Egzistencijalni glagoli u hrvatskome
Existential verbs in Croatian

Summary/Abstract: In the existing linguistic literature on Slavic languages there are practically no works on existential predicates in the Croatian language. This paper therefore examines some of the existing claims about existentiality and the commonest Croatian existential verbs imati ’to have’ and biti ’to be’, and the negative verb nemati ’to.have.not’. The paper presents an analysis of differences in meaning that sentences with these verbs acquire depending on the various case marking of their arguments, as well as restrictions in word order, imposed by the information structure of existential sentences. It also analyzes existential predicates under negation. Croatian has a dozen verbs which may be used existentially (if we count verbs of perception such as čuti ’hear’, vidjeti ’see’ or osjećati ’feel’): biti ’be’, imati ’have’, nemati ’have.not’, nedostajati ’miss’, uzmanjkati ’lack’, and nalaziti ’find’. Existentiality as a complex phenomenon often escapes a firm definition but nevertheless we side with those who distinguish existential sentences, which establish the existence of someone or something, from purely locational sentences, which establish the fact that something is located someplace (cf. Clark, 1978; Babby, 1980; Freeze, 1992, and others). Within existential sentences we can further distinguish those denoting absolute, timeless existence from those denoting concrete existentiality. The latter are always associated with a particular location and therefore called locational–existential. Based on Croft’s (1991) diachronic study of the development of verbal negators, Croatian would be classified as type B, since it has a special form of affirmative and negative existential predicate, with the verb imati ’have’, which is different from other verbal negators. However, this is limited to the present tense – existential predicates in the past or future tense are expressed with the verb biti ’be’ and negated with the same verbal negator as other predicates, which is typical of type A. We would therefore consider Croatian to be of the transitory type A - B, which shows synchronic variability.

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