Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language that, like most other Slavic languages, has an extensive system of inflection. This article describes exclusively the grammar of the Shtokavian dialect, which is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum and the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of Serbo-Croatian. "An examination of all the major 'levels' of language shows that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system."
Pronouns, nouns, adjectives and some numerals decline (change the word ending to reflect case, the grammatical category and function) whereas verbs conjugate for person and tense. As in other Slavic languages, the basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), but the declensions show sentence structure and so word order is not as important as in more analytic languages, such as English or Chinese. Deviations from the standard SVO order are stylistically marked and may be employed to convey a particular emphasis, mood or overall tone, according to the intentions of the speaker or writer. Often, such deviations will sound literary, poetical or archaic.
Nouns have three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) that correspond, to a certain extent, with the word ending. Accordingly, most nouns with -a are feminine, -o and -e neuter, and the rest mostly masculine but with some feminine. The grammatical gender of a noun affects the morphology of other parts of speech (adjectives, pronouns, and verbs) attached to it. Nouns are declined into seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, and instrumental, albeit with considerable syncretism (overlap) especially in the plural.
Verbs are divided into two broad classes according to their aspect, which can be either "perfective" (signifying a completed action) or "imperfective" (action is incomplete or repetitive). There are seven tenses, four of which (present, perfect, future I and II) are used in contemporary Serbo-Croatian, and the other three (aorist, imperfect and pluperfect) used much less frequently. The pluperfect is generally limited to written language and some more educated speakers, and the aorist and imperfect are considered stylistically marked and rather archaic. However, some nonstandard dialects make considerable (and thus unmarked) use of those tenses. Aorist and pluperfect are typically more used in villages and small towns of Serbia than in standard language, even in villages close to the Serbian capital Belgrade. In some parts of Serbia, the aorist can even be the most common past tense.
All Serbo-Croatian lexemes in this article are spelled in accented form in the Latin alphabet as well as in Ijekavian and Ekavian (with Ijekavian bracketed) when these differ. See Serbo-Croatian phonology.
Nouns.
Serbo-Croatian makes a distinction between three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, instrumental) and two numbers (singular and plural).
The dative and locative cases mostly coincide; however, in some nouns they have a different pitch accent: "grȃd — grȃdu — grádu, stvȃr — stvȃri — stvári".
Declension.
Serbo-Croatian has three main declensional types, traditionally called a-type, e-type and i-type respectively, according to their genitive singular ending.
a-type nouns.
This type reflects Proto-Slavic o-stems, and is characterized by the endings (-o), (-e), or zero (-Ø) in the nominative singular, and (-a) in genitive singular. It includes most of the masculine and all of the neuter nouns.
The category of animacy is important for choosing of accusative singular of o-stems, and of personal pronouns. Animate nouns have the accusative case like the genitive, and inanimate nouns have the accusative case like the nominative. This is also important for adjectives and numerals that agree with masculine nouns in case.
This type has two sets of case endings: one for masculine, and the other for neuter gender:
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The zero ending -Ø is for masculine nouns that end in a consonant in the nominative singular. Most masculine monosyllabic and some bisyllabic words receive an additional suffix -ov- or -ev- throughout the plural ("bor – borovi" 'pine', "panj – panjevi" 'stump').
The choice of -o- and -e- endings in the nominative, vocative and instrumental singular, as well as the plural suffix -ov-/-ev-, is governed by the stem-final consonant: if it is a "soft" (chiefly palatal consonant – "c, č, ć, đ, j, lj, nj, š, ž, št", and sometimes "r"), -e- endings are used, and -o endings otherwise; however, there are exceptions.
Some loanwords, chiefly of French origin, preserve the ending vowel (-e, -i, -o, -u) as part of the stem; those ending in -i receive an additional epenthetic -j- suffix in oblique cases: "kàfē – kafèi" 'café', "pànō – panòi" 'billboard', "kànū – kanùi" 'canoe', "tàksi – taksiji" 'taxi'. They are always of masculine gender; loanwords ending in -a are typically of the e-declension class (feminine); neuter nouns are basically a closed class.
