31
Marta Petrak
*
 UDK 811.163.42'367.623:81'373.611
University of Zagreb, Croatia DOI: 10.4312/linguistica.60.1.31-60
DEVELOPMENT OF A PRODUCTIVE DERIV ATIONAL 
PATTERN ON THE BASIS OF LOAN TRANSLATION?
THE CASE OF CROATIAN ADJECTIVES FORMED  
WITH THE PREFIX MEĐU­ 1
1 INTRODUCTION 
This paper deals with Croatian adjectives containing the prefix među- ‘inter-’, the ma-
jority of which are derived on the basis of the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern. Such adjectives 
are a result of the simultaneous addition of a prefix and a suffix to a nominal base, as 
in the examples među-grad-ski ‘intercity’
2
 (<grad ‘city’) or među-zub-ni (<zub ‘tooth’) 
‘interdental’ (Babić 2002: 445). While this word-formation pattern is productive in 
contemporary Croatian, diachronic data seem to demonstrate that it accounted for just 
a few adjectives only about a hundred years ago.
More precisely, when one analyses older available dictionaries, such as the Dic-
tionary of the Croatian or Serbian Language (also known as the Academy’s Diction-
ary, Budmani/Maretić 1904–1910), one finds only several such adjectives, most of 
which are either hapax legomena or recent inventions formed as equivalents of Latin 
or German terms. In line with that important fact, one could arguably presume that the 
[među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern did not exist in the Croatian language, but that it emerged only 
sometime in the 19
th
 century, first as a result of loan translations of Latin and German 
terms. The only adjective listed in the Academy’s Dictionary that is not claimed to be a 
loan translation (calque) is međusoban ‘mutual’ (<među ‘between’ + se(be) ‘oneself’). 
However, this adjective, according to the information provided, only appears in the 
works of several authors in mid- or late 19
th
 century. These facts seem to underpin the 
conclusion that it was probably in the 19
th
 century that među- prefixed adjectives first 
appeared in Croatian.
The next available lexicographic source, Benešić’s dictionary (1957), compris-
ing Croatian literary works published from the beginning of the 19
th
 century until the 
*
 mpetrak@ffzg.hr
1 An earlier version of this paper was presented in the form of a poster at the Mediterranean Mor-
phology Meeting (MMM12) in Ljubljana in June 2019. I would like to thank two anonymous 
reviewers for their numerous comments and suggestions, which were almost entirely included in 
this revised version of the paper.
2 All the English equivalents in the paper, unless otherwise indicated, were provided from the 
Merriam Webster online dictionary available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/ (accessed 
in August 2020). The writing rules, especially those related to hyphenation, were preserved as 
they appear in the dictionary.
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32
1940s, lists only three među- adjectives: međunarodan ‘international’, međusatni ‘oc-
curring between two (school) classes’ and međuzvjezdani ‘interstellar’. This fact, while 
based on literary works only, still points to the conclusion that među- adjectives were 
not that common in mid-20
th
 century Croatian. Newer dictionaries, however, list more 
među- adjectives; thus in Veliki rječnik hrvatskoga standardnog jezika (2015) (the 
Large Dictionary of Croatian Standard Language, henceforth: VRH 2015), the largest 
dictionary of the Croatian standard language, one finds 37 such adjectives.
In order to complement the analysis of the lexicographic works, a part of the study 
presented in this paper also included an analysis of three digital corpora: Riznica, a 
corpus containing literary and other written sources from the second half of the 19
th
 
century to this day, HNK (Hrvatski nacionalni korpus), the Croatian national corpus 
comprising texts written from 1990 onwards, and hrWaC, a web corpus and the largest 
extant corpus of the Croatian language. The corpora results seem to corroborate the 
lexicographic ones. More precisely, in the Riznica corpus, as few as four među- adjec-
tives appear between late 19
th 
century and the 1970s, and they start to become more 
numerous from the 2000s onwards. In the HNK, there are 51 među- adjectives with 10 
or more occurrences, and in hrWaC there are as many as 134 među- adjectives with 10+ 
occurrences. These facts point to the conclusion that, over time, the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 
pattern has started to produce more and more adjectives, some of which have not yet 
been listed in dictionaries. The absence of certain među- adjectives found in the hrWaC 
corpus from dictionaries might, firstly, be a result of the fact that some of them are spe-
cialized terms which one would not expect to find in general language dictionaries such 
as the VRH, and secondly, of the fact that it takes some time for dictionaries, especially 
paperback ones, such as the VRH, to list new lexemes that have already existed in the 
language for some time.
