утром.
утром
in the morning
директор
director
документ
document
подписывать
to sign
Questions & Answers about Директор подписывает документы утром.
How would we change this active sentence into a passive one using the short-form participles from this lesson?
To say 'The documents are signed by the director', you take the perfective verb подписать, form the short passive participle подписан, and make it plural to match документы. The result is Документы подписаны директором. Notice that the doer of the action (директором) moves into the instrumental case.
Why is the imperfective verb подписывает used here instead of the perfective подпишет?
The imperfective is used because this is a routine action happening in the present tense (he signs them generally, every morning). Perfective verbs do not have a present tense form; if you used подпишет, the sentence would jump into the future tense, meaning 'The director will sign the documents in the morning'.
What case is документы in this sentence? It looks exactly like the dictionary form.
It is in the accusative case because it serves as the direct object receiving the action. Because документ is an inanimate noun, its plural accusative form is completely identical to its nominative form.
Why does the word for morning (утро) take the instrumental case ending (утром)?
Russian frequently uses the bare instrumental case for parts of the day and seasons to answer the question 'when?'. Therefore, утро becomes утром to mean 'in the morning'. The same pattern applies to words like вечером (in the evening) and ночью (at night).
Learn Директор подписывает документы утром and more in Russian
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free