Masculine nouns.
Masculine nouns belonging to this declension class are those that are not hypocorisms, and do not end in -a, which undergo e-type declension.
According to the nominative singular forms they are divided in two classes:
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Masculine nouns ending in -o or -e present a special case. They generally comprise personal names, hypocorisms and certain foreign-language borrowings.
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Neuter nouns.
Neuter nouns end in -"o", -"e" and -"∅".
Neuter nouns ending in -"o".
The final "o" is always a suffix. Nouns which have at least two consonants (except "st" and "zd") before the final "o" have disappearing "a" in genitive plural.
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The noun "dȑvo" can mean 'wood', in which case it is declined as above (without disappearing a); and 'tree', where it can be declined either as above (without disappearing a) or as an imparisyllabic form below:
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When the nouns "ȍko" and "ȕho" mean 'eye' and 'ear', except after a number ending with two-to-four, their plurals are feminine; their plurals are neuter otherwise.
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Nouns "čȕdo" 'miracle', "kȍlo" 'wheel', "nȅbo" 'sky', "tijêlo" 'body' and "ȕho" 'ear', in addition to parisyllabic form plurals without disappearing "a", have imparisyllabic plurals formed by appending -"es"- to the base. These plurals are used differently. The nominative plural of "ȕho" is "ušèsa", and the nominative plural of "tijêlo" is "tjelèsa".
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Neuter nouns ending in -"e".
The final "e" can be a suffix, so the noun is parisyllabic, and it can belong to the noun base, in which case the noun is not parisyllabic. The noun is parisyllabic if it ends with -"je" (except "jáje" in singular), -"lje", -"nje" (except "jȁnje"), -"će", -"đe", -"ce" (except "pȕce" and "tùce"), -"šte", -"šće" or -"žđe". The nouns "môre" and "tlȅ" are also parisyllabic. If a noun has at least two consonants before the final "e", it has a disappearing "a" in genitive plural. This is not the case if the noun ends with -"šte", -"šće", -"žđe" or -"je". Nouns representing living things do not have plural forms, but their plurality is marked with a collective noun formed with -"ād" ("téle", n. sg. "singulare tantum" → "tȅlād", f. sg. "singulare tantum") or by using a noun formed with -"ići" ("pȉle", n. sg. "singulare tantum" → "pȉlići", m. pl.). The noun "dijéte" 'child' is a "singulare tantum" and uses the collective noun "djèca", f. sg. "singulare tantum", but plural with verbs, instead of a plural form.
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Other neuter nouns.
The "pluralia tantum" nouns "vráta", "ústa" and "plúća" can have the suffix -"ijū" in genitive plural: "vrátijū", "ústijū", "plúćijū". The only neuter noun ending in -"a" is "dȍba"/"dôba":
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e-type nouns.
This type reflects Proto-Slavic a-stems, and is characterized by the ending -a in nominative singular and -ē in genitive singular. It contains most of the feminine nouns, and a small number of masculines.
i-type nouns.
This type reflects Proto-Slavic i-stems, and is characterized by the zero ending in nominative singular and -i in genitive singular. It contains the rest of feminine nouns, i.e., those that are not contained in the e-type nouns (a-stems).
Some nouns appear only in the plural form and do not have a singular variant (see plurale tantum). The gender of these nouns is either feminine (e.g. "hlače" 'trousers', "gaće" 'pants', "grudi" 'chest') or neuter (e.g. "kola" 'car', "leđa" 'back', "usta" 'mouth').
Pronouns.
Serbo-Croatian allows deletion of the subject pronoun, because the inflected verb already contains information about its subject (see pro-drop language). Example:
"Bojim se." 'I am afraid.'
"Bojiš se." You are afraid.
"Možeš reći što god hoćeš." 'You can say whatever you want.'