The central question that we explore in this paper is whether the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 
pattern appeared as a result of loan translation. 
Even though lexicographic works such as the Academy’s dictionary seem to sug-
gest that među- adjectives appeared as loan translations of Latin and German terms in 
the 19
th
 century, Croatian borrowing literature says little about phenomena related to 
the borrowing of derivational morphemes, with rare exceptions (cf. Kovačec 1967: 
101–103; Dabo-Denegri 2007: 44). When it comes to the borrowing of morphemes 
generally, it is usually separated into borrowing of inflectional morphemes, which was 
considered by some prominent linguists as virtually impossible (e.g. Meillet 1926; Ja-
kobson 1938), and borrowing of derivational morphemes, which some authors consider 
to be more susceptible to borrowing (e.g. Weinreich 1953). Today, there is general 
agreement among linguists that inflectional borrowing is a relatively rare phenome-
non, while derivational morphemes are more easily borrowed (Gardani, Arkadiev and 
Amiridze 2015: 9). 
In this paper, we hypothesize that adjectives formed according to the [među-N-
Suff]
Adj
 pattern first appeared in Croatian as a result of loan translation under Latin 
and German influence, and that the pattern was subsequently reinforced under strong 
English influence. Even though this hypothesis cannot be entirely confirmed, once the 
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33
[među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern appeared in Croatian, it probably continued to exist to some 
extent, as supported by evidence of the Riznica corpus and Benešić’s dictionary. How-
ever, it was only in the mid- and late 20
th
 century that it really became productive, as 
attested to by the VRH dictionary, as well as the HNK and hrWaC corpora. That period 
coincides with a large English influence on Croatian (Filipović 1990; Samardžija 2002; 
Turk 2013), so it could be assumed that the influence of English contributed to the re-
inforcement of the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern, and to the creation of a larger number of 
new među- adjectives. 
The rest of the article is organized as follows: Section 2 provides an overview of 
language borrowing phenomena, with a special focus on morphology, especially that 
which is derivational, and the difference between MAT and PAT borrowing (Sakel 
2007). Section 3 positions the Croatian language in the context of language borrowing, 
emphasizing especially the role of loan translations (calques). In Section 4, we provide 
more details about the derivation of adjectives in Croatian. Section 5 is dedicated to the 
methodology we have used to study the question of whether među- adjectives appeared 
in Croatian as a result of loan translation. Our methodology is a combination of analy-
ses conducted on available lexicographic works and digital corpora. Section 6 presents 
the results of our analysis. It shows that, as predicted at the beginning, među- adjectives 
first emerged as a result of loan translation, and have become more numerous with 
time, with the highest number of occurrences recorded in contemporary Croatian, both 
according to lexicographic and corpus data. The majority of adjectives are formed via 
the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern, and the među- prefix in these adjectives behaves like a 
polysemous morpheme whose meanings form a radial structure, with the prototypi-
cal (spatial) meaning at the centre (cf. Lakoff 1987). In Section 7 we provide some 
concluding remarks, reaffirming our hypothesis that među- adjectives have entered the 
Croatian language as a result of loan translations of Latin and German terms, and could 
subsequently have become more numerous under English influence. This is also cor-
roborated by data from the Etymological Dictionary of the Croatian Language (2016).
2 BRIEF OVERVIEW OF LANGUAGE BORROWING PHENOMENA 
Linguistic change stemming from language contact could be said to be an almost uni-
versal phenomenon occurring in both existing and extinct languages (cf. Grant 2019: 1). 
Another well-known fact is that language contact can affect the participating languages 
on a number of levels, and most prominently in the lexicon (e.g. Thomason 2001: 10; 
Turk 2013; Poplack 2018: 1; Grant 2019: 1). In this paper, however, attention is turned 
to a different aspect of language contact, morphological borrowing. The issue has been 
much less explored than lexical borrowing, but today is “far from being unknown” 
(Grant 2019: 17). Moreover, recent years have seen an increasing scholarly interest in 
the field of morphological borrowing (Gardani, Arkadiev and Amiridze 2015: 1). 
