Breakdown of Mati i kći istražuju svoje podrijetlo.
i
and (additive)
kći
daughter
svoj
one's own
istraživati
to investigate
mati
mother
podrijetlo
origin
Questions & Answers about Mati i kći istražuju svoje podrijetlo.
Why does the sentence use mati and kći instead of majka and kćer?
Mati and kći are the traditional, grammatically correct nominative (subject) forms of these highly irregular nouns. In everyday speech, you will often hear majka instead of mati, and people frequently (though grammatically incorrectly) use the accusative form kćer as the subject instead of kći. This sentence uses the strictly correct nominative forms for both because they are doing the exploring.
The English translation says "their origin", so why is the word svoje instead of njihovo?
In Croatian, when the subject of the sentence acts upon their own possession, you must use the reflexive possessive pronoun svoj (meaning my own, his own, their own, etc.). Because the mother and daughter are exploring their own origin, we use svoje. If we used njihovo, it would mean they were exploring some other people's origin.
What case are svoje and podrijetlo in here?
They are in the accusative case because they represent the direct object (the thing being explored). Podrijetlo (origin) is a neuter noun, and for neuter nouns, the accusative form looks exactly the same as the nominative. The pronoun svoj takes the neuter accusative ending -e to match it, becoming svoje.
What is the infinitive of the verb istražuju?
The infinitive is istraživati (to explore or research). It is an imperfective verb, meaning it describes an ongoing or continuous process, which makes sense here since exploring your origins usually takes time and isn't finished in a single moment.
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