Subject Control and the da-Clause

English is generous with the infinitive. It lets you say I want to go and I want him to go with the same word go, simply slotting in a new subject before it. Croatian cannot do this. The moment the doer of the second verb differs from the doer of the first, the infinitive collapses and a full da + present clause takes its place. This page is about that switch — the rule linguists call control — and about why it falls out so cleanly from one fact: a Croatian infinitive carries no person, so it can only ever be controlled by the subject already on the table. For the simpler same-subject choice between da and the infinitive, see da vs the infinitive; this page is the syntactic engine underneath it.

The core split: same subject vs different subject

The deciding question is always the same. Who does the second verb?

When the wanter and the goer are the same person, both routes are open: the infinitive Želim ići and the clause Želim da idem are both grammatical (the infinitive is the western-Croatian default; da + present is heard more in the east and in casual speech). But the instant the subjects diverge, the infinitive is impossible. You cannot say Želim tebe ići or Želim te ići. The only grammatical option is the full clause.

Why the infinitive cannot take its own subject

The reason is morphological, and it is worth internalising because it predicts the whole pattern. A Croatian infinitive (ići, čekati, raditi) is a frozen, person-less form. It has no slot for a subject of its own, so grammatically it can only "borrow" the subject of the verb above it. In Želim ići, the only available subject is ja ("I"), so ići automatically means that I go. There is no way to override that and make ići belong to someone else.

A da-clause, by contrast, is a real clause with a finite verb (odeš, dođe, čekamo) that carries its own person ending. Because the verb is inflected, the subject is encoded right there in the ending — od-eš is unmistakably "you (sg.) leave." That is exactly what you need when the second subject is new. English hides this by letting go serve both jobs; Croatian splits the labour between a person-less infinitive and a fully finite clause.

Tense inside the da-clause: present and future, never a subjunctive

Here is the point where speakers of Spanish, French, Italian, or German must consciously unlearn a habit. Those languages put a special subjunctive mood inside the equivalent clause (quiero que vengas, je veux que tu viennes). Croatian has no subjunctive at all. The verb in a da-clause sits in the ordinary indicative present — the same form you would use to state a plain fact.

The tense choice is straightforward: use the present for an action seen as concurrent or as a general aim, and the future when you genuinely point at a later event (Nadam se da ćeš…). What you never do is hunt for a mood marker — there is nothing to mark. If you find yourself wanting a subjunctive because your first language has one, just write the everyday present and you will be right.

The persuade / order / allow / advise class

A whole family of verbs describes one person acting on another so that the second person does something: ordering, advising, allowing, forbidding, persuading, asking. Because the doer of the second action is by definition a different person, these verbs take a da + present complement almost as a rule — and the person being acted on appears in the case the verb governs (often dative).

Notice that English here uses its bare-infinitive or to-infinitive complement (let me go, ordered him to rest, advise you to do), so an English speaker's instinct is to look for a Croatian infinitive too. There is none. The person acted on is always a different subject, so the da-clause is forced every time. The only thing that varies is which case the leading verb assigns to that person.

Reading the structure: the case marks the controller

One elegant payoff of understanding control is that the case of the pronoun tells you exactly who does the second verb. In Molim te da dođeš, the accusative te ("you") is both the object of molim and the understood subject of dođeš — and indeed the verb ending -eš confirms it is "you." The two pieces agree, which is your cross-check that you have built the sentence correctly.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Same subject → infinitive or da
  • present both work (Želim ići / Želim da idem). Different subjects → da
    • present is obligatory (Želim da odeš).
• A Croatian infinitive carries no person, so it can only ever belong to the subject already in the clause — that is why a new subject forces a finite da-clause.
• Inside the da-clause the verb is the ordinary indicative present (or future for a later event). Croatian has no subjunctive — do not import one from Spanish, French, or German.
• The persuade / order / allow / advise / ask class (savjetovati, narediti, dopustiti, zabraniti, moliti) almost always takes da
  • present, with the affected person in the case the verb governs (usually dative, sometimes accusative).
• The case of the pronoun and the person ending of the da-verb agree on who does the second action — use that agreement as your built-in check.