There are various phenomena that enter the field of morphological borrowing. They 
are generally divided into two major types: borrowing of inflectional morphemes (e.g. 
Weinreich 1963: 31–33; Kovačec 1967; Minayeva 2003), and borrowing of deriva-
tional morphemes (e.g. Della Volpe 1997; Coghill 2015).
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34
Sakel (2007) distinguishes two basic types of borrowing between languages: matter 
borrowing (MAT) and pattern borrowing (PAT). MAT-borrowing refers to taking over 
both morphological material and its phonological form, while PAT-borrowing refers to 
replicating the organization and grammatical or semantic meaning without borrowing 
the form itself. This second type results from loanshifts or calques (Sakel 2007: 16). In 
other words, PAT-borrowing refers to the situation in which a recipient language uses 
its own morphological elements and organizes them in a way that resembles the struc-
ture of the source language (cf. Gardani, Arkadiev and Amiridze 2015: 3). 
This paper focuses on a particular type of PAT derivation: loan translation of com-
plex words consisting of an affix (a prefix), a (nominal) base and a suffix. A general 
claim in the literature on affix borrowing is that affixes are most commonly borrowed 
indirectly, as part of complex loanwords (Weinreich 1963: 31–32). In such a case, a 
number of complex loanwords enter a recipient language, and only subsequently can 
its speakers analyse these words into their constituent parts and eventually start using a 
foreign affix with native bases (cf. Seifart 2015: 512). In direct borrowing, on the other 
hand, an affix is recognized by the speakers of a recipient language and immediately 
used with native bases (ibid.). For Seifart (2015), the crucial difference between the 
two types of affix borrowing lies in the question of whether speakers of a recipient 
language understand the source language. If they do, it can lead to a situation of direct 
borrowing.
Loan translations or calques are a specific type of borrowing. In the case of complex 
words, a number of authors distinguish between an “entire calque”, or the reproduc-
tion of a complex foreign word element by element (loan translation proper, Wein-
reich 1963: 51; Martinet 1980: 170), and a “partial calque”, or the loan translation of 
only parts of words (loan rendition, Weinreich 1963: 51; calque approximatif, Martinet 
1980: 170). When applied to words formed with affixes, examples of the first case 
would be loan translations of both an affix and a base (e.g. French pré-elargissement 
‘pre-enlargement’ -> Polish przedrozszerzenie, Trajder 2007: 140), and of the second 
one loan translation of the affix only (e.g. French supercommissaire ‘super-commis-
sioner’ -> Polish superkomisarz) (ibid.).
In the examples analysed in this paper, i.e. in Croatian među- prefixed adjectives, 
entire calque is at work due to the fact that both the prefix (među-), the base and (usu-
ally) the suffix are borrowed and translated, i.e. expressed with Croatian linguistic ma-
terial, such as in the following example: Latin internationalis (inter- ‘inter- + natio ‘na-
tion’ +-alis ‘adjectival suffix’ = ‘international’) > Croatian međunarodan ‘international’ 
(među- ‘inter-’ + narod ‘people’ + -an ‘suffix’). Before proceeding with the analysis 
of adjectives, some details need to be provided about major linguistic influences on 
Croatian, as well as about the formation of Croatian adjectives in general.
3 CROATIAN IN THE CONTEXT OF LANGUAGE CONTACT
At its very beginnings, Croatian already came into contact with several substrate lan-
guages, and had lasting contact with Latin as the language of Western Christianity, ad -
ministration and education (Samardžija 2002: 61). By the end of the Middle Ages, it had 
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35
also established contacts with a number of neighbouring languages: Italian, Hungarian, 
German and later on Turkish, all of which exerted influence primarily on the lexical level, 
at times very strongly
3
 (Samardžija 2002: 61–62). Latin loanwords from the areas of 
Christianity and philosophy, but also related to administration, law and new inventions, 
were for a long time the most numerous ones in Croatian (Samardžija 2002: 63). 
