57 Dative of Whom It Matters

In this chapter, I venture a bit into the spoken Croatian, but such features are a part of the Standard too. There's a feature normally called ethical dative, but it has nothing to do with ethics. Actually, the name comes from Latin, and the feature there is really not the same as in Croatian, just a similar one.

Recall impersonal constructs with je describing situation, similar to English constructs:

Hladno je. "It's cold." (the whole sentence is in neuter in both languages!)
Kasno je. "It's late."

Now if we want to say who is experiencing this, English put the person in place of the subject:

"He's cold."
"He's late." (but look below)

Croatian takes a different road. First, it seems that it can be cold to everyone or cold to someone, in the same way that a letter can be to someone, and in all those cases Croatian uses the dative, to note who "gets" it:

Hladno mu je. lit. "It's cold to him." = "he's cold." (but not his body, he just feels the cold!
Kasno mu je. lit. "It's late to him." = "He feels it's late."

Other people maybe think it's not late: it happens to him. This notion "things happen to someone" is then extended all over the place:

Ti si prijatelj. "You're a friend." (a general statement)
Ti si prijatelj Ani. "You're a friend to Ana." (a statement about what goes on with Ana) = "you're Ana's friend."

Škola je počela. "(The) school has started."
Škola mi je počela. "(The) school, I have something to do with, has started." = "My school has started."

Sestra mi se vratila. "My sister came back."
Juha mu je hladna. "(the) soup is cold for him." (but someone else would maybe think it's ok)

Dijete mi se razboljëlo. "My child got sick."
Hlače su joj preuske. "(The) trousers are too tight for her." (but may be ok for someone else)

Don't ever think that dijete mi always implies "my child": it just means that the whole action happened "to me", it happened in "my" house, "my" family, "my" life, and "my" child is just a consequence. Since people talk about things that matter, and since mi "to me" is shorter than the possesive moj "my", people use dative like this a lot! It's similar to colloquial English "The school started on me."

Some more examples:

Vlak joj je kasnio. "her train was late."
Ivanu se brat zaposlio. "Ivan's brother got employed."

Sometimes, it can have ambigous meanings:

Žena mi je pripremila ručak.

Does it mean "(The) woman prepared (a) lunch for me" or "My wife prepared (a) lunch."?

It depends on the context. Žena can be someone unrelated to you (meaning both "woman" and "wife") - but it's sure that you have something to do with the whole thing! Likely, you will eat...

More ambigous sentences:

Djëca su mi razbila prozor.

It could mean:

"My children broke (a) window."
"Children broke my window."
"My children broke my window."

Furthermore:

Knjiga je zanimljiva. "(The) book is interesting."
Knjiga mu je zanimljiva. "He considers (the) book interesting." (the usual meaning) or "(The) book he wrote is interesting." (seldom)

Sometimes, usually in the spoken Croatian, one can add the dative ti or vam, trying to say that what is said should matter to the listener, it's just asking for attention, or trying to produce compassion (hence the 'ethical' in the name of a similar use of the dative in Latin):

Ja säm ti umorän. "You know, I'm tired." (only a rough translation!)

Is this all "gramatically correct"? English has a similar feature: "on me", "on him", that's considered non-standard. Well, I'll just cite an article:

The Dativus Ethicus (henceforth DE) is a grammatical construction with an ancient lineage. Strict grammarians point out that it is colloquial and from the point of view of the written language always appears as a structurally superfluous element (Hofmann & Szantyr, 93). Nevertheless they cite examples from Sophocles (o: teknon, e: veve:ken e:min o ksenos), Cicero (Hic tibi rostra Cato advolat) the New Testament (Schwyzer, 149).

(Veronica DuFeu: The Dativus Ethicus (DE) in the Slavonic Languages)

One last remark: Spanish and some other languages have exactly the same construct (only the word no is moved left in the Spanish example):

El computador no me funciona. (Spanish) = Računalo mi ne radi. (Croatian)
"It happens to me, the computer is not working."

56

[in construction]

55

[in construction]

54 Appositions, Roles and Family Relations

English can just chain nouns, where all nouns but the last one serve as adjectives. For instance, a "car engine tuning service" is a kind of a "service".

Croatian cannot do that. Nouns cannot be used as adjectives, but genitive and prepositional phrases must be used:

Servis za podešavanje motora automobila
lit. "service for tuning of engines of cars"

However, there's a construct in Croatian where one noun can describe another, but has a very restricted use. One noun must stand for a member of a group (for instance učitelj "teacher") and another must be a name (Ivan):

Učitelj Ivan "teacher Ivan"

The first noun ("role") can have attributes; both nouns are in the same case:

Moj učitelj Ivan "my teacher Ivan"
Pišem mom učitelju Ivanu. (dat.) "I'm writing to my teacher Ivan."

