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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 62 The Friend I Saw: Relave Clauses 362 / 600

This sounds a bit awkward, but Croatian is flexible and usually nouns with such

descriptions attached are moved to the back:

Došao je na plažu A prijatelj N koji N me A je zvao. (the same meaning) doći past-m | 1

Bear in mind that the description does not change if the described noun change its

case:

Vidim prijatelja A koji N me A je zvao. I can see the friend who called me.

1

Razgovarao sam s prijateljem I koji N me A je zvao. I talked to the friend who 1

called me.

But if you change the noun to plural, you must also change the description, since you

are now really talking about something else:

Vidim prijatelje A koji N su me A zvali. I can see the friends who called me.

1

Vidim prijatelje A koje A sam čekao. I can see the friends I was waiting for.

In the first sentence, the adjective/pronoun koji is in N-pl, as the friends are the

subject of the clause; in the second one, it’s in A-pl, since they are the object in the

clause, while the subject is the first person (expressed by the 1st person verb sam).

It’s also obvious that forms of descriptive (i.e. relative) clauses are the same as

questions starting with koji. Therefore, if the role in description involves a

preposition, you must place it before koji:

Vidim prijatelja A s kojim I sam putovao. I can see the friend I traveled with.

Došli smo na plažu A na kojoj DL je bilo mnogo ljudi G . ‘We came to a doći past-mpl

beach many people were on.’

English is full of reduced passive clauses; for example, instead of:

We live in a house that was built by my grandfather.

The normal sentence is:

We live in a house built by my grandfather.

Such reducing is impossible in Croatian. Such passive clauses must be actually

rephrased in Croatian into non-passive:

Živimo u kući DL koju A je izgradio moj djed N . We live in a house my grandfather built.

You can also use relative clauses after indefinite pronouns (somebody,

everything...). However, there’s a twist in Croatian. If you use relative clauses after

indefinite pronouns, you have to use pronouns tko who or što what as conjunctions

instead of koji which/what! For example:

Vidio sam nešto A [što A ne mogu objasniti]. I saw something [I can’t moći pres-1

explain].

The pronoun što what here changes case according to the role in the clause, and

prepositions came before it:

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