EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 56 Desires and Demands 325 / 600
Htio¹ sam² [da¹ me A ² nazoveš]. I wanted you to call me.
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It will likely be some effort to learn such sentences, since their structure is
completely different than in English, and they often use perf. verbs:
Želim da se Ana N vrati. I want Ana to come back. (lit. ‘that Ana comes back’, perf.)
There’s nothing special about negation in this kind of clauses:
Želim da ne pada kiša N . I want it not to rain. (lit. ‘that the rain doesn’t fall’)
Like in purpose clauses, there are two restrictions. First, you can use only the present
tense after da (but you can use perf. verbs). Second, the verb biti (je² +) be is almost
always replaced by (bude), for example:
Toplo je. It’s warm.
Želim da bude toplo. I want it to be warm.
If you now think that the conjunction da is some special word that introduces
imagined, desired events and processes in Croatian, and that verbs in clauses after it
always come in the present tense, stop immediately.
The word da has about a zillion uses in Croatian, and demands on verbs after da are
determined by the main verb.
For other verbs in the main sentence, there can be other rules for use of verbs in
clauses. There are four main types of clauses in Croatian, regarding behavior of
verbs in them (I’ve invented the names, there are no established names):
Main types of clauses in Croatian
indicative any tense
(the default) no perf. verbs in present
(counter)factual
only past or present
no perf. verbs in present
only the present tense
atemporal perf. verbs allowed
biti (je² +) → (bude)
only verbs in inf
infinitive ®
perf. verbs allowed
(see below!)
no conjunction used
Atemporal-type clauses – like ones with željeti above – express the subject, but not
tense. Infinitive-type clauses cannot even express the subject, and they aren’t really
clauses at all, as words attached to inf can be scattered in the sentence:
Želim piti čaj A . I want to drink tea. ®
Željela te A je vidjeti. She wanted to see you.
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