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Word order in Serbian interrogative sentences
| The Word
Order in Interrogative Sentences |
There are three types of interrogative sentences:
A. Yes-no questions
B. Wh-questions
C. Alternative questions
These are questions that require either a yes
or no for an answer, as in:
Da li radite? ‘Do you work?’
There are two most common ways to ask such questions in
Serbian:
I. Inserting da li
at the beginning of the sentence:
| 1. |
a. |
Da li učiš srpski? |
'Do you study Serbian?' |
| |
b. |
Da li Marko radi? |
'Does Marko work?' |
The word order in da li
questions is: da li + (subject) +
verb + anything else
As you can see, the subject is optional (hence,
parentheses), as discussed in the section on
word order in declarative sentences.
II. Inserting li
immediately after the main verb (as in 2a) or after the
non-clitic, auxiliary verb
(if there is one, like ‘jesi’ in 2b and 2c).
| 2. |
a. |
Učiš li srpski? |
'Do you study?' |
| |
b. |
Jesi li radio? |
‘Did you work?' |
| |
c. |
Hoće li Marko učiti srpski? |
'Will Marko study Serbian?' |
The word order in li
questions is:
verb + li + anything else
| Negative
yes-no questions |
Sometimes, a speaker may ask a question negatively, by
negating the verb (as in 3), or the auxiliary (as in 4):
| 3. |
Ne učiš li srpski? |
'Don’t you study Serbian?' |
| 4. |
Nisi li radio danas? |
'Didn’t you work today?' |
An alternative is to put the negative phrase: ‘zar
ne’ (didn’t you/ don’t you) at the beginning of
the sentence, as in 5 and 6. Such sentences express
surprise.
| 5. |
Zar ne učiš srpski? |
'Don’t you study Serbian?' |
| 6. |
Zar nisi radio danas? |
'Didn’t you work today?' |
These are questions that turn a positive declarative
statement into the question, by inserting the tag negative
phrase ‘zar ne’ (didn’t
you/ don’t you), at the very end of the sentence. Just like
in English:
| 7. |
Učiš srpski, zar ne? |
'You study Serbian, don’t you?' |
| 8. |
Nisi radio danas, zar ne? |
'You worked today, didn’t you?' |
So, in 7 and 8, we first have a regular declarative
sentence, followed by ‘zar ne’.
These are questions that ask about a certain part of
the sentence, eg., subject or object. In English, these
types of questions are called ‘wh-questions’, since they
start with a question word: who, what, which, etc.
In Serbian, such sentences start with question words that
generally start with ‘k’, such as
ko (who),
koga (whom),
koji (which/what),
kada (when),
kako (how),
koliko (how much/how
many). But also, we have šta
(what),
gde (when),
zašto (why),
čiji (whose).
Some examples od k-questions:
| 9. |
Ko je ovo? |
'Who is this?' |
| 10.. |
Ko peva? |
'Who is singing?' |
| 11. |
Šta je ovo? |
'What is this?' |
| 12. |
Šta učiš? |
'What are you studying?' |
| 13. |
Gde ideš? |
'Where are you going?' |
| 14. |
Koga voliš? |
'Who(m) do you love?' |
| 15. |
Koje knjige čitaš? |
'What books are you reading?' |
The word order in these k-questions is:
K-word – Verb- (Subject) - (Object) – (Anything Else)
So, just like in English, these k-words occur at the front
of the sentence.
Similar to English, a preposition can precede these K-words,
as in:
| 16a. |
S kim ideš u Srbiju? |
'With whom are you going to Serbia?' |
| 17a. |
Od koga dobijaš pisma? |
'From whom are you getting letters?' |
You cannot split the preposition and the k-word, as is the
case in English (‘Who are you going to Serbia with?’):
| 16b. |
*Kim ideš u Srbiju sa? |
(ungrammatical) |
| 17b. |
*Koga dobijaš pisma od? |
(ungrammatical) |
But unlike English, these k-words can be separated from the
rest of their phrase:
| 18. |
Koliko si dobila pisama? |
'How-many did got letters', 'How many letters
did you get' |
| 19. |
Koje si čitala knjige? |
'What did read books', 'What books did you
read?' |
As you can see (I hope you see), the k-words: ‘koliko’
in 18. and ‘koje’ in 19.
are separated from their respective nouns:
pisama (letters) and
knjige (books),
respectively. If this is too hard, don’t bother, just stick
to the word order like in 15 above.
And again, unlike English, we can front multiple k-words, in
multiple questions:
| 20. |
Ko je šta video? |
'Who has what saw?', 'Who saw what?' |
| 21. |
Šta je ko video? |
'Who has whom saw?', 'Who saw whom?' |
As you can see from the two examples above, the order of
these k-words is free. You can front them in any order. But
if this is too complicated for you, you can use multiple
questions, just like in English, with one k-word fronted and
the remaining in its place.
| 22. |
Ko je video šta? |
'Who has seen what?' |
| Word order in
indirect questions |
Besides direct questions discussed above, we have to discuss
the word order in indirect questions. Indirect questions are
basically declarative sentences, except that in the
subordinate sentence, the question words: ‘da li’ (whether)
or k-words introduce the subordinate sentence.
Some examples:
| 23. |
Ne znam [da li je Marko došao.] |
'I don’t know whether Marko came' |
| 24. |
Pitam se [kada će Marko doći.] |
'I wonder when will Marko come' |
In these two examples, the indirect question is shown in
brackets. In 23, the indirect question starts with ‘da
li’ (or yes-no phrase), and in 24, it
starts with the k-word
kada (when).
Q:
So, what is the word order in these two embedded indirect
question sentences?
A: It is the same as in direct questions.
In 23, the order is the same as in yes-no questions and in
24, it is the same as in direct k-questions, discussed
above.
As for direct k-questions, in indirect questions, a question
word can be preceded by a preposition:
| 25. |
Ne znam [o kome ću pričati.] |
'I don’t know about whom I will talk.' |
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