Calques became a regular phenomenon in the Croatian lexicon starting from the 
second half of the 16
th
 century, and were especially related to the publication of first 
larger dictionaries (Samardžija 2002: 63). Older Croatian lexicographic works were 
usually bi- or even multi-lingual, and their source language was usually a foreign one, 
mostly Latin (Gostl 1995). Faced with numerous gaps on the Croatian side, lexicog-
raphers were oftentimes forced to invent equivalents themselves, which resulted in a 
large number of neologisms, calques, etc. (Samardžija 2002: 64).
At the time of the industrial revolution, a considerable number of new technical 
and scientific terms were formed on the basis of classical languages (Latin and Greek), 
which are sometimes called Europeisms (Croatian europeizmi) due to their presence in 
a number of modern European languages (Samardžija 2002: 65). At the end of the 19
th
 
century, Croatian borrowed a number of internationalisms through its contacts with 
German and Italian (Samardžija 2002: 65). It needs to be emphasized that Latin was 
the official language in continental Croatia until 1847, followed by German until 1860 
(Samardžija 2002: 66). When Croatian finally became the official language, it lacked 
functional diversity. It therefore saw numerous additions in the second half of the 19
th
 
century, during which time two prominent lexicographers played a key role: Šulek in 
continental Croatia and Parčić in littoral Croatia (Samardžija 2002: 66–67). They both 
agreed on providing Croatized words for all notions where it was possible (Samardžija 
2002: 67), which left the language once again with a substantial portion of calques.
In recent history, English is undoubtedly the language that has exercised by far the 
strongest influence on Croatian (Samardžija 2002: 72). Numerous Anglo-American 
elements have spread into Croatian owing primarily to the media, and have entered the 
language at a quick pace (Samardžija 2002: 72). Moreover, Turk (2013: 159) claims 
that in the second half of the 20
th
 century Croatian was “inundated” by loanwords from 
English. English influence on the Croatian language has occurred both overtly, in the 
acceptance and adaptation of English lexemes into the lexicon, and covertly, as loan 
translations, which are “really numerous” (Muhvić-Dimanovski 1992: 94), and can be 
found on virtually all language levels (Margić Drljača 2009). 
4 ADJECTIV AL WORD­FORMATION PROCESSES IN CROATIAN
Having given an overview of language contact phenomena relevant for this paper, this 
section shall provide some more details about the formation of adjectives in Croa-
tian. The major word-formation processes on the basis of which Croatian adjectives 
are formed are the following: suffixation (e.g. glazba ‘music’ + -en ‘suffix’ > glaz-
ben ‘musical’), prefixation (e.g. ne- ‘un-’ + služben ‘official’ > neslužben ‘unofficial’), 
3 Multinational states such as the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which Croatia was a part of, were 
an important factor that contributed to language contacts (Turk 2013: 15).
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36
prefix-suffix combination (e.g. izvan- ‘out-’ + brak ‘marriage’ + -ni ‘suffix’ > 
izvanbračni ‘extramarital’), compound-suffix combination (e.g. hladan ‘cold’ + krv 
‘blood’ + -(a)n ‘suffix’ > hladnokrvan ‘cold-blooded’) and compounding (e.g. vatra 
‘fire’ + otporan ‘resistant’ > vatrootporan ‘fireproof’) (Babić 2002: 381; 445; 459; 
463; 472–473). The word-formation process that accounts for the majority of adjectives 
is suffixation (Babić 2002: 381).
When it comes specifically to the question of word-formation with the prefix među-, 
the author of the most comprehensive manual on Croatian word-formation, Babić 
(2002: 445; 461; 468; 473), claims that it participates in the following four types of 
adjective formation:
1) prefix-suffix combination of relational adjectives (e.g. međugradski ‘intercity’, 
međuzubni ‘interdental’, međunarodni ‘international’, etc.),
2) prefix-suffix formation of descriptive adjectives (1 example: međusobni 
‘mutual’),
3) prefix-suffix formation of descriptive adjectives with zero suffix (1 example: 
međuvremen ‘intertime’),
4) formation of descriptive adjectives through prefixation (1 example: međuzavisan 
‘interdependent’).
From the abovementioned list, it can firstly be concluded that all types of adjective 
formation but the first one – prefix-suffix combination of relational adjectives – are 
rather unproductive and of very limited scope, because they are all used to form a single 
adjective, according to Babić (2002). Unlike these three processes, prefix-suffix com-
bination results in a number of relational adjectives. Secondly, it can also be concluded 
from the aforementioned facts that the među- prefix is productive in the formation of 
relational, and not descriptive adjectives.
