Der Relativsatz im Serbokroatischen

This comprehensive study of relative clauses in Serbo-Croatian begins with the selection and description of properties of such relative clauses as are most frequently realized in various languages, including Serbo-Croatian. These properties can therefore be considered to belong to typical representatives of the relative clauses. The author then analyses formal constituents of the antecedent which determine the realization of the relative clause as restrictive or non-restrictive. The non-typical relative clauses (e.g. free relatives, extraposed relatives), the differentation of inflected from uninflected relativizer (used with personal pronouns), adverbial relativizers, and the replacement of the participle by the relative clause in Serbo-Croatian are also described in this study. The corpus composed of texts from the journalistic, bookish, administrative-legal, and scientific styles has shown that several interesting on-going changes can be perceived with regard to the most typical relative pronoun in Serbo-Croatian. One of them is the extension of the animate masculine into the inanimate (and increasingly into the neuter) of the pronun as a means of morphologically disambiguating the subject and object. The other change concerns the possessive genitive of the pronoun. The study is supplied with examples, charts, and an extensive bibliography.