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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 43 And, Or, But: Basic Conjuncons 250 / 600

43 And, Or, But: Basic Conjunctions

Croatian has basically two conjunctions that correspond to English and:

i¨ a¨

The conjunction i¨ is used when you want to join two words or two parts of

sentences:

Ivan N i Ana N rade. Ivan and Ana are working. (nouns)

Ana N je žedna N i gladna N . Ivan is thirsty and hungry. (two adjectives)

Sobe N su u prizemlju DL i na katu DL . The rooms are on the ground floor and on the

first floor. (two locations)

It’s possible to join two normal-type sentences (that is, two verbs) that have the

same subject:

Ana N jede i pije. Ana is eating and drinking.

jesti | piti

[Pijem čaj A ] i [čitam knjigu A ]. I’m drinking tea and reading a book.

piti

Here we actually join two clauses; a clause is kind of sentence-within-a-sentence (I

have put square brackets around each of them in the last sentence).

It’s also possible to join two subjective-experience-type sentences, if they have the

same experiencer (in DL):

Hladno mi DL je i dosadno. I’m cold and bored.

1

However, if you want to join two sentences that have different subjects (and usually

verbs too), you have to use the conjunction a¨:

Ana N čita knjigu A , a Goran N spava. Ana is reading a book, and Goran is sleeping.

When an a¨ is used, a comma always separates two clauses.

Now there’s a very interesting rule. If you have different subjects – and

consequently use a¨ – the subjects must be emphasized. That is, you have to use

them:

Ana N čita knjigu A , a ja N spavam. Ana is reading a book, and I’m sleeping.

You cannot use the previous sentence with just a spavam!

The same works for experiencers: they must be emphasized, that is, stressed forms

of pronouns must be used:

Ana N se zabavlja, a meni DL je dosadno. Ana is having fun, and I’m bored.

Again, you cannot use the previous sentence with just a dosadno mi je! Also, such

emphasized subjects are usually the in the leftmost position.

The conjunction a¨ is also used if there’s some opposition between two clauses, e.g.

Zabavljam se, a trebao bih učiti. I’m having fun, and I should study.

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