EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 81 Sneeze Once and Start Blooming 457 / 600
kapati ~¹ kapnuti (kapne) drip
kucati ~¹ kucnuti (kucne) knock
štucati ~¹ štucnuti (štucne) hiccup
treptati (trepće) ~¹ trepnuti (trepne) blink
As you can see, such verbs frequently end in -nuti, with the regular -ne in pres-3.
Perf. verbs with this ‘once’ meaning sometimes have a fancy name: semelfactive
(abbreviated as smlf.); the corresponding impf. verbs are sometimes called iterative.
This doesn’t apply to all verbs where it could make sense: for instance, there’s no
verb for "cough once".
There are verb pairs where the perf. verbs have meaning similar to ‘atomic’ – they
mean for a short while, a bit. I will classify them as kind-of semelfactive, with the
same mark (~¹), but you should be aware of the small difference. Three most
common pairs like that are:
misliti ~¹ po- think
nadati se² ~¹ po- («) hope
osjećati ~¹ osjetiti feel
The perf. verbs above mean think for a short time and hope for a short time, or have
a thought. They are often used in negative, to emphasize that somebody didn’t think
even for a moment.
Don’t forget that there’s a substantial difference in meaning between verbs like
zavoljeti (...) and pomisliti. The former verbs indicate entering a state which can last
any amount of time – we don’t say how long, and if we want to express when the
state ended, we have to use another verb. The latter ones are ‘atomic’, or small
‘pulses’, indicating that action or state lasted for a small amount of time:
‘inchoative’
(start-of-state)
‘semelfactive’
(atomic / brief)
zaspati (zaspi)
fall asleep
zavoljeti (zavoli,...)
start to love
kihnuti (kihne)
sneeze (once)
pomisliti
think for a moment
However, there are perf. verbs where the two meanings are mixed. Two common
ones are:
zaželjeti (zaželi,...)
‘perf.’ wish
poželjeti (poželi,...)
From what I’ve explained above, you would expect that poželjeti (...) means wish for
a moment, and that zaželjeti (...) start to wish, but it’s not so – both have meaning