Past verbal adverb

Lesson opening

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

The past verbal adverb: došavši, uradivši, videvši

Pročitavši pismo, nasmejao se. Having read the letter, he laughed.

First he read the letter, then he laughed: pročitavši “having read” names an action that is already over before the main one. The Serbian verbal adverb has two forms, and you already know one of them. The lesson “Present verbal adverb” taught you the form in -ći: radeći “working”, čitajući “reading”, idući “going”. It describes an action that runs at the same time as the main one. Now comes its mirror image, the form in -vši: uradivši “having done”, došavši “having come”, videvši “having seen”.

English gives you a head start, because it makes the same split: “reading the letter, she smiled” against “having read the letter, she smiled”. Serbian pročitavši is, in meaning, exactly “having read”. The difference that matters is register. Even English “having read” sounds a little formal, and Serbian pročitavši goes further: it is a bookish form, at home in novels, news reports and court rulings. You will read it all the time; you will say it rarely, and with care. This lesson covers how it is built, what it means, the rule that holds it together, and how to say the same thing in conversation with kad, nakon što or pošto.

How it is built: the infinitive stem plus -vši

Grammars describe two suffixes: -vši after a vowel and -avši after a consonant of the infinitive stem. Most verbs have a stem ending in a vowel, and then the rule is as simple as it gets: drop the -ti of the infinitive and add -vši. The present verbal adverb grew out of the “they” form (rade → radeći); this one grows out of the other stem, the one you see in the infinitive (a verb has two stems: the lesson “Infinitive & stems”).

Nothing softens at the join: videti → videvši, platiti → plativši (compare the passive viđen, plaćen). The reflexive se does not go anywhere; it stands right after the verbal adverb: vratiti se → vrativši se “having returned”, javiti se → javivši se “having got in touch”.

Verbs in -ći and -sti: where -avši comes from

In verbs in -ći the stem ends in a consonant, but the infinitive hides it. The l-participle shows it: rek-ao, doš-ao, stig-ao (the lesson “The l-participle”). After a consonant the suffix comes out as -avši, with the same a as in rekao: rekavši, došavši, stigavši. The easiest way to build these is straight from the masculine l-participle: drop the -o, add -vši (rekao → rekavši), and the second suffix needs no learning of its own.

Never build this form from the present tense. The present stem of doći is dođ- (dođem, dođeš), and the hand is tempted to build “dođivši”. No such form exists. The l-participle honestly shows the stem you need, došao, so the answer is došavši. The same goes for reći: its present is reknem or rečem, and in speech kažem (from kazati) usually stands in for them, but the l-participle is rekao, and the verbal adverb is rekavši, not “kaživši”.

A small family of its own are the verbs in -sti such as pasti (padnem) and sesti (sednem). Their stem, too, shows only in the l-participle: the stem-final d or t has already vanished there (pao, seo), and after the vowel comes the ordinary -vši:

Aspect: almost always perfective

The main restriction on the form is aspect (completed whole or ongoing process). The past verbal adverb is built from perfective verbs, the present one from imperfective verbs. This is not a matter of style but a division of roles: the imperfective gives an action in progress, so “at the same time” and -ći; the perfective gives a completed action, so “before” and -vši. The aspect pairs from the lesson “Aspect pair formation” turn here into pairs of verbal adverbs:

Cheat sheet

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Past verbal adverb: -vši / -avši

Glagolski prilog prošli: an invariable form, almost always of a perfective verb, for an action before the main one (“having done”, “having come”). No gender, number or case. Requires a shared subject with the main verb. Bookish register: fiction, newspapers, official texts.

Building it: the infinitive stem plus -vši

Never from the present stem: dođem, but došavši (not “dođivši”); reći gives rekavši (not “kaživši”).

Aspect decides: -ći or -vši

Use

• Negation is a separate word in front: ne rekavši, ne pozdravivši nikoga.
• Besides “before”, it often reads as a cause.
• Set off by a comma; usually before the main clause.
• A clitic of the main clause comes after the comma: Došavši kući, seo je za sto (not “je seo”); a clitic of the phrase right after the form: videvši je, vrativši se.
• In conversation, a full clause: kad (usual), nakon što / pošto “after” (pošto also “since”), čim “as soon as”, or two verbs with i: Kad je došao kući…, Pošto je izgubio ključeve…, Došao je kući i odmah legao.
• “The man who has read the book”: only čovek koji je pročitao knjigu.
• Frozen: bivši “former” (declines), izuzev “except”, počev od “starting from”. “Being a student” is kao student, not bivši.