B1 — intermediateClitics and second position

Internal clitic order

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Clitic order: drilling the chain until it runs by itself

Clitics are short words with no stress of their own: sam, je, se, mi, ga, li, ću and the like. They cannot stand alone and are said as one with a neighbouring word, a little like English ’s and ’ll in he’s and I’ll. The lesson “The second-place rule” showed where they go: straight after the first stressed word or phrase of the sentence, all together and in a fixed order. This lesson is about the order itself. The aim is to drill it until a long chain of clitics assembles on its own, without counting on your fingers. In Da li si mu ih dao? “Did you give them to him?” four clitics follow Da in single file, and you should put them in that order without a moment’s thought. We will also drill the chain in the negative. You have already seen that nisam, nije and neću can open a sentence (Nisam ga video “I didn’t see him”); now we look at how the pronouns line up behind them.

An English speaker needs this lesson for a particular reason. English word order is fixed too, but the other way round: “He gave it to me” puts the verb first, then “it”, then “to me”, each pronoun trailing after the verb. Serbian welds its unstressed pronouns into a block in second place, mi ga je, “to me, it, has”, and nothing inside that block may move: On mi ga je dao, or, starting with the verb, Dao mi ga je. Every English reflex pulls you towards a mistake.

The chain template: six groups in order

Here is the template: the same six groups as in “The clitic inventory” and “The second-place rule”. This time we are not studying it but filling it, again and again, until the order feels natural.

We start with short chains and make them longer:

Trace the groups in the last and longest one. Da holds first place, then come li (group 1, the question) → si (2, the auxiliary) → mu (3, “to whom”) → ih (4, “what”). Four clitics in line, and you cannot reshuffle them: no native speaker will say “Da si li mu ih” or “Da li mu si ih”. All three sets in group 2 behave the same way: sam, ću and bi stand before the pronouns (Ja sam mu ga dao, Ja ću ti ga dati, On bi mu ga dao). Two links in particular have to become automatic. “To whom” always comes before “what”: mi ga, never “ga mi”, even though English says “it to me”. And the auxiliary always comes before the pronouns: si mu, never “mu si”.

Deeper culture

Da li si mu ih dao?: the chain that trips the tongue

In Da li si mu ih dao? “Did you give them to him?” four one-syllable clitics stand in a row: li si mu ih. None of them has a stress of its own, so in speech they run together with Da into one quick, unstressed string, rather like a tongue-twister. The chain can grow: Da li si mu ih ti dao? “Was it you who gave them to him?” (the stressed ti “you” comes after the clitics) or Da li bi mu ih dao? “Would you give them to him?”. Each clitic sits in its proper place in the queue. All six groups never meet in one sentence, though: a sentence has only one auxiliary (sam, ću, bih or je), and je drops out next to se anyway.

Chains like this are exactly where you find out whether someone has mastered the order. A native speaker assembles li si mu ih instantly and without error, because the order lives in habit, not in a rule. A learner whose order is not yet automatic starts to count the groups and gets tangled: puts “what” before “to whom”, drops li in the wrong place. That is the whole point of this lesson. You do not need to understand the order (you already do); you need to drill it, so that Da li si mu ih dao? comes out as effortlessly as it does for a Serb. The tongue-twister is a training machine.

je at the tail and ju for je: revising them on chains

Three points from “The second-place rule” come up constantly in long chains, so let us go over them again. The first: je, the “is” form (the “he/she/it” form of biti “to be”, which also builds the past tense: dao je “he gave”), goes to the very tail of the chain, after the pronouns. All the other forms, sam, si, smo, ste, su, stand in group 2, before them. There is no simple rule that explains why je behaves differently: its place at the tail simply has to be learnt.

Compare the persons. “I gave it to him” is Ja sam mu ga dao, with sam at the head of the chain; “he gave it to him” is Dao mu ga je, with je at the tail. The second point is in Video ju je: the accusative “her” sounds just like the “is” form je, so to avoid “video je je” it turns into ju in front of je. The same happens when “it” stands for a feminine noun: Dala mu ju je. With no “is” form after it, the ordinary je stays: Šaljem ti je “I’m sending it (her) to you”.

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Clitic order: drilling the chain until it runs by itself

Clitics (short words with no stress: sam, je, se, mi, ga, li…) stand together in second place in a fixed order that never changes with meaning: Da li si mu ih dao? has four clitics in a row, and none can move.

The chain template: six groups

Examples

1	2	3	4	5	6
li	auxiliary (except je)	dative	accusative / genitive	se	je “is”
question	sam, si, smo, ste, su; ću, ćeš, će, ćemo, ćete; bih, bi, bismo, biste	mi, ti, mu, joj, nam, vam, im	me, te, ga, je, ju, nas, vas, ih	reflexive	3rd person singular

Filling the template

Examples

Example	Translation
Dao mi je knjigu.	He gave me the book.
On mi ga je dao.	He gave it to me.
Ja sam mu ga dao.	I gave it to him.
On bi mu ga dao.	He would give it to him.
Da li si mu ih dao?	Did you give them to him?

The last one: Da (first place) → li (1) → si (2) → mu (3) → ih (4). “To whom” before “what” (mi ga, not “ga mi”, despite English “it to me”); the auxiliary before the pronouns (si mu, not “mu si”), be it sam, ću or bi.

The habits of je

The “is” form je goes to the tail, after the pronouns: On mi ga je dao, Dao mu ga je, while sam, si, smo head the chain (Ja sam mu ga dao).
“Her” before je becomes ju, to avoid “je je”: Video ju je na ulici. He saw her in the street. With no “is” form after it, the ordinary je stays: Šaljem ti je. I’m sending it (her) to you.
Next to se, je drops out: On se vratio, On mu se javio, not “vratio se je”. Other persons keep the auxiliary: Javili su mi se.

Negation: nisam, nije, neću in front

The fused forms are stressed: they open the sentence, the pronouns follow: Nisam ti ga dao. I didn’t give it to you. Neću ti ga dati. I won’t give it to you. Nije mi ništa rekao. He didn’t tell me anything. (Affirmative: Dao sam ti ga.) nije stays next to se: Nije se vratio. After another word, the pronouns come before the negative: On mi ga nije dao, Sutra ti ga neću dati. With “would”, ne stays apart: Ne bih ti ga dao.

Questions; after da, jer, kad

Question: full form + li (Jesi li mu ga dao?) or da li (Da li si mu ga dao?): Did you give it to him? The short si cannot open a question; Je li…? and Bi li…? can.
da, jer, kad, ako, što hold first place in their clause: Znam da si mu ga dao. I know you gave it to him. Kaže da mi ga je dao. He says he gave it to me.

Auxiliary	+ ne	Auxiliary	+ ne
sam	nisam	smo	nismo
si	nisi	ste	niste
je	nije	su	nisu
ću	neću	će	neće