Breakdown of Sudac ga je proglasio nedužnim.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
on
he
sudac
judge (m)
proglasiti
to declare
Questions & Answers about Sudac ga je proglasio nedužnim.
Why is nedužnim in the Instrumental case rather than agreeing with the Accusative ga?
The verb proglasiti (to declare) triggers the Instrumental of predication. When you declare, name, or consider someone as something, that descriptive word or title takes the Instrumental case, even though the person being described (ga) is in the Accusative.
Does nedužnim change if the person being declared innocent is female?
Yes. The adjective in the Instrumental still has to agree in gender and number with the person it describes. If the judge declared her innocent, the pronoun would be ju and the adjective would take the feminine Instrumental ending: Sudac ju je proglasio nedužnom.
Why do the short words ga je come right after Sudac instead of next to the main verb?
ga (him) and je (auxiliary) are enclitics. These unstressed words must strictly occupy the second grammatical position in a Croatian sentence. Because Sudac takes the first position, the clitic cluster ga je must immediately follow it, rather than attaching to proglasio.
Could we use the imperfective verb proglašavati in this sentence instead?