SUBJUNCTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSES IN SERBIAN AND BULGARIAN

Abstract

This paper examines subjunctive relative clauses in Serbian and Bulgarian. Our aim is to present characteristics of the Serbian subjunctive constructions as nominal modifiers in comparison with those in Bulgarian, which gives a more thorough insight into the complex situation among the Slavic languages of the Balkan Sprachbund. It has been concluded that the Bulgarian language has a broader distribution of subjunctive relatives which are marked by the subjunctive marker da (or with the relativizer kojto and the marker da), as well as that those Bulgarian subjunctive relatives are less dependent on semantic factors than their Serbian counterparts. Namely, Bulgarian demands agreement in subjunctivity in a higher degree, i.e. in Bulgarian it is not enough that a question or, for instance, an acquisition verb from the main clause subjunctively mark the subordinate clause, but it is required that a relative clause does that explicitly (with the subjunctive marker da after the relativizer). Furthermore, it seems that Serbian has a stronger subjunctivity of the future tense and similar morphosyntactical categories which are not primarily subjunctive, but have subjunctive semantics, hence subjunctive semantics of the relative clauses can also be achieved by these morphological forms in the Serbian relative clause with a relativizer.