What Counts as Second Position?

“Second position” in Serbian means after the first suitable unit of a clause, not necessarily after its first written word. That unit may be a complete phrase, a single prosodic word, a lexical verb, an interrogative expression, or a subordinator. Choosing among those possibilities depends on constituency, intonation, and information structure.

The learner default: one complete constituent

The most reliable strategy is to place the whole clitic cluster after the first complete constituent.

The openings are a multiword subject, prepositional phrase, and object phrase. The first clitic is not word number two in any of them. Each entire phrase counts as unit one; ми је or смо follows as unit two.

A first prosodic word can also count

Standard Serbian attests clitics after the first word inside some initial phrases.

The clitic interrupts the syntactic noun phrase тај уговор or моја сестра. This is genuine first-word placement, but it is not automatically neutral. With initial arguments, the unsplit phrase—Тај уговор је…, Моја сестра се…—is generally the safer choice.

First-word placement is especially robust when the opening belongs to the predicate.

Adverb веома and l-participle послала each supply a prosodic host. The subject is postposed or omitted; the clitics still have a legitimate first unit.

A preposition alone is not a unit

A preposition and its complement form one phrase. Do not insert the cluster immediately after bare у, на, са, без, после.

The full phrases у овој згради and без његове помоћи count as the opening unit. Forms such as у се овој згради and без бисмо његове помоћи split the preposition from its complement and are impossible.

Questions and subordinators supply an opening

An interrogative constituent can host a following clitic cluster.

In the second example, колико alone hosts сте им inside the longer interrogative phrase колико примерака. This attested first-word placement is natural with the wh-expression; Колико примерака сте им… is also possible with the complete phrase as host.

Subordinators start their own clause domain and normally precede its clitics.

Кад ми се and да ће нам are beginnings of separate dependent clauses. The cluster is calculated anew after each connector.

Coordinators do not all count alike

Fuller coordinators such as али, него, па, те, или can support a following cluster. Short а and и normally require an accented constituent before it.

The second clauses begin али нам се but а ви ћете. A comma does not decide the issue; the connector’s own prosodic behavior does. See Clitics after Conjunctions and Subordinators.

Intonational boundaries can exclude material

A detached vocative, parenthetical, or frame pronounced before a clear break does not necessarily host the following clause’s clitics.

Vocative Никола is outside the question, so ли attaches to full јеси inside it. Parenthetical колико се сећам has its own reflexive clitic се; main-clause нам је follows subject Ивана.

If an initial topic remains integrated, it can host the cluster. If it is detached with a pause and resumed inside the clause, the clause calculates a new host.

The comma and pronoun in the second sentence signal a different construction, not an optional delay of the same clitic.

One proposition, several first units

Consider “Jelena sent me the address yesterday.”

The cluster ми је follows Јелена, јуче, or адресу. Moving the first unit is grammatical only with the corresponding information structure. Second position does not make the three orders synonymous.

A unit-finding diagnostic

1. Mark the finite clause boundaries.
2. Ignore detached vocatives and parentheticals outside the target clause.
3. Identify the first integrated phrase, predicate word, wh-expression, or eligible connector.
4. Use the whole first phrase for the neutral default.
5. If choosing first-word placement, check that the word is a prosodic host and that the context supports the split.
6. Move the whole cluster; do not rearrange it internally.

Practice Tasks

Task 1: Mark the first unit

Bracket the host in five sentences beginning with a subject NP, a PP, a wh-phrase, да, and али. Rewrite the first two with another information-structure opening and move the entire cluster accordingly.

Task 2: Compare word and phrase hosting

Build both тај важан предлог је… and тај је важан предлог…. Describe the first constituent, prosodic host, and relative markedness. Then explain why у је овој сали is not a comparable option.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• A complete first constituent is the safest neutral host.
• Serbian also has conditioned first-word placement, especially with predicate-initial material and some wh-phrases.
• A preposition cannot be separated from its complement to create a host.
• Every dependent or coordinated clause recalculates its own second position.
• Eligible connectors differ: али can host directly, while short а normally cannot.
• Detached material outside an intonational boundary does not mechanically count as the first unit of the following clause.