Prefix-suffix combination, or the formation of new lexemes through the simultane-
ous addition of a prefix and a suffix, is also called parasynthetic formation or parasyn-
thesis (e.g. Serrano-Dolader 2015; Iacobini 2020). The term parasynthesis is mostly 
used today to refer to Romance verbs formed from adjectival or nominal bases (e.g. 
French embarquer ‘to load, board’ < em- ‘in’ + barque ‘boat’ -er ‘infinitive ending’) 
(Serrano-Dolader 2015: 524), but some authors also use it to refer to nouns and adjec-
tives formed through the addition of a prefix and a suffix to a base (Serrano-Dolader 
2015; Iacobini 2020). It is important to emphasize that, in order for a formation to be 
considered a case of parasynthesis, many authors argue that there should not be an at-
tested “intermediate stage”: thus, in the above French example, there are no words such 
as *barquer or *embarque. Authors writing from a generative point of view explain 
that requirement on the basis of the binary branching hypothesis, which specifies that 
only one word-formation process can apply at a time (cf. Serrano-Dolader 2015). In 
other words, they reject the possibility of ternary structures for parasynthetic deriva-
tions (ibid.).
4
4 For more details on the treatment of parasynthesis in linguistic literature, see Serrano-Dolader 
(2015).
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37
When applied to Croatian adjectives formed according to the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pat-
tern, however, this principle does not seem to work formally because a simple adjec-
tive can be found in the language for every parasynthetic one, such as in the following 
examples: gradski ‘urban’ <> međugradski ‘intercity’; državni ‘state’ <> međudržavni 
‘interstate’; zvjezdani ‘stellar’ <> međuzvjezdani ‘interstellar’, etc. Still, all these ad-
jectives are claimed to be parasynthetic or prefix-suffix formations by Babić (2002) 
due to the fact that their meaning cannot be construed as the sum of the prefix and an 
adjective: for instance, međugradski ‘intercity’ does not mean ‘occurring between what 
pertains to the city’ (*među- ‘inter-’ + gradski ‘pertaining to the city’), but its meaning 
is ‘relative to what is between cities’, thus među- ‘inter-’ + grad ‘city’ + -ski ‘suffix’. In 
this paper, such adjectives are considered parasynthetic formations.
The fact that Babić (2002) enumerates a number of adjectives formed through pre-
fix-suffix combination with među- points to the conclusion that adjectives formed ac-
cording to this process are fairly present and regular in contemporary Croatian. What 
Babić (2002) omits to specify, however, is, firstly, how productive the derivational 
pattern [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 is, and secondly and more interestingly, how it emerged in 
Croatian.
5
 It is therefore the goal of this paper to shed some light on the history of the 
formation of među- prefixed adjectives and to explore their productivity in present-day 
Croatian language.
5 METHODOLOGY 
In order to explore the emergence of među- prefixed adjectives in Croatian and the pro-
ductivity of the patterns according to which they are created, available lexicographic 
works and corpora were consulted. More precisely, three dictionaries were used: the 
Academy’s Dictionary (Budmani/Maretić 1904–1910), Benešić’s dictionary (1957), 
and VRH (2015). Brief explanations shall be given as to why the three dictionaries 
mentioned were chosen for the analysis presented in this paper.
The Academy’s Dictionary is a rich historical dictionary of Croats, Serbs, Bosnian-
Herzegovinian Muslims and Montenegrins that provides information from the earliest 
linguistic sources in the 12
th
 century up until works of the 19
th
 century. In the period 
when it was written, it was considered that these ethnic groups spoke a single language 
called Croato-Serbian or Serbo-Croatian. Importantly for this paper, it is also a termi-
nological dictionary, as well as a dictionary of foreign words and loanwords.
