B2 — upper-intermediateIrregular and high-frequency verbs

Prefixed verb families

Lesson opening

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

Prefixed verb families: how one root builds your vocabulary

The lesson “Verbal prefixation” gave you a map of the prefixes: u- “in”, iz- “out”, pod- “under”. Now look at the same machine from the side of the root. Put the prefixes on one root in turn, give every new verb its imperfective partner, take a noun from each pair, and you get not a dozen words but a family of thirty.

English has a small version of this, borrowed from Latin: describe, prescribe, inscribe, subscribe, all built on scribere “to write”. Serbian does the same with native roots, far more often, and with one extra layer: aspect. Our job is to learn the pattern and to spot the members whose meaning you cannot add up from the parts.

Anatomy of a family: pisati in full

Here is the most transparent family in full: the aspect pair on the left, the meaning on the right. Read it not as a word list but as a pattern: hundreds of roots work the same way.

Examples

Perfective — secondary imperfective	Meaning
napisati (no secondary imperfective)	to write (and finish): the plain perfective of pisati
potpisati — potpisivati	to sign
prepisati — prepisivati	to copy out; to copy (in an exam), crib
opisati — opisivati	to describe
upisati — upisivati	to write in, enter; to enrol, get into (a university)
ispisati — ispisivati	to write out; to fill (a page, a notebook) with writing
zapisati — zapisivati	to write down, note down
propisati — propisivati	to prescribe (a medicine, a rule)
popisati — popisivati	to list, make an inventory of; to count in a census
raspisati — raspisivati	to announce, call (a competition, an election)
dopisati — dopisivati	to finish writing, add in writing; dopisivati se — to correspond, write to each other
otpisati — otpisivati	to write off (a debt); to give up on

Twelve prefixes, twenty-three verbs instead of one. The third floor is used when the action repeats or is going on right now: Potpisujem ugovore svakog ponedeljka. I sign contracts every Monday. The second floor is used when it happens once and is done: Potpisao sam ugovor u ponedeljak. I signed the contract on Monday.

Deeper sources

Tvorbeno gnezdo: what Serbian grammars call it

The “nest” is not a textbook metaphor but a working term of Serbian linguistics. Word formation in Serbian is tvorba reči, the set of words of one root is a tvorbeno gnezdo, the word it starts from is the tvorbena osnova, and a derived word is an izvedenica.

The main modern work is Ivan Klajn’s two-volume Tvorba reči u savremenom srpskom jeziku (“Word formation in contemporary Serbian”): the first volume, on compounds and prefixes, came out in 2002, the second, on suffixes and words that move to another part of speech, in 2003. The verbal prefixes are taken there one by one, with the shades of meaning of each and how readily it makes new words. A more compact account is the word-formation chapter of the secondary-school textbook Gramatika srpskoga jezika by Živojin Stanojčić and Ljubomir Popović. The spellings at the seam (potpisati, raspisati) are fixed by the Pravopis srpskoga jezika of Matica srpska, the oldest Serbian cultural and learned society.

One prefix is “empty”, the rest make new words

Inside a family the prefixes play two roles (the lessons “Aspect pair formation” and “Verbal prefixation”). One only completes the action: pisati → napisati “to write → to write (and finish)”; the verb with this “empty” prefix is the plain perfective partner of the base verb. All the others bring a meaning of their own and create a new word: potpisati is not “to write to the end”, it is “to sign”.

This gives a rule for the whole family. The empty member usually has no secondary imperfective: the base verb pisati already covers the ongoing sense. A member with a new meaning does have one: without potpisivati you would have no way to say “I am signing” or “I sign (regularly)”. Compare the two rows:

The translation gives the empty member away. If English keeps the same verb, only finished (write → have written), the prefix is empty. If English needs a different verb or a particle (sign, describe, write down, write off), the prefix carries meaning, and the verb has an imperfective of its own. English particles such as down, off and out do much of the work Serbian gives its prefixes. The empty prefix itself is learnt with each verb: raditi → uraditi, piti → popiti.

