Concerning the plural problem in Serbian

[Danko Sipka]

On Thu, 25 Apr 1996, E. Wayles Browne wrote:

> Danko Sipka cites Serbo-Croatian neuter nouns ending in -e, genitive
> -eta, which have a form in -ad:
...
> Can we test these for plurality, in the manner of Zaliznjak? If
> burad is really the plural of bure, it should be possible
> to make a sentence
> Jedno od tvoje buradi bilo je prazno.
> "One of your barrels was empty."
> Is it?

Yes. This sentence is perfectly OK. But my point about testing it with
subjects was about the status of -ad vs. -ici, -oci, and being really
plural concerns not -ad, but -ic'i and -oci. Yes, you can say:

Jedno od tvojih buric'a bilo je prazno,

but is it plural of bure, buric' or both.

> In a previous posting Sipka mentioned forms with -ad and then a plural
> ending on the -ad. Would these be buradi, burencadi, c'ebadi, c'uradi?
> What do these -ad-i forms mean?
>

The proof that they exist can be found in Baric' et al. Hrvatska
gramatika, SK, Zagreb, 1995, where on the pages 171-2, w can
find plural forms of the nouns telad (NAV te["]la[-]di,
G te["]la[-]di[-], DLI te["]la[-]dima), siro~ad, and unu~ad.

Also, the other collective nouns are given in plural in this
grammar (like cvijec'e:cvije}a, p. 146).

It is also true that this plural form is rare (I do not know any
statistical data, but impressionistically, one can say that), but
sentences like:

"Djevoj~ica se igrala dugmadima - jednom dugmadi koju je
 skinula s kaputa i drugom koju je skinula sa ko{ulje."

or

"Razgovarali su o nedono{~adima - i onima iz gradske, i onima
iz univerzitetske klinike."

are acceptable, and can be found.

Also, there is word mom~ad, where semantic link to mom~e,eta
has been lost, and which have normal plural: mom~adi, which is
normally used.

Sincerely,


Danko Sipka