Agreement with 5 and up

Lesson opening

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Agreement with 5 and up: a number that was once a noun

At five, counting takes a sharp turn, and you already know the outline: after pet, šest, sedam and on, the noun goes into the genitive plural: pet gradova, deset žena, sedam sela. The lesson “Agreement with 2–4” covered the small plural after 2, 3 and 4 (dva grada, tri žene). This lesson tells the other half: why everything changes exactly at five, what happens to the adjective and the verb, and how compound numbers count.

The key idea of the lesson: from five on, a number behaves less like an “adjective attached to things” and more like a noun of measure, the way English uses a dozen, a score or a hundred. And a noun of measure, like any noun of quantity, is followed by the genitive, the Serbian “of” case. English says a glass of water, a flock of sheep, dozens of cities; Serbian says pet gradova, literally something like “a five of cities”. Both the case of the noun and the neuter verb follow from this one thought.

Five and up: the genitive plural

The mechanics are simple. The number freezes, and the noun does the work:

Here English gives you no help at all: it says five cities with the same plural as two cities. In Serbian gradovi is the plural for the subject of a sentence (gradovi su veliki, “the cities are big”), while after pet you need the “of” form, gradova. The one real skill required is building the genitive plural with confidence, as in the lesson “Genitive plural”. Most nouns take a long -a (gradova, žena, sela), feminine nouns ending in a consonant take -i (pet noći, “five nights”), and čovek uses a different word altogether, ljudi. When the stem ends in two consonants, an “a” is inserted between them: student → deset studenata, sestra → sedam sestara (“seven sisters”).

An adjective in such a group is in the genitive plural too, ending in -ih: pet dobrih drugova (“five good friends”), deset novih knjiga (“ten new books”). Compare the small plural after 2–4: dva dobra druga.

A neuter verb: pet studenata je došlo

This is where English lets you down. English says five students came, five students have arrived, with a plural verb. But a Serb sees pet studenata as one single quantity, a “fivesome”, and puts the verb in the neuter singular:

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Agreement with 5 and up: the genitive plural

From five on, the number freezes and works as a noun of measure (“a fivesome”, like English a dozen), so it takes the genitive plural, the “of” form, for the noun and its adjective (pet dobrih drugova). If the group is the subject, the standard verb is neuter singular.

5 and up: the genitive plural

Long -a; -i for feminines in a consonant (pet noći); an “a” between two final consonants (deset studenata, sedam sestara).

The verb: neuter singular

Auxiliary je, participle in -lo: Bilo je pet ljudi, Došlo je deset gostiju. Casual speech also has su došli; the standard is je došlo. The pair: dva studenta su došla (2–4, plural) ↔ pet studenata je došlo (5+, neuter).

Quantity words count like “five”

mnogo, malo, nekoliko, koliko, toliko: the same genitive and neuter verb. Mnogo ljudi je došlo. A lot of people came. Koliko je gostiju stiglo? How many guests have arrived? Uncountables take the genitive singular (malo vode, mnogo novca); nekoliko goes with countables only.

Compound numbers: the last word is in charge

With a jedan tail the one agrees like an adjective, and the verb with the noun: dvadeset jedan student je došao, Trideset jedna žena je glasala. Not the English plural of twenty-one cities!

11–19 and round numbers are already “many”