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: • Past uses the present of
biti 'to be' plus the perfect participle, e.g.,
radio sam (or
sam radio, order depending on the sentence). • Future I uses the (reduced) present of
htjeti 'will' or 'to want' plus the infinitive, e.g.,
ćemo kuhati (or
kuhat ćemo, in which case the
-i of the infinitive marker
-ti is elided). • Future II uses the perfective future of
biti (the only verb with a simple future) plus the perfect participle, e.g.
budu išli. • Pluperfect, which is not often used, uses the composite past tense of
biti plus the perfect participle, e.g.
bio sam došao, or (archaic) imperfect of
biti plus the participle, e.g.
bijah došao 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 's Grammar book
Serbo-Croatian 1st pub. 1997, 2nd pub. 2006 (Contents) Besides the
indicative, Serbo-Croatian uses the
imperative,
conditional, and the
optative. Imperative forms vary according to the type of the verb, and are formed by adding the appropriate morpheme to a verbal stem. The conditional I (present) uses the
aorist of
biti plus perfect participle, while conditional II (past) consists of the perfect participle of
biti, the aorist of the same verb, and the perfect participle of the main verb. Some grammars classify future II as a conditional tense, or even a mood of its own. Optative is in its form identical to the perfect participle. It is used by speakers to express a strong wish, e.g.
Živio predsjednik! 'Long live the president!',
Dabogda ti se sjeme zatrlo! 'May God let your seed destroyed' (an archaic and dialectal curse), etc. The optative may be translated into English by an imperative construction, with set phrases (such as the already exemplified 'long live'), or by use of the modal verb
may. Some authors suggest existence of
subjunctive mood, realized as
da plus the present of indicative, but most grammars treat it as present indicative.
Aspect Verbal
aspect is distinguished in English by using the simple or
progressive (continuous) forms. 'He washed the dishes' indicates that the action was finished; 'He was washing the dishes' indicates that the action was ongoing (progressive). Serbo-Croatian, like all Slavic languages, has the aspect built into the verbs, rather than expressing it with different tenses. To compare the meanings of the different aspects with verbal aspect in English, one should know three basic aspects: completed (may be called preterite, aorist, or perfect according to the language in question), progressive (on-going but not completed yet, durative), and iterative (habitual or repeated). English uses one aspect for completed and iterative and another for progressive. Serbo-Croatian uses one for completed and another for iterative and progressive. Aspect is the most challenging part of Serbo-Croatian grammar. Although aspect exists in all other Slavic languages, learners of Serbo-Croatian who already know even one of several other Slavic languages may never learn to use aspect correctly, though they will be understood with only rare problems. While there are bi-aspectual verbs as well, primarily those derived by adding the suffix
-irati or
-ovati, the majority of verbs not derived in such a manner are either perfective (
svršeni) or imperfective (
nesvršeni). Almost all of the single aspectual verbs are part of a perfective–imperfective pair of verbs. When learning a verb, one must learn its verbal aspect, and the other verb for the opposite verbal aspect, e.g.
prati 'to do washing' (imperfective) goes with
oprati 'to wash' (perfective). The pairing, however, is not always one to one: some verbs simply don't have a counterpart on a semantic level, such as
izgledati 'seem' or
sadržati 'contain'. In others, there are several perfective alternatives with slightly different meanings. There are two paradigms concerning formation of verb pairs. In one paradigm, the base verb is imperfective, such as
prati 'to wash'. In this case the perfective is formed by adding a
prefix, in this case
o, as in
oprati. In the other paradigm, the root verb is perfective, and the imperfective is formed either by modifying the root:
dignuti→
dizati 'to lift', or adding an
interfix:
stati→
stajati 'to stop', 'to stand'. A pattern which often arises can be illustrated with
pisati 'to write'.
Pisati is imperfective, so a prefix is needed to make it perfective, in this case
na-:
napisati. But if other prefixes are added, modifying the meaning, the verb becomes perfective:
zapisati 'to write down' or
prepisati 'to copy by hand'. Since these basic verbs are perfective, an interfix is needed to make them imperfective:
zapisivati and
prepisivati. In some cases, this could be continued by adding a prefix:
pozapisivati and
isprepisivati which are again perfective.
Conjugation There are three
conjugations of verbs: • 'a': almost all verbs that have this conjugation end in '-ati'. • 'e': verbs ending in '-nuti' and all irregular verbs (as in the example below). Verbs ending in '-ovati', '-ivati' become 'uje' when conjugated (
trovati 'to poison' is
trujem,
truje etc.) • 'i': almost all verbs ending in '-jeti' or '-iti' use this conjugation.
Auxiliary verbs As in most other Indo-European languages including English, the
Indo-European copula ('to be') is used as an auxiliary verb. It is universally irregular, because conjugations of two
proto-forms *h1es- (>English
is) and
*bʰuH- (>English
be) merged, producing mixed paradigms: the former being used in the present, and the latter in the other tenses. In Serbo-Croatian, however, there are two present forms surviving:
jesam ('I am') and
budem ('I be'). Because of that dualism, some grammars (chiefly Serbian ones) treat
jesam as a
defective verb having only present tense. Others treat these forms as two realizations of the same irregular verb
biti,
jesam being imperfective and
budem perfective.
Jesam has the following conjugation in the present tense. It has long and
clitic (short) forms (without leading
je), while its negative form is written as one word, unlike other verbs (compare English
is–''isn't''). The short and the negative forms are used as auxiliary, while the long form is
marked. The
copulative use of the verb
јеsam matches that of the verb 'to be' in English (e.g. He
is a student – On
је učenik), of course, in the present tense only. The 'true' forms present of the verb
biti, (
budem) have a limited use (in formation of the future exact tense, or in
conditional clauses referring to the future, e.g.
ako budem –
if I am). Verb
biti is conjugated as follows:
Regular verbs The conjugation system of
regular verbs is rather complex. There are several classes of verbs distinguished according to certain features verbs within a class share. The verb is
raditi (
To work) The present tense of "reći" is rare. It's replaced by the present tense of the verb "kazati". "Reći" is a verb of the perfective aspect and hence it doesn't have the imperfect tense.
Irregular verbs Irregular verbs are more complex to conjugate than regular verbs, for example the verb
moći (
can, to be able to) ==Adverbs==