CROATIAN ZA-INFINITIVE: EXTERNAL BORROWING VS. INTERNAL LANGUAGE CHANGE

Abstract

The use of the infinitive in sentences such as Imate li sobu za iznajmiti? in the modern Croatian language is usually called “prepositional infinitive” or “za + infinitive construction”. Infinitive used with za is considered to be ungrammatical and a loan from other languages, namely German and/or Italian. It is therefore recommended to avoid using such an expression in a finer literary discourse. This paper proposes a different approach and points out that the za-infinitive might be an issue of internal language change, as has already been indicated by Pranjković. Furthermore, it shows that the Croatian za-infinitive follows the universal path of semantic and formal grammaticalization of the infinitive, as outlined by Haspelmath. Such a claim is supported by evidence from older texts in the Croatian language, as well as by certain comparisons with other European languages. Consequently, a new formal description of the infinitive use in question is proposed.