Order role-name can be reversed, then it means "x, who is y"; again everything is in the same case:

Pišem Ivanu, mom učitelju. (dat.) "I'm writing to Ivan, my teacher."

This is all very similar to English, except for the cases. This construct is not limited to people: as in English, the first noun may be mačka "cat", tvornica "factory", mjesec "moon", and the second the name of a cat, factory or moon.

This is a suitable moment to meet some words for roles. One group of them are a-nouns with masculine (animate, of course) gender. They are the exception of the approximate rule that all a-nouns are feminine. They are:

sluga m^a "servant"
gazda m^a "master" (colloquial)
vođa m^a "leader"
vojvoda m^a "duke"
vojskovođa m^a "warlord"
varalica m^a "crook, cheat"
lovokradica m^a "poacher"
ubojica m^a "murderer"
izdajica m^a "traitor"

And some others, less frequently used. These words can be used for females as well - there are no feminine counterparts. Some of them can even be understood as feminine, in other words, they can switch gender:

Ubojica je došäo. (m^a)
Ubojica je došla. (f)

Other nouns for roles are mostly masculine. For family relations some are arranged in pairs, but others are used in single form:

roditelj m^a "parent"
brat m^a (sg. only) "brother" : sestra f "sister"
ujäk m^a "mother's brother" : ujna f "wife of mother's brother"
etc.

This diagram lists relations of a male person, younger generations are on the right, marriages are represented by hatched lines. Round rectangles are women, names in parentheses are somewhat archaic:

Names for some professions (male : female):

profesor : profesorica "professor"
predsjëdnik : predsjednica "president"
učenik : učenica "pupil, student"
prijatelj : prijateljica "friend"
kralj : kraljica "king"
slikar : slikarica "painter"
vozač : vozačica "driver"

The default way is to add -ica, discarding -ik if the male noun ends on it. Nouns ending on -čar usually add -ka to it:

matematičar : matematičarka "mathematician"
atletičar : atletičarka "athlete (track and field)"

However, for roles ending on -äc, there's no easy way to make a female role noun! One would expect discarding the ending and substituting -ica, as in punäc:punica, but for some strange reasons it's not so:

pisäc : spisateljica "writer"
sudäc : sutkinja "judge"
kriväc : ? "culprit, perpetrator"
policajäc : policajka "policeman/woman"

Some people don't like it (for ideological reasons) but masculine role-words can be applied to women. Recall that there's only one word for "parent" (roditelj, only m^a) or "person" (osoba, only f), and no one objects to that. It's just so that Croatian uses preferably masculine nouns for various roles. For some worlds there's no way to construct a feminine noun, so people invent new nouns.

Croatian is everything but gender-neutral: zrak "air" is masculine inanimate; voda "water", vatra "fire" and zemlja "earth, ground" are feminine. Život "life" is masculine inanimate, and smrt "death" feminine!

53 Verb 'budem' and Another Future Tense

The verb budem, -, -, - is very curious one: it's the only verb that has only forms for present, no past, and no infinitive. It's the perfective counterpart of säm, bio, bila, biti - "to be", the most important (imperfective) verb.

It means something like "start being", "get to be", "become". For instance:

Ako budem gladan... "If I get hungry..."

It's meaning and aspect, in a way, imply future events. Therefore, it's used to make another form of future tense - with the same past participle used for the past tense:

Spavao säm. "I was sleeping."
Budem spavao. "I'll be sleeping."

In some parts of Croatia (we will discuss dialects later) this is the only form of future tense.

This verb is completely regular, but lacks all forms but the present tense.

So this tense comes cheap: the past participle you already know, and there's just a peculiar verb with present only and all forms of it regular. It could have been much worse.

Now, we have two future tenses, which one should we use and when? Answer: in Standard Croatian, you use budem-future only in sentences "if I go...", and it's optional. In Colloquial Croatian, you can mix them as you want.

Budem is not a clitic - it can go to any position in the sentence, but it normally precedes a past participle. Questions can be formed with and without li, and it alters the meaning:

Budeš li išla... = ako budeš išla
Budeš išla..? = hoćeš li ići...?

Since hoću has two meanings: "want" and "auxillary verb to create future", sentences with hoću imply intentions, but sentences with budem imply certain future events. Just ću is neutral, it's a pure auxillary, but it normally not used in questions.

You might think about short-cutting, using sam for the past, budem for the future tense, but you still need infinitives to produce forms like trebam spavati "I need to sleep".

That much about the "exact future tense".

These are all tenses that are used in everyday speech. Others are just fancy stuff and for poetry. This makes some people (who think more complicated = better) unhappy, but it's good for you.