The exact title of Benešić’s dictionary (1957) is Rječnik hrvatskoga književnoga 
jezika od preporoda do I. G. Kovačića (Dictionary of the Croatian Literary Language 
from the National Revival until I. G. Kovačić). Its intention was to be a dictionary of 
contemporary Croatian literary language as a collection of quotes from the most excel-
lent Croatian writers who published between the very beginning of the 19
th
 century 
until the 1940s (Nikolić-Hoyt 2010: 63–64). It was chosen due to the fact that it cov-
ers the “middle” period between early 20
th
 century and the 1940s. One of Benešić’s 
goals in compiling his dictionary was to revise and modernize the data found in earlier 
5 The second question was outside Babić’s (2002) scope because he wrote a synchronic word-
formation manual.
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38
dictionaries, for instance by leaving out words that were no longer used in the Croatian 
literary language, and by introducing those that were used by Croatian modern authors 
(Nikolić-Hoyt 2010: 62). It should therefore serve as a good illustration of the Croatian 
lexicon from early 19
th
 century to mid-20
th
 century.
Finally, the VRH dictionary is the largest and most recent dictionary of the Croatian 
standard language (Slišković 2016: 244). It is based on older relevant lexicographic 
works, manuals, specialized dictionaries and digital corpora. 
After an analysis of the mentioned lexicographic works, three major digital cor-
pora were also consulted: Riznica, HNK and hrWaC. The Riznica corpus, compiled by 
the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, contains literary and other written 
sources from the second half of the 19
th
 century to this day.
6
 The corpus contains 100 
million tokens (Brozović Rončević and Ćavar 2012). Due to its specificities, Riznica 
was searched via the među.* standard regular expression, providing all words starting 
with the graphic sequence među. 
The HNK, 3.0 beta version, contains more than 2.3 billion words (Tadić 2009). 
Much larger than Riznica, it is a balanced and representative corpus
7
 of standard con-
temporary Croatian, which contains a certain amount of faction (such as magazines, 
newspapers, books, diaries, novels, etc.), fiction, etc., in line with text typology stand-
ards (Tadić 2002: 442). The HNK corpus was also searched via the među.* standard 
regular expression, providing all words starting with the graphic sequence među. The 
results obtained were then organized through the Frequency – Lemma function, provid-
ing a list of među- words with their number of occurrences in the corpus. The results 
were manually checked.
The hrWaC (Ljubešić and Erjavec 2011) is a web corpus whose 2.2 version was 
crawled in 2014 from the .hr domain, so it provides us with data about very recent 
Croatian language usage. It is the largest extant Croatian corpus, with 1.4 billion to-
kens. Adjectives entering the analysis were extracted from the corpus via the following 
CQL order:
[word=”među.*”] containing [tag=”A.*”]
The order searches for all words beginning with the sequence među and bearing 
the PoS mark “A”, i.e. adjective. After that, using the option Frequency – Lemma, all 
the obtained results were organized according to their frequency of appearance in the 
6 The Riznica corpus comprises the following: fundamental works of Croatian literature, popular 
works, scientific works and university manuals from different domains, elementary and high 
school manuals, translations by prominent Croatian translators, daily, weekly and monthly news-
papers available online, books from the pre-standard period of the Croatian language, see http://
riznica.ihjj.hr/dokumentacija/index.hr.html.
7 See http://filip.ffzg.hr/cgi-bin/run.cgi/corp_info?corpname=HNK_v30. The corpus consists of 
two components: 1) written contemporary Croatian texts, dating from 1990 onwards, and 2) the 
so-called text archive, comprising various genres published before or after 1990, such as classical 
Croatian authors, but also chatroom discussions, etc. (Tadić 2002: 443).
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39
corpus. For the purposes of this paper, only adjectives with freq ≥ 10, which enables 
the finding of both high- and lower frequency lexemes, were taken into consideration. 
The corpus data was checked manually in order to eliminate noise such as adjectives 
formed via other word-formation processes (e.g. međunarodno-pravni ‘related to inter-
national law’), typos (međusubni, međunardni), etc., leaving a final list of 134 adjec-
tives. This figure itself already suggest that adjectives formed with the prefix među- are 
fairly numerous in contemporary Croatian, and that the derivational pattern is a rather 
productive one. 
6 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
This section first presents the results of the lexicographic analysis, followed by corpus 
results.
6.1 Older Dictionaries 
6.1.1 Academy’s Dictionary
Table 1 presents the među- adjectives in the Academy’s Dictionary (1904–1910).