The family of raditi “to work, to do” is built the same way: u- is the empty prefix, and in the imperfectives d becomes đ:

Perfective — imperfective	Meaning	Noun
uraditi (imperfective: raditi itself)	to do, get done	—
zaraditi — zarađivati	to earn	zarada “earnings”
izraditi — izrađivati	to make, produce (a thing)	izrada “making, production”
preraditi — prerađivati	to rework, revise (a text); to process (raw material)	prerada “processing”
obraditi — obrađivati	to process (data); to work (the land)	obrada “processing”

Koliko zarađuješ? How much do you earn?

Deeper history

How Vuk sorted verbs by aspect

In a Serbian dictionary, prefixed relatives are separate words, not forms of one word. So they already were in the Srpski rječnik (“Serbian dictionary”) of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, the reformer of the Serbian alphabet and literary language. The first edition (Vienna, 1818) held about 26,000 words, the second (Vienna, 1852) about 47,000, and Vuk marked verbs with the Latin abbreviations v. pf. (verbum perfectivum) and v. impf. (verbum imperfectivum).

The consequence lives on: in a Serbian dictionary the members of one family stand as separate entries, scattered through the alphabet. napisati is under N, potpisati under P, ispisati under I, and nothing tells you they are related. Putting the family together is left to the reader, that is, to you. So the knack of mentally stripping off the prefix pays off doubly here: it turns twenty scattered entries into one family.

What a prefix adds beyond aspect: shades of the action

A prefix does not always draw a direction in space. Often it sets the manner of the action: its start, a small dose, the finish, having one’s fill. These shades repeat from root to root: learn them once, read them everywhere.

Cheat sheet

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Prefixed verb families

Family (tvorbeno gnezdo) = all words of one root: imperfective pisati → prefixed verbs (perfective) → their secondary imperfectives (mostly -iva-/-ava-) → nouns.

The pisati family

Perfective — imperfective	Meaning	Noun
napisati (pisati)	write	—
potpisati — potpisivati	sign	potpis
prepisati — prepisivati	copy out; crib	prepis
opisati — opisivati	describe	opis
upisati — upisivati	write in; enrol	upis
ispisati — ispisivati	write out; fill with writing	ispis
zapisati — zapisivati	write down	—
propisati — propisivati	prescribe	propis
popisati — popisivati	list; take a census	popis
raspisati — raspisivati	call (an election)	—
dopisati — dopisivati	finish writing; dopisivati se correspond	—
otpisati — otpisivati	write off	otpis

Two roles of a prefix

Empty (aspect only) → a pair: pisati — napisati, čitati — pročitati, raditi — uraditi. Test: English keeps the verb (write → have written).
Lexical → a triple: prepisati — prepisivati, smisliti — smišljati; d → đ: zaraditi — zarađivati “earn”, izraditi “make”, preraditi “rework”, obraditi “process”.
Perfective root (dati, uzeti): no empty prefix; imperfective as the root’s: dodati — dodavati “add, pass”, prodati — prodavati “sell”, predati — predavati (also “teach”), udati se; preuzeti — preuzimati “download”, oduzeti “take away”, zauzeti “occupy”.

Shades of the action

Shade	Examples
za- start	zapevati, zaplakati, zavoleti
po-/pro- a little	popričati, poraditi, prošetati
do- to the end	dočitati, dojesti
pre- again; too much	presoliti, preterati
na-…-se one’s fill	najesti se, naspavati se
po- all, one by one	pozatvarati, pokupiti
iz- to exhaustion	ispisati, isplakati se
raz-…-se get into the swing	raspričati se, razigrati se

“Start”, “a little”, “one’s fill” verbs usually have no imperfective; do-, pre- ones do: dopisivati, preterivati.

Families with alternating stems

Root	Members (perfective → imperfective)	Nouns
-stati/-stajati	postati, ostati, nastati, prestati, ustati, sastati se, rastati se, pristati, odustati “give up”; nedostajati “be missing”	ostatak, ustanak “uprising”, sastanak “meeting”, pristanak
-neti/-nositi	doneti, odneti, uneti, izneti “amount to”, preneti, podneti, naneti	odnos, unos, iznos “amount”, prenos
-ći/-laziti	doći, otići, ući, izaći, preći, proći, naći, poći, prići, sići “get off”, obići “visit”	—

The prefix–root seam

Devoicing: ot-, pot-, is-, ras-; mobile -a-: sabrati, sastati se, odabrati; ob- + pisati → opisati.
Parsing: strip the prefix, restore its voicing → the root without the suffix → add up the meanings.