Conjugational types in Croatian

Abstract

This paper analyses a new classification of verb conjugation types in Croatian, which is based on both their canonical form – the infinitive, which is the non-finite verbal form par excellence, and the basic form – the present, which is on the other end of the finiteness scale. The first chapter provides a brief overview of Croatian conjugational typology, starting from the grammar by B. Kašić (1604) until the most recent grammars by Silić and Pranjković (2005), as well as Jelaska (2015), ranging from one up to twenty-nine categories. The recent typologies within structuralist, generative and cognitive approaches are described in more detail, especially in Jelaska and Bošnjak Botica (2012), where prototype-based categorization is argued for as the most appropriate categorization. The second part of the paper analyses some properties of the present classification into three groups (a, i, e) and ten types within them: the shape, productivity, size, usage and the relations between them. The data consists of 24,400 Croatian verbs, which are categorized into groups, types and subtypes. The first group has only one type as member (verbs such as gledati), the second has three members (verbs such as moliti, vidjeti and trčati), the third has six (verbs like pisati, smijati se, putovati, davati, viknuti, ići).

Avoiding stress on non-lexical material in nouns and verbs: predictable verb prosody in Serbo-Croatian stress standard varieties

“…Theme vowel combinations are the most common way of describing Serbo-Croatian conjugation classes (see, e.g., Jelaska and Bošnjak-Botica [2019] for a recent overview). However, as we will also show in the following section, providing a complete list of theme-vowel classes is not at all straightforward.…”

“…Nontransparent classes account for 20 % of all verbs and allow multiple possible parsings into stems and theme vowels, as also reflected in the different treatments in traditional descriptions, which resulted in different classifications (see, e.g., Jelaska and Bošnjak-Botica 2019 for a recent overview). This ambiguity will be elucidated using the two most common types from Table 2 , illustrated by ispitivati∼ispitujemo ‘explore’ and školovati∼školujemo ‘school’, respectively.…”

Theme-vowel minimal pairs show argument structure alternations

“…4 Cognitive-linguistic approaches analyze theme vowels as conjugational class markers (e.g. Nesset 2000;Jelaska & Bošnjak Botica 2012Bošnjak Botica & Jelaska 2015, and references therein). Roughly, prototypical members of a category are 'central' members, sharing the greatest number of properties, while marginal members share only a few properties with the more typical ones.…”

“…In a series of papers, Jelaska & Bošnjak Botica (2012 use the notion of prototype to analyze Croatian theme vowels and conjugation classes. The basic idea is that conjugational types are represented as fuzzy sets containing concepts, with the properties of each concept contributing to their representativeness within the category.…”