О граматичким јединицама, функцијама, категоријама и класама
On the Grammatical Units, Functions, Categories and Classes

Summary/Abstract: The set of grammatical units includes the morpheme, the word, the phrase, the clause, the sentence and the paragraph. The word is the basic grammatical unit with autonomous meaning; it is a starting point for the definition of all other units. When they become part of utterances, the words assume special functions. These functions basically reflect two kinds of relationships: modification and predication. While modification relates the modifiers to their heads, predication relates the predicate to the participants in the action or state, the basic one being the subject. Along with the grammatical functions come the exponents of the grammatical categories of which, in Serbo-Croatian, there are ten: person, number, gender, case, tense, modality, aspect, status, voice and comparison. The exponents (affixes and/or function words) and categories are not in one to one relationship: one exponent can represent more than one category and more than one exponents can combine to express one single category. Each word class has a specific set of exponents of specific grammatical categories. The number and choice of categories represented can be a criterion for the delimitation of the word class; the latter can be defined as a group of words formed on the basis of the presence or absence of given grammatical categories. The set of word classes has been subdivided into two subsets: major word classes and minor word classes. The former include the nouns, the verbs, the adjectives, the pronouns and the adverbs. The latter, until recently, was restricted to the prepositions and conjunctions; now it also includes the determiners and the auxiliaries. Since the verbs and predicate adjectives define the nouns that function as subjects while the adverbs define the verbs, the adjectives and themselves, the nouns could be set off as the basic word class. However, the verbs govern many nouns and select all the functions other than the subject. Therefore, an adequate language analysis cannot accept the absolute primacy of the noun. As a matter of fact, once the subject selects its predicate, the latter becomes the pivot of the sentence; all the relations at the level of the sentence are directed towards the predicate.

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