Adjectives.
Some of the declensions for adjectives are the same as for nouns: "velika "kuća (sing. fem. nom.), "veliku "kuću (sing. fem. acc.). Others differ: "velikog stana (sing. masc. gen.), "jednim "klikom" 'with one click' (sing. masc. instrum.).
Numerals.
Nouns modified by numerals are in the genitive case. As a vestige of the dual number, 2, 3, and 4 take the genitive singular, and 5 and above take the genitive plural.
Verbs.
Like those of other Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian verbs have a property of aspect: the "perfective" and the "imperfective". Perfective indicates an action that is completed or sudden, while the imperfective denotes continuous, repeated, or habitual action. Aspect compensates for a relative lack of tenses compared with e.g. Germanic or Romance languages: the verb already contains the information whether the action is completed or lasting, so there is no general distinction between continuous and perfect tenses.
Slavic verbs in general are characterized by a relatively low number of stems, from which a wide variety of meanings is achieved by prefixation.
Tense.
The indicative has seven tenses: present, past, futures I and II, pluperfect, aorist and imperfect. The last two are not used often in daily speech , especially the imperfect. The imperfect is considered archaic in speech and appears only in certain expressions like "Kako se "zvaše"" ("What was it called"). The aorist is often used to indicate that something has just now happened, for example "Ispadoše mi ključevi" ("My keys fell down"). The aorist form of the verb "otići" ("to go away") is often used to refer to an immediate future, for example "Odoh na spavanje" ("I'm going to sleep"). Like the present, the aorist and imperfect are formed through inflection, and the other tenses are periphrastic:
Future tense can also be formed with (reduced) present of "hteti" plus the conjunction "da" and the present of the main verb, e.g. "ćeš da kuvaš" in Serbian, but this form is incorrect in Croatian. Also, whereas in Croatian it would be "radit ćemo", in Serbian the "t" can be omitted and the verbs merged into "radićemo".
Aorist forms
The aorist form depends on the verb's infinitive root (the form without "-ti", may be different from the present root). Case where the root ends in a vowel:
The infinitive root may not be obvious from the infinitive if it ends in a consonant, because the root ending interacted with the "t" of "-ti" during the language's development. These were the sound changes:
This is the source of infinitives with "-ći" instead of "-ti" (except ići). Roots of these kinds should then technically be known by heart, but they happen to be equal to the present root forms. An alternate aorist form is used with these verbs: an "-o-" is infixed in some cases, and "-e" is used in 2nd/3rd sg.
Before the front vowel "e", the velars "k" and "g" regularly turn into "č" and "ž" respectively.
A verb with an irregular inf. root ending in a consonant. Correspondingly, the 2nd aorist form described is used:
The use of this apparently extraneous (when compared to the infinitive) "d" has spread to other verbs, most notably verbs on "-stati" and "znati".
Exemplary "postati" (to become):
How to use the aorist?
It is used only with verbs of the perfective aspect
1: For actions that have just now happened, right before you talk about it (often with an emotional nuance):
Examples:
""Ujede" me komarac" ("A mosquito bit me")
""Ode" mi autobus" ("I missed the bus/The bus went away")
"Baš sad "htedoh" da te nazovem" ("I just wanted to call you")
""Uništiše" mi ovi moljci košulju" ("These moths destroyed my shirt")
""Pomislih" na tebe" ("I have just thought about you")
2: One time actions that happened at some point in the past. This meaning of the aorist appears often in storytelling
"Bio sam u kući, kad neki ljudi "zakucaše" na vrata. "Ustadoh" da vidim ko je" ("I was at home when someone knocked at the door. I got up to see who it is")
3: Actions that are just about to happen. Limited to certain verbs
"Odoh sad u školu" ("I'm going to school now")
"Pomresmo od gladi" ("We are starving")
Mood.
Besides the indicative, Serbo-Croatian uses the imperative, conditional, and the optative. Imperative