Leaving out and pointing back

Lesson opening

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

Leaving out and pointing back: what holds a text together

Two earlier lessons taught where to put words: “Topic & focus” by information, “Word order and style” by voice and register. This skill runs the other way: don’t say more than you need, and don’t name the same thing twice. A connected text holds together not only through what it says but also through what it leaves out.

There are two tools, and they work as a pair: leaving out drops what the reader can restore anyway, and pointing back replaces a repetition with a short pointer word. Together they make neighbouring sentences read as one text, not a list of messages. And both extremes give a foreigner away: the speaker who repeats every word (“Marko je došao. Marko je seo. Marko je pitao…”) or, out of English habit, every ja, and the speaker who drops a word Serbian insists on, such as the je in On je lekar or the object pronoun after a verb.

The subject without a pronoun: ja stays silent by default

English needs a subject in every clause; Serbian does not. Like Spanish or Italian, it leaves the subject pronoun out: person and number already sit in the verb ending, so the pronoun is not said until it adds something (“Personal pronouns (nominative)”).

The pronoun appears only when there is a reason to say it. There are four, and all come down to emphasis (“Topic & focus” showed why: a spoken ja is never neutral).

• contrasting people: Ja radim, a ti spavaš. (I'm working, and you're asleep)
• a change of the person acting: Marko je otišao. Mi smo ostali do kraja. (Marko left. We stayed to the end)
• answering “who?”: Ja sam to napisao. (I'm the one who wrote it)
• introducing yourself: Ja sam Ana. (I'm Ana)

The same law works at the level of the text, only on a wider scale: the subject is not repeated until it changes. A person named once carries through a whole chain of sentences without a pronoun.

The name is said once, then four verbs in a row do without a subject. As soon as the person changes, you name the new one, or the reader will attach the action to the old one out of inertia: Marko je stigao u pet. Ana ga je čekala u kuhinji. Marko arrived at five. Ana was waiting for him in the kitchen. By default the reader takes a left-out subject to be the subject of the previous sentence; if you mean someone else, name them.

Sometimes there is no subject at all and nothing to restore it from, as in impersonal sentences about the weather or about what “it says” in the papers (the lesson “Impersonal constructions”). The empty slot there is not a gap but the normal shape of the sentence: Grmi i seva. There's thunder and lightning.

Leaving out the verb, and other gaps inside a sentence

The second common omission is the verb. If two parts of a sentence joined by a or i share the same verb, the second part does not repeat it: only the contrasted words remain, each in the case the verb would need. English does it too, in careful style: “Marko drinks coffee, and Ana tea.”

Serbian marks the gap with nothing but the comma before a. The condition is strict: only the same verb in the same tense can be left out. The person and number may change (the reader restores ide from idem), but if the tense or the verb itself differs, the verb has to be repeated in full: in Ja sam čitao, a on će pisati. there is nothing to drop, because sam čitao and će pisati share nothing.

The second kind, and the most frequent, is dropping the copula or the auxiliary, that is, the short forms of biti “to be” (sam, si, je…) used on their own or to build the past tense. It is possible exactly when the second part would contain the same clitic.

In both sentences the clitic je from the first part is left out. But in Ja sam pevao, a ti si svirao. you cannot drop si: the first part had sam, a different form. Omission is allowed not “when it's clear” but when the form matches letter for letter. Signs and headlines drop the copula too: Ulaz slobodan “entry free”, Zabranjeno pušenje “no smoking”.

The third kind is dropping the noun after a modifier. The adjective, demonstrative or possessive stays on its own and carries the gender, number and case of the vanished noun, like English “the red one”, but with no “one”.

• Uzmi crvenu olovku, ne plavu olovku. → Uzmi crvenu, ne plavu. (take the red one, not the blue one)
• Ovo je moj kaput, a ono je tvoj kaput. → Ovo je moj, a ono tvoj. (this coat is mine, and that one is yours)
• Hoću onu veliku sobu. → Onu veliku. (that big one; the answer to “which room?”)

Cheat sheet

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

Leaving out and pointing back

Leaving out (izostavljanje): don’t say what the reader can restore. Pointing back: a short word instead of a repeat.

The subject without a pronoun

• default: no pronoun: Idem u grad. Nisu stigli na vreme.
• pronoun only for: contrast (Ja radim, a ti spavaš), change of person (Marko je otišao. Mi smo ostali), answer to “who?” (Ja sam to napisao), introductions (Ja sam Ana)
• a named person carries on: Marko je stigao u pet. Ostavio je torbu i otišao pod tuš. New person: name them
• impersonal (no subject): Grmi i seva. Piše u novinama da će struja poskupeti.

What else can go

Another tense or verb, no omission: Ja sam čitao, a on će pisati.

Dialogue: answer with a fragment

• one word: Kad dolaziš? — U pet. Gde si bio? — Kod Marka.
• the verb instead of “yes”: Jesi li video film? — Jesam. Hoćeš li kafu? — Neću.
• joining in: I ja (me too) after a positive, Ni ja (me neither) after a negative
• echo question: Sutra idemo. — Sutra?

Pointing back: the ladder

a gap (Marko je ušao i seo) → clitic (Video sam ga) → demonstrative (Taj čovek) → the noun again or a broader word (pas → životinja). Take the lightest step that is still clear. Gender is the Serbian noun’s: kafa → ona, je.

Written reference: isti “the same” (not taj), pomenuti “mentioned”, navedeni “stated”, dotični “the said” (officialese), potonji “the latter”, the pair prvi … drugi. Formulas: kao što je već rečeno, kao što smo videli, o čemu je bilo reči. Not the official “da iste potpišete” but da ih potpišete.