Questions & Answers about Iznenađena je tvojim pitanjem.
Why is there no word for "by" before tvojim pitanjem?
In Croatian, the instrumental case is often used without a preposition to show the means, instrument, or cause of an action. Here, tvojim pitanjem is in the instrumental case because the question is the direct cause of her surprise. You do not need a preposition like s (with) or od (from) here.
How do we know the sentence means "She is surprised" when there is no word for "she"?
The word iznenađena ends in -a, which is the feminine singular ending. This tells us the hidden subject is female. Croatian frequently drops subject pronouns like ona (she) because the adjective and verb endings already make it clear who is experiencing the state.
If I wanted to explicitly include the word "she" (ona), how would it change the word order?
If you add ona, the sentence becomes Ona je iznenađena tvojim pitanjem. The verb je (is) is an enclitic, meaning it is a "weak" word that must strictly take the second position in the sentence, right after the new first word, Ona.
Why does the possessive word tvojim end in -im instead of -om?
Tvojim (your) is in the instrumental case to match the neuter noun pitanjem (question). Possessive pronouns that end in a soft consonant, like the j in tvoj, take the -im ending in the masculine and neuter instrumental case. If the base word ended in a hard consonant, it would take -om instead.
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