Verbal nouns and old participles

Lesson opening

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Verbal nouns and old participles: čitanje, piće, bivši

A Serbian verb has two doors out, and whatever passes through them stops being a verb. The first door leads to nouns: čitati “to read” gives čitanje “reading”, putovati “to travel” gives putovanje “a trip, travel”, piti “to drink” gives piće “a drink”. This is the verbal noun, glagolska imenica: it names an action as a thing and can fold a whole sentence into one word. The second door leads to adjectives, and behind it stand the old participles: bivši “former”, sledeći “next, following”, preostali “remaining”, umirući “dying”, the remains of participles that Serbian no longer makes.

English does both jobs with -ing (reading is fun, the reading public); Serbian splits them, and only the noun side is open. You already know the infinitive, the l-participle, the passive participle and the two verbal adverbs; the verbal noun completes the set, and it is the only one of these verb forms that declines like a noun. The old participles explain Serbian’s most awkward gap: why it cannot say “the reading man”, and what it says instead.

How it is built: passive participle plus -je

There is one rule: take the passive participle from the lesson “Past passive participle” and add -je. Any consonant change has already happened inside the participle (nošen, viđen), and the noun keeps it. At the join n and j merge into nj, and t and j into ć: this is iotation, a consonant merging with a following j (the y of yes), as in the lesson “Iotation”. Intransitive verbs (no object) have no passive participle, but build the noun the same way, on the infinitive stem: spavati → spavanje “sleeping”, putovati → putovanje.

Hence Do viđenja! “Goodbye!” (literally “till the seeing”) and datum rođenja “date of birth”. Words in -će are few, and no new ones are made: besides those in the table, there are piće “a drink”, biće “a being”, then otkriće, pokriće, raspeće, učešće “discovery, cover, crucifixion, participation” and a few bookish ones such as nadahnuće “inspiration” and svanuće “dawn”. Inside piće, biće and otkriće sits an old participle in -t that today’s language has lost: the participle of piti is pijen, of otkriti otkriven, and biti has none at all. So the act of drinking follows the general rule, pijenje kafe “drinking coffee”, while piće is what you drink. The suffix -nje, on the other hand, works with almost any imperfective verb, and with perfectives more sparingly (the lesson “Noun-forming suffixes”): you can build such a word yourself and be understood.

What kind of noun it is: gender, declension, se, negation

The verbal noun is neuter and follows the soft pattern of polje from the lesson “The three declensions”: čitanje, čitanja, čitanju, čitanjem. A noun of action rarely needs a plural; those that have become ordinary words take it: pitanja, osećanja, predavanja, preduzeća “questions, feelings, lectures, companies”.

Two traps. First, the reflexive se disappears. It is a clitic (a short unstressed word tied to the verb that cannot stand first), and a noun has no place for it: vraćati se → vraćanje “returning”, kupati se → kupanje, školovati se → školovanje, venčati se → venčanje “wedding”. Second, the negation is written as one word, because what you have is now a noun, not a verb, as in English misunderstanding: neznanje “ignorance”, nerazumevanje “lack of understanding”, nepoštovanje “disregard, failure to respect”.

From a sentence to a noun: three rules

The sentence Marko čita knjigu “Marko is reading the book” folds into the phrase Markovo čitanje knjige “Marko’s reading of the book”, which can take any case, follow a preposition or be the subject. The conversion follows three rules.

First: the direct object moves into the genitive. A verbal noun never takes an accusative; English, too, says the reading of the book.

Second: a preposition with its case stays as it was. This is the most reliable part: razmišljati o poslu → razmišljanje o poslu “thinking about work”, učestvovati u projektu → učestvovanje u projektu, odustajati od plana → odustajanje od plana, insistirati na detaljima → insistiranje na detaljima. Which verb asks for which case is the subject of the next lesson, “Which case a verb takes”.

Third: the doer becomes a possessive adjective or a genitive. A person prefers the possessive adjective from the lesson “Possessive adjectives (-ov/-in)” (Markovo pisanje, njegovo kašnjenje, naše putovanje); anything else goes into the genitive (mišljenje profesora, dolazak gostiju “the professor’s opinion, the guests’ arrival”). (In otvaranje izložbe “the opening of the exhibition” the genitive is really the thing opened, as in the first rule.) With both a doer and an object, give the doer to the possessive: two genitives in a row confuse.

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Verbal nouns and old participles

Glagolska imenica: a neuter noun naming an action = passive participle + -je. At the join n + j → nj, t + j → ć; with no participle, the infinitive stem.

-će: a few words, no new ones: piće, biće, otkriće, pokriće, raspeće, učešće. The act of drinking is pijenje. -nje works with almost any imperfective verb, with perfectives more sparingly.

Properties

• Neuter, soft pattern like polje: čitanje, čitanja, čitanju, čitanjem; a plural once it is an ordinary word: pitanja, osećanja.
• se drops: vraćati se → vraćanje, venčati se → venčanje.
• Negation as one word: neznanje, nerazumevanje, nepoštovanje.

From a sentence to a noun

• Object → genitive: učiti jezik → učenje jezika, prati sudove → pranje sudova.
• Preposition + case unchanged: razmišljanje o poslu, učestvovanje u projektu, odustajanje od plana.
• Doer → possessive or genitive: Markovo pisanje; dolazak gostiju.
• Imperfective = process, perfective = result: rešavanje solving / rešenje solution; obaveštavanje / obaveštenje.

Register

Signs and papers: Zabranjeno pušenje. Hvala na razumevanju. Plaćanje karticom. In talk, a verb: Posle čitanja ugovora… → Kad smo pročitali ugovor…; Hvala na čekanju → Hvala što ste sačekali. Bureaucratese izvršiti proveru → proveriti; doneti odluku is neutral.

Vocabulary

Ordinary words now: pitanje question, mišljenje opinion, stanje state, osećanje feeling, sećanje memory, ponašanje behaviour, odeljenje department, class, zvanje profession, title, pečenje roast meat, biće a being.

Where a short noun exists, use it: dolazak, odlazak, povratak, početak, završetak, razgovor, dogovor, susret, rad.

Old participles

-ći words and bivši: almost always the long form, soft endings: sledećeg, sledećoj, bivšem; but Moguće je. idućeg petka “next Friday”, but idući kući “on the way home”.