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The Order of Enclitics: Person Singular (And That Is Not Always The Case, Only in

The document discusses the order of enclitics in Serbian. It notes that enclitics do not carry stress and there can be multiple enclitics in one sentence. There is a hierarchy for which enclitics come first. This includes question particles, weak verb forms, then weak pronoun forms in the order of dative, genitive, accusative, and finally the verb "to be". Examples are provided to illustrate the hierarchy and how pronouns are ordered before the verb "to be" to avoid clashes.

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79 views3 pages

The Order of Enclitics: Person Singular (And That Is Not Always The Case, Only in

The document discusses the order of enclitics in Serbian. It notes that enclitics do not carry stress and there can be multiple enclitics in one sentence. There is a hierarchy for which enclitics come first. This includes question particles, weak verb forms, then weak pronoun forms in the order of dative, genitive, accusative, and finally the verb "to be". Examples are provided to illustrate the hierarchy and how pronouns are ordered before the verb "to be" to avoid clashes.

Uploaded by

hyde93
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THE ORDER OF ENCLITICS

– enclitics are words that do not carry stress


– in certain situations, there can be many enclitics in one sentence
– in these cases, there is a hierarchy of enclitics or the rule about which
ones go first
– common enclitics are the question particle li, the weak forms of
pronouns (genitive, dative, accusative) and the help verbs (to be & to
have)
– weak forms of pronouns are listed below:
Dativ
Singular Plural
1. mi 1. nam
2. ti 2. vam
3. mu / joj 3. im

Genitiv
Singular Plural
1. me 1. nas
2. te 2. vas
3. ga / je 3. ih

Akuzativ
Singular Plural
1. me 1. nas
2.te 2. vas
3.ga / je (ju) 3. ih

Note: As you could notice, the pronouns for genitive and accusative only
differ in feminine 3rd person singular (and that is not always the case, only in
special circumstances).
Let's conjugate the verb to see where what we are looking at is a female
(hence we will use a feminine 3 rd person singular pronoun in accusative - she
is the object, what we are looking at):

Video sam je. I saw her. Videli smo je. We saw her.

Video si je. You saw her. Videli ste je. You saw her.

Video je je. Videli su je. They saw her.

Oops, we have a double je, what do we do now? We use ju instead! We say:

Video ju je. He saw her.

This double je happens only when using feminine 3rd person singular
pronoun in accusative, where one je is the help verb and the other is the
pronoun. As you can see, in all the other persons there is no clash, the verb
and the pronoun are different.

What happens with feminine 3rd person singular pronoun in genitive? Verbs
that have their object in genitive are usually reflexive verbs (such as bojati se
– to be afraid; of whom or of what?). As I mentioned in the other sheet
(one about past tense of reflexive verbs), the weak form of the verb je gets
kicked out in 3rd person singular. So we have the following situation:

Bojao je (verb) se. He was afraid.

Bojao je (short form of nje, hence a pronoun!) se. He was afraid of her.

The pronoun je stays here; the verbal JE can be kicked out (we get partial
perfect tense but retain the same meaning) but the pronoun JE can't (we
would lose meaning). As for why JE goes before SE in this example, that is
because genitive pronouns precede the accusative ones (reflexive se is
considered an accusative pronoun). More about order of the enclitics on the
next page.
The hierarchy of the enclitics tells us that we should order them in a
following sequence:
1. question particle li
2. weak forms of the verbs (the only exception is je – the 3rd person
singular of to be)
3. weak forms of the pronouns (in this order: dative, genitive, accusative)
4. je (3rd person singular of to be)

Some examples:

Da li si video Mladena sinoć? Did you see Mladen last night? (First the
particle li, then the verb.)

Pružio si joj drugu šansu. You provided her with a second chance. (First the
verb, then dative pronoun).

Pružio joj je drugu šansu. He provided he with a second chance. (First the
dative pronoun, then the verbal je).

Gde je telefon? Dao sam joj ga. Where is the phone? I gave it to her. (First
the verb, then dative and later accusative pronoun).

Gde je auto? Dao joj ga je. Where is the car? He gave it to her. (First the
dative and accusative pronouns and only then the verbal je.)

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