Clitics in second position

You already know almost every little word in this lesson. sam, je, ću, ćeš, mi, ti, ga, je, se — the past auxiliary, the future auxiliary, the object pronouns, the reflexive se. What you have not been told is the one rule that decides where they stand, and it is the same rule for all of them.

These words have no stress of their own. When you say them out loud they lean backwards onto the word in front, so that vidim ga comes out as one breath, like a single word vidimga. A word that leans like this cannot stand at the front of a sentence — there would be nothing behind it to lean on. Serbian solves this in the simplest possible way: the leaning words all move to the second spot in the clause.

The leaning words

Second position

Say the first stressed word or phrase of the clause, and then put the little words. That first element can be almost anything — the subject, a question word, a conjunction, an adverb, the verb itself. Whatever it is, the little words come right behind it.

Notice the last row. If nothing else is standing in front, the verb itself takes the first spot and the little words follow it. That is why Vidim ga is right and Ga vidim is impossible.

The order inside the pile

When several of them turn up at once, they queue in a fixed order. Learn the queue once and you never have to think about it again.

1. li
2. the auxiliary: ću / ćeš / će… or sam / si / smo / ste / su
3. the dative pronoun: mi, ti, mu, joj, nam, vam, im
4. the accusative pronoun: me, te, ga, nas, vas, ih
5. se

One form breaks the queue: je. The 3rd person singular past auxiliary je goes LAST, after the object pronouns, not with the other auxiliaries: On ga je video — never On je ga video. Every other auxiliary keeps its place: On ga je video, but Oni su ga videli.

And je disappears next to se. When a 3rd person singular past has se in it, the je is simply dropped: Ona se vratila, not Ona se je vratila. Compare the plural, where nothing is dropped: Oni su se vratili.

Negation

ne has no stress either, so ne plus the verb behave as a single first element and the little words come after the whole thing: Ne sećam se, Ne mogu ti pomoći. The fused negatives nisam and neću are different — they are full stressed words, so they can stand first all by themselves and the little words simply follow: Nisam ga video. Neću ti reći.

But nisam and neću only take the first slot when nothing else is in it. If a question word or a conjunction is already standing there, the little words take second place as usual and the stressed negative comes after them: Zašto mi nisi rekla?, … ali se nije javio. Compare Nisam ti rekla with Zašto mi nisi rekla — same words, and the clitic moves because the first slot is taken.

Yes/no questions

li is a leaning word too, and it is the first in the queue. With da li the whole da li counts as the first element, and everything else comes after it: Da li si mu rekao? Without da, the verb goes first and li right behind it: Jesi li mu rekao?, Hoćeš li doći?

The one thing you can never do is start a clause with a leaning word. If a sentence would begin with ga, mi, se, sam or ću, something is wrong: find the first stressed word and put them behind it.