Advanced quantity agreement

Lesson opening

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Advanced quantity agreement

The earlier lessons on numbers taught you to choose the form of the noun: dva grada is the small plural after 2–4 (the lesson “Agreement with 2–4”), pet gradova the genitive plural, troje dece a collective numeral. That is half the job. The other half is the words around the counted group: the verb, the adjective, the word in front of the number. Here an English speaker trips not over the case of the noun but over agreement, because English agrees by meaning: five students are, never is.

The verb with a quantity: tense and word order

You know the rule “5 and up → neuter” from the past tense (“Agreement with 5 and up”). Gender shows on a Serbian verb only in the l-participle (čekao, čekala, čekalo), that is, in the past tense and the conditional (Pet studenata bi došlo), and on an adjective after biti “to be”. In the present a quantity group simply asks the verb for the third person singular, the form you would use with “it”. In the future there is nothing to choose: će is the same for “he” and “they”.

The bottom row is the treacherous one: the adjective after biti also goes into the neuter singular, spremno, not “spremni”. Quantity words (mnogo, nekoliko) and the collective numerals in -oro or -oje count the same way:

Mnogo ljudi radi od kuće. A lot of people work from home.

Nekoliko kolega dolazi tek sutra. A few colleagues aren’t coming until tomorrow.

Troje dece spava u istoj sobi. Three children sleep in the same room.

English knows the instinct: a total of ten people was injured. Standard Serbian applies it every time, whatever the word order: Pet studenata je došlo, Došlo je pet studenata. That is what textbooks and newspapers write. In conversation, especially about people and with the number before the verb, you will also hear su došli, just as English says five students have come: recognise it, but write je došlo.

The two orders differ not in grammar but in what is news. Pet studenata je došlo tells you what these five did; Došlo je pet studenata answers “how many came?”. With the verb first, the neuter is usual in conversation too.

Došlo je pet studenata, a očekivali smo dvadeset. Five students turned up, and we had expected twenty.

A subtlety that marks a good speaker: the neuter lasts only to the end of its own clause. When the same people come up again, the verb is plural, by meaning rather than by form:

Došlo je pet studenata, ali su brzo otišli. Five students came, but they soon left.

sav and oba: “all five” and “both at once”

A number is often preceded by one more word: sav “all, whole”, the demonstrative ovaj “this”, the possessive moj “my”. All of them take their form not from the noun but from the number itself. The forms of sav you will need: singular sav, sva, sve “the whole” (masculine, feminine, neuter), plural svi, sve, sva “all” (masculine, feminine, neuter), genitive plural svih, and svima for the dative, instrumental and locative.

One rule does the work: before 2–4 such a word stands in the same small plural as an adjective (dva dobra druga), and before 5 and up it goes into the genitive plural, like the noun:

The verb obeys the number, not sav: Sva tri sela su ostala bez struje “All three villages were left without power” (2–4: plural), but Svih pet studenata je došlo “All five students came” (5 and up: neuter). Sav also goes with the collective numerals: sve troje “all three” (a mixed group), sva trojica “all three” (men), sve četvoro, sva četvorica.

Svih dvadeset mesta je već rezervisano. All twenty seats have already been booked.

Cheat sheet

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Advanced quantity agreement

Words in front of the number

sav: singular sav, sva, sve “whole”; plural svi, sve, sva “all”; Gen. plural svih; Dat./Instr./Loc. svima.

With collectives: sve troje, sva trojica, sve četvoro, sva četvorica. “Both” = sva dva: oba (masculine and neuter), obe (feminine), oboje (man and woman: oboje roditelja), obojica (men); colloquial obadva, obadve; undeclined in speech: sa obe strane.

Approximate quantities

Without na, plural: Hiljade ljudi su izašle.

Several subjects: which gender

• ili: singular, by the nearest: Ključ je uzeo Marko ili Petar
• ni ... ni: plural: Ni Marko ni Ana nisu došli
• sa: by the first name: Otac sa sinom je otišao
• verb first: may agree with the nearest: Došao je otac i majka

Leftover declension

A declined numeral takes the noun into the same case of the plural: između dveju reka, trima kandidatima, obema rukama. Official writing; commonest dveju, dvema, obema. Speech leaves the numeral unchanged: sa dva prijatelja.