Lesson Five, Norms

Word Order

Basic word order parameters are just like in the English language. Subject-Verb-Object is the most common sentence pattern (e.g., Student čita knjigu 'Student (subject) reads (verb) a book (object)', and the adjectival modifier precedes the noun (e.g., velika knjiga 'big (adjectival modifier) book (noun)'. In general, Serbo-Croatian word order is much more flexible than its English counterpart. For example, most adverbs can be placed either before or after the verb. The only area which may constitute a problem to a foreign learner is the placements of the words which do not have their own accent. These words are called clitics. Some of them are pronounced together with the preceding word (they are called enclitics), the others together with the following words (called proclitics). The following words fall into these two categories:

Proclitics	Enclitics
Negative particle ne	Short auxiliary verbs, e.g., sam 'am', si 'are', je 'is'
Prepositions, e.g., u 'in', za, etc.	Short pronominal forms, e.g., mu 'him', joj 'her'
Conjunctions, e.g., i 'and', a 'but'	Reflexive particle se 'oneself'
	Interrogative particle li 'question tag'

While proclitics are unproblematic with respect to their placing, there are two principle rules which need to be followed when placing enclitics:

• a. One enclitic or cluster of enclitics is always placed in the second position in the sentence or sentence subsection (e.g., noun phrase). Many native speakers have difficulties with this rule, and there is a great deal of disagreement among the experts. This rule should be remembered only as a tendency. What is beyond any doubt is that you cannot start a sentence with an enclitic. Remember thus that they cannot be in the first position.
• b. When there is a cluster of enclitics, the order is as follows: verb-pronoun-reflexive. There are two exceptions from this rule, both in the third person singular.
• b1. The reflexive deletes the verb in the third person singular,
• b2. The pronoun precedes the verb in the third person singular.

Placing of enclitics		Ordering of a Cluster of Enclitics
Example	Explanation	Example	Explanation
Radnik je radio. 'Worker worked.'	Second position in the sentence, one enclitic	Ja sam ga se setio. 'I remembered him.'	verb-pronoun-reflexive
Ja sam ih vidio. 'I saw them.'	Second position in the sentence, cluster of encitics	On se okrenuo. 'He turned around.'	The auxiliary verb je deleted by the reflexive in the third person singular
Moj otac radio je na fakultetu. 'My father worked at the university.'	Second position in the verb phrase.	Ona ga je pozvala. 'She invited him.'	Pronoun precedes the verb in the third person singular.

Spelling of the Clitics

Two spelling problems can be identified.

First, the negative particle li should never be merged with the preceding word (although, being an enclitic, it is pronounced in that manner). Thus, for example: Jesu li to oni (not Jesuli).

Second, the following rule apply to the negative particle ne:

With	Spell	Example
Verbs	Separately	ne može 'cannot'
Nouns	Together	nevjernik 'infidel'
Adjectives	Together	neinteresantan 'uninteresting'