Fleeting 'A' & Syllabic 'R' in Serbian
Fleeting 'A' and Syllabic 'R' (Nepostojano A i vokalno R)
Nepostojano A appears in Nom.sg and Gen.pl between final consonants but drops in oblique cases (pas → psa, borac → borca); syllabic R acts as a vowel forming syllables (prst, trg, Srbija).
Two distinctive phonological phenomena in Serbian morphology and prosody are *Fleeting A (Nepostojano A) and the Syllabic / Vocalic R (Vokalno / Slogotvorno R)*:
*1. Fleeting A (Nepostojano A): - In historical Slavic, the loss of reduced vowels (yers) left a vowel a that appears exclusively in closed final syllables in the Nominative Singular and Genitive Plural, but completely disappears in all other oblique case forms: - pas (dog) → Gen. psa, Dat. psu, Nom.pl psi, Gen.pl pasa - borac (fighter) → Gen. borca, Ins. borcem, Gen.pl boraca - starac (old man) → Gen. starca, Gen.pl staraca - devojka → Gen.pl devojaka - Adjectives in masculine indefinite: dobar → fem. dobra, neuter dobro, Gen. dobrog*.
*2. Syllabic / Vocalic R (Vokalno / Slogotvorno R): - In Serbian, the rolled vibrant consonant r can function as a full syllable nucleus / vowel when positioned between two consonants or word-initially before a consonant: - prst (finger — 1 syllable) - trg (square — 1 syllable) - vrt (garden) - krv (blood) - br-do (hill — 2 syllables) - Sr-bi-ja (Serbia — 3 syllables) - r-t* (cape — 1 syllable). - Syllabic R can carry any of the four standard Serbian pitch accents and vowel length.
Examples
Glavni trg u starom gradu pun je turista koji šetaju i fotografišu spomenike.
The main square in the old town is full of tourists who are walking and taking pictures of monuments.
Moj verni pas me radosno dočekuje svakog dana kada se vratim sa fakulteta.
My faithful dog greets me joyfully every day when I return from the faculty.
Srbija ima prelepe planine, brze reke i izuzetno bogatu kulturnu istoriju.
Serbia has beautiful mountains, fast rivers, and an extremely rich cultural history.
Ovaj dobar i marljiv momak je uspešno završio sve univerzitetske ispite.
This good and hardworking young man has successfully finished all university exams.
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