Indirect questions
Lesson opening
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Indirect questions: a question tucked inside a sentence
You can already ask direct questions freely: Gde je stanica?, “Where is the station?”, Da li dolazi?, “Is he coming?”. But in real conversation a question is often tucked inside another sentence: “I don't know where the station is”, “I wonder whether he's coming”. It is the same question, but now it hangs on words such as ne znam (“I don't know”), pitam se (“I wonder”) or reci mi (“tell me”). This is an indirect, or embedded, question.
The good news: Serbian embeds questions very simply, with no word order to rearrange and none of the “backshift” of tenses that English usually applies (“He asked where I lived”). We will look at two cases: the embedded yes–no question (with da li, or with the verb and li) and the embedded question-word question (with gde, ko, kada and the rest). Along the way, two old friends turn up: the second-place rule for clitics and the Serbian comma.
The embedded yes–no question: da li or the verb + li
A yes–no question (the lesson “Yes–no questions”) is easiest to embed with da li (Da li dolazi?): you simply put the whole da li block after the main verb, without turning anything round:
Notice that da li opens the embedded question as a single block, and what follows is an ordinary statement (dolazi, je kasno, si gladan). Here your English instinct is a good guide: da li sits exactly where English puts whether, at the front of the clause. The other way keeps the order of the direct question Dolazi li?: the verb first, li right after it, so Ne znam dolazi li. Both are correct. In Serbia da li is the more usual in an embedded question, and the verb + li is especially common with hoće li and je li: Pitam se da li će doći and Pitam se hoće li doći both mean “I wonder whether he’ll come”. The short će cannot open a question, so the full hoće goes first. The one thing to retrain is the little word if, which English uses in the same slot.
In fast speech you will often hear je l' instead of da li, a contraction of je li (in texting also run together, jel'): Je l' dolazi?, “So is he coming, or what?”. It is purely colloquial (the lesson “Tag & confirmation questions”); in writing, use da li or the verb + li.
The embedded question-word question: the question word stays
A question that asks for information (the lesson “Wh-questions”) is led by a question word: ko, šta, gde, kada, kako, zašto, koliko, koji, čiji. When you embed it, that word stays put: the same word you would use to ask directly (Gde je?) also leads the embedded question (Ne znam gde je). Only the frame around it changes, because a main verb appears:
Just as in a direct question, the question word takes whatever case its job inside the embedded question requires. Case is the change in a word's ending that shows its role in the sentence. English keeps a faint trace of it in who and whom; Serbian does it every time: Ne znam ko je to, “I don't know who that is” (nominative), but Ne znam koga tražiš, “I don't know who (whom) you're looking for” (accusative), and Pitam se kome je to dao, “I wonder who he gave it to” (dative, the receiver). Koji and čiji agree with their noun, as in the lesson “Interrogative pronouns”: Ne znam koji autobus ide do centra, “I don’t know which bus goes to the centre”; Pitam se čija je ovo kafa, “I wonder whose coffee this is” (kafa is feminine).
Cheat sheet
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Indirect questions
Indirect question: a question inside another sentence. Opened by da li or the verb + li (yes–no) or by a question word. Main verbs: znati, pitati, pitati se, reći, videti, razumeti, zavisiti.
Yes–no: da li or the verb + li
Da li opens the clause, where English puts “whether/if”; a statement follows. The verb + li is equally correct; da li is more usual in Serbia.
Question word: kept, in the case of its role
Also šta, gde, kako, koliko, koji. Case follows the role inside the clause, not the main verb; koji, čiji agree with their noun. “What” is šta (Znam šta kuva), “that” is da, never dropped (Znam da kuva).
Word order, clitics, end mark
Clitics right after the question word, da li or li. A full stop ends a statement (Ne znam gde je.), a question mark only a whole question (Znaš li gde je apoteka?).
No backshift
Not a question: kako as a scene, što as a fact
- After videti, čuti, gledati: Video sam kako ulazi u zgradu. “I saw him going into the building”; Čujem kako pada kiša. “I can hear the rain falling.”
- After drago mi je, hvala, izvini: Drago mi je što si došao. “I'm glad you came.”