sastojati se (to consist of)

Sastojati se ("to consist of, to be made up of") is the verb you need to describe what something is composed of — a team of eleven players, a book of three parts, a meal of two courses. Two facts define it. First, it is inherently reflexive and used almost exclusively in the third person (sastoji se, sastoje se): things, not people, "consist of", so there is no natural I/you form. Second, it governs od + genitive — "consist of" maps onto od (literally "from") + the genitive, not iz ("out of"), the preposition learners reach for by mistake. Keep it apart from its look-alike sastaviti ("to put together, to compose"), which is an active, transitive verb.

Aspect

Sastojati se is imperfective and has no everyday perfective partner, because "consisting of" is a permanent, structural state, not an event — and states are imperfective (see imperfective meaning). You never "finish consisting of" something. When you mean the act of putting parts together, you switch to a different verb entirely — the perfective sastaviti (see §3 below) — which is transitive and not reflexive.

Present tense

The paradigm exists in full, but only the third-person forms are used in practice; the 1st/2nd-person rows are listed for completeness, with the caveat that they are vanishingly rare.

The l-participle

Built on the stem sastoja-; in practice only the neuter and plural turn up (the subject is a thing). Masculine sastojao, feminine sastojala, neuter sastojalo, plural sastojali / sastojale / sastojala.

Perfect tense (perfekt)

Clitic biti + l-participle + se. Only the third-person rows are realistic, so the table gives those; the 3rd singular drops je before se (sastojao se, not sastojao se je).

Future I (futur prvi)

The infinitive sastojati drops its final -i before the clitic; with the third-person subject this gives sastojat će se (sg. and pl.). The 1st/2nd-person futures are omitted for the same reason as above — there is no natural "I will consist of".

Imperative

No imperative. You cannot command a thing to consist of something — the verb describes an inherent property, not a controllable action. This row is empty by the nature of the verb. (If you want to tell someone to assemble something, that's sastaviti — Sastavi popis! "Make a list!".)

Conditional I (kondicional prvi)

bih-clitics + l-participle + se; again only the third person is realistic.

Other forms

• Passive participle: none — sastojati se is intrinsically reflexive and intransitive, so it cannot be passivised. (The se here is the reflexive/middle marker, not the passive se; see the se-passive and impersonal se.)
• Verbal adverb: present sastojeći se ("consisting of") appears in writing: Knjiga, sastojeći se od triju dijelova, obuhvaća cijelo razdoblje ("The book, consisting of three parts, covers the whole period").
• Related noun: sastav ("composition, line-up, make-up"): sastav momčadi ("the team's line-up"), kemijski sastav ("chemical composition") — and sastojak ("an ingredient, a component"): sastojci za kolač ("ingredients for a cake").

Key uses and government

1. The headline: sastojati se OD + GENITIVE ("consist OF")

The components go in od + genitive. The trap for English speakers — and for speakers of some neighbouring Slavic norms — is the choice of preposition: it is od ("of/from"), not iz ("out of"). Sastojati se od views the parts as the material from which the whole is built; iz (motion "out of") is wrong here. The whole pattern is X se sastoji od + genitive (singular) / X se sastoje od + genitive (plural subject). See genitive after prepositions and the genitive with verbs.

2. Subject–verb agreement: sastoji se vs sastoje se

Because the verb is third-person, the only choice you make is singular vs plural, and that agrees with the whole (the subject), not with the parts in the genitive. A singular whole takes sastoji se even if it is made of many parts; a plural whole takes sastoje se.

3. The look-alike: sastaviti / sastavljati ("put together, compose")

Do not confuse sastojati se with sastaviti (pf) / sastavljati (impf), which means "to put together, assemble, compose, draw up". Sastaviti is active and transitive — it takes an accusative direct object and a real subject who does the assembling: Sastavila je popis ("She drew up a list"), Trener je sastavio momčad ("The coach put together the team"). The relationship is logical: you sastaviti (assemble) a whole out of parts, and afterwards that whole sastoji se (consists) of those parts.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• sastojati se is inherently reflexive and used almost only in the third person: sastoji se (sg.), sastoje se (pl.). It has no imperative and no passive.
• Government: od + genitive — "consist of". The classic mistake is iz instead of od.
• Agreement is singular/plural with the whole (the subject), not with the parts: Tim se sastoji… but Pregovori se sastoje….
• It is imperfective only (a structural state). The future is sastojat će se.
• Keep it apart from the active transitive sastaviti / sastavljati ("put together, compose"), which takes an accusative object. Related nouns: sastav, sastojak.