The Nominative Case (Nominativ) in Serbian
Nominative Case (1. padež – Nominativ)
The dictionary base case answering Ko? (Who?) and Šta? (What?), marking the grammatical subject of the clause and predicate nominals.
The *Nominative Case (Nominativ / Prvi padež) is the foundational, uninflected base case in Serbian grammar. It answers the interrogative pronouns Ko? (Who?) for animate beings and Šta? (What?)* for inanimate objects and concepts:
1. Primary Syntactic Roles: - Subject of the sentence: Performs or undergoes the action of the verb (Profesor govori, Knjiga leži na stolu). - Predicate Nominal with 'biti': Identifies or describes the subject (Petr je lekar*, Beograd je glavni grad*).
2. Standard Nominative Endings: - Masculine singular: Consonant ending (brat, student, grad, sto); Plural: -i (braća is collective paucal, studenti, gradovi with infix -ov-/-ev- for monosyllabic stems). - Feminine singular: -a (žena, sestra, škola); Plural: -e (žene, sestre, škole). - Neuter singular: -o / -e (selo, more, dete); Plural: -a (sela, mora, deca).
Subject-Verb Agreement: The finite verb agrees strictly with the Nominative subject in person, number, and (in compound tenses) grammatical gender (Studenti su učili, Studentkinje su učile).
Examples
Novi studenti marljivo uče srpski jezik u biblioteci svakog dana.
The new students study Serbian diligently in the library every day.
Ova stara istorijska zgrada u centru grada je nacionalni muzej.
This old historic building in the city center is the national museum.
Sunce sija jarko i osvetljava celo prelepo planinsko selo.
The sun shines brightly and illuminates the entire beautiful mountain village.
Moj stariji brat je uspešan inženjer u međunarodnoj kompaniji.
My older brother is a successful engineer in an international company.
Related terms
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