Serbo-Croatian grammar
Case Singular Plural
N dȍba dȍba
G dȍba dôbā
D dȍbu dȍbima
A dȍba dȍba
V dȍba dȍba
L dȍbu dȍbima
I dȍbom dȍbima
Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language that has, like most other Slavic languages, an extensive system of inflection. This article describes exclusively the grammar of the Shtokavian dialect, which is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum and the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of Serbo-Croatian. An examination of all the major 'levels' of language shows that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system. A taxonomic qualification is required to understand why this language remains referred to in its dialect form of Slavic as Shtokavian. The grammar emerges out of morphological changes from its parent language. The host of ethnonims applied such as Bosnian and Montenegrin rises from socio-civic political constructs from very recent periods, while the dialect develops prior to the existing ethnic and national identities. While normally the dialect would assume the name of the civic or state entity in which it happens, Shtokavian develops cross-tribally, predicating its use as the preferred choice for linguistic discussion. Pronouns, nouns, adjectives and some numerals decline (change the word ending to reflect case, the grammatical category and function) whereas verbs conjugate for person and tense. As in other Slavic languages, the basic word order is subject-verb-object (SVO), but the declensions show sentence structure and so word order is not as important as in more analytic languages, such as English or Chinese. Deviations from the standard SVO order are stylistically marked and may be employed to convey a particular emphasis, mood or overall tone, according to the intentions of the speaker or writer. Often, such deviations will sound literary, poetical or archaic. Nouns have three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) that correspond, to a certain extent, with the word ending so most nouns with -a are feminine, -o and -e neuter, and the rest mostly masculine but with some feminine.