Exercises

[in construction]

52 Present Participle

What is this?! This is a word that coresponds to English "-ing" forms. It's really constructed easily. One just adds -ći to the 3^rd pers. pl. of the present tense of impf. verbs:

pišem (pišu) "write" → pišući "writing"
padam (padaju) "fall" → padajući "falling"
pečem (peku) "bake" → pekući "baking"
idem (idu) "go" → idući "going"
tečem (teku) "flow" → tekući "flowing"

It's a participle, so it's something between an adjective, an adverb, and a verbal form. It can be used in various ways. First, all pres. part. can be used freely in sentences as adverbs, meaning "while x-ing":

Idući ulicom, ugledao sam nju. "While walking the street, I spotted her"
Zaspao sam gledajući televiziju. "I fell asleep while I was watching TV."

The case of nouns appended to the participle is the same used with the verb:

idem ulicom (ins.) → idući ulicom
gledam televiziju (acc.) → gledajući televiziju

Another use is indicating a manner, how you did something, but it's really again the same thing, you were doing something at the same time:

Vozili smo se pjëvajući. lit. "We were driving singing." = "We sang while driving."
Učim prepisujući iz knjige. lit. "I'm learning copying from the book." = "I'm learning by copying from the book."

The third use is as a real adjective. Not all pres. participles allow that. Moreover, some of them developed special meanings when used as an adjective:

idući "following, next"
tekući "liquid"
budući (from säm) "future" , as in "future tense"
etc.

An example:

Vidjëla je leteće tanjure. "She saw flying saucers."

However, their most often use is in fixed phrases, like leteći tanjuri or tekući sapun "liquid soap", since it can be phrased using relative clauses:

tekuća voda "flowing water" (opp. to "still") = voda koja teče
leteći kukci "flying insects" = kukci koji lete

Word idući means "following" or "next" but the more frequent one is sljëdeći which means only "next", and it's the main way to express that meaning in Croatian. If used as an adverb (not as an adjective) it's spelled slightly differently: slijëdeći.

The opposite meaning, "previous", is expressed by prošäo, prošla, simply the past participle of prođem, used as an adjective:

Prošle godine smo išli u Francusku. "Last year we went to France."
Sljëdeće godine idemo u Italiju. "Next year we go to Italy."
etc.

Both time phrases are in genitive singular.

51 Verbs stajem, padam, tvorim

Verbs stajem "stand" and padam "fall" are important verbs indicating basic placement of things. However, verbs derived from them have really diverse and important meanings. Verb tvorim has a completely different basic meaning "make" (and is seldom used) but verbs derived from it are also important.

Verb stajem, stajao... (impf.) ~ stanem, stao... means "stand". Sometimes an alternative form stojim is also used for the impf. aspect. Verbs derived from it don't change aspect: all of form x-stajem are impf. and x-stanem are perf. Other forms are simply derived from the basic verb: pre-stao, pre-stala, pre-stati, etc. So only prefixes will be listed.

prefix	meaning	prepositions and cases
izo-	be absent (from X)	s X-gen.
na-	come into being, get created
o-	stay, remain X	X-nom. (!) = similar to sam
odu-	give up (on X)	od X-gen.
po-	become X, turn into X	X-nom. (!) = similar to sam
pre-	cease, stop (with X)	s X-ins. / inf.
pri-	a. comply, consent to X; b. land on X	na X-acc.
ra-	separate, divorce (from X)	se (od X-gen.)
sa-	meet X	se s X-ins.
u-	stand up
za-	stop briefly

Verbs ostajem ~ ostanem, postajem ~ postanem behave as sam, bio: they can have an adjective as object, or another noun in nominative! These are the only with object in nominative, or two subjects, if you prefer! Occasionally, one can read these verbs with objects in instrumental: it's slightly archaic nowadays.

Some examples of use:

[in construction]

Verb padam,... (impf.) ~ padnem, pao, pala, pasti means "fall". Verbs derived from its impf. form are impf., likewise for the perf. So only prefixes will be listed. Some verbs have double meaning, literal and highly metaphorical.

prefix	meaning	prepositions and cases
do-	be liked by X	se X-dat.
is-	fall out of X	iz X-gen.
na-	a. attack X; b. fall onto X in great quantity	na X-acc.
ot-	fall off X, come off X	od X-gen.
pri-	belong to X, pertain	X-dat. (!)
pro-	fall through X	kroz X-acc.
ra-	fall apart, decay (to X)	se (na X-acc.)
u-	fall in(to) X	u X-acc.

Some examples of use:

[in construction]

The verb tvorim impf. means "make" (in meaning: "bricks make house"), but is very seldom used nowadays. Verbs derived from it are perf., and their impf. versions are made with -tvaram.

prefix	meaning	prepositions and cases
o-	open	acc.
pre-	transform A to B	A-acc. u B-acc.
pri-	...	acc.
s-	create X	X-acc.
za-	close X	X-acc.

Passive participles are expected -tvoren perf., -tvaran impf. Words otvoreno and zatvoreno, meaning "open" and "closed" are very frequently used in shops, offices, etc.

[in construction]