Table 1: Adjectives formed with među- in the Academy’s Dictionary (1904–1910).
Adjective Etymology (as specified by 
the Academy’s Dictionary)
Comment (from the 
Academy’s Dictionary)
1 međudnevički 
‘related to 
međudnevica’
Derived through suffixation 
from the noun međudnevica 
‘three-week period between 
the Assumption and the 
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin 
Mary’
In Vuk’s dictionary;
8
 in the 
work of M. Đ. Milićević
2 međunarodan
9
 
‘international’
formed after Latin 
internationalis ‘international’
recent word-formation
8 Srpski rječnik (Serbian Dictionary) (1818).
9 The adjective međunarodan ‘international’ appears with the–(a)n suffix in the Academy’s Dic-
tionary and Benešić’s dictionary, while in the VRH it appears as međunarodni, with the –ni 
suffix. An average Croatian speaker would not note any difference in meaning between these 
two adjectives. An average Croatian speaker with more linguistic knowledge would probably 
say that međunarodni is the definite form of the indefinite adjective međunarodan, with no other 
difference in meaning. Babić (2002: 451–456) has dedicated a whole chapter to the question of 
differentiating between the -(a)n and -ni suffixes, which proves in itself that the question is rather 
complex. These two suffixes present differences on both formal and semantic level. Put briefly, 
-(a)n is used to form descriptive adjectives (e.g. pametan ‘intelligent’), while -ni is used to form 
relational adjectives (e.g. autobusni ‘pertaining to buses’). Adjectives taking the -(a)n suffix have 
both indefinite and definite forms, can be compared and can have two types of declension (in-
definite and definite), while adjectives formed with –ni cannot be compared and only have the 
definite type of declension. 
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40
Adjective Etymology (as specified by 
the Academy’s Dictionary)
Comment (from the 
Academy’s Dictionary)
3 međusoban:
a) ‘internal, 
domestic’
b) ‘mutual, 
occurring 
between 
people’
-
a) only found in Daničić’s 
dictionary
10
 as a quote 
from a 14
th
 century 
document
b) appears in certain works 
written by J. Rajić, V. 
Karadžić, P. Petrović, M. 
Pavlinović and B. Bogišić
4 međusošan 
‘interfurcal’
formed after Latin interfurcalis 
or German gabelstandig 
‘forked’
only in Šulek’s DST
11
5 međustaničan 
‘intercellular’
formed after Latin 
intercellularis. e.g. 
međustanična tvar as 
equivalent for German 
Intercellularsubstanz 
‘intercellular matter’
only in Šulek’s DST
6 međusudan 
‘interjudicial’
equivalent of Latin 
interiudicialis ‘interjudicial’, a 
Church law term
only found in one writer’s 
work
7 međutiman 
‘temporary’
među- ‘between’ + tim ‘that’; 
e.g. Zwischenregierung – 
međutimna vlada ‘interim 
government’
a recent legal term
8 međuviličan 
‘intermaxillary’
equivalent of German 
Zwiscbenkieferknochen 
‘intermaxillary bone’
only in Šulek’s DST
9 međuzeman 
‘occurring 
between 
countries’
međuzemno more ‘sea between 
countries’ as equivalent of 
German Binnenmeer
only in Šulek’s DST
10 međuzemski 
SYN međuzeman 
‘intercountry’
equivalent of German 
Zwischenverkehr ‘intercountry 
traffic’
-
10 Rječnik iz književnih starina srpskih (Dictionary of Older Serbian Literature), 1863–1864.
11 Hrvatsko-njemačko-talijanski rječnik znanstvenoga nazivlja (Croatian-German-Italian Diction-
ary of Scientific Terminology) published by Bogoslav Šulek in 1874/1875. The Dictionary ofter 
provides French and English, as well as Latin and Greek equivalents. See http://ihjj.hr/iz-povijes-
ti/bogoslav-sulek/38/.
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41
When one observes the adjectives from Table 1, one immediately understands that, 
firstly, their number is rather limited, amounting to as few as ten adjectives altogether.
12
 
Secondly, and more importantly, almost all of the listed Croatian adjectives are claimed 
to be equivalents of Latin(ate) or German specialized terms, which means these are 
intentional calques created for the purposes of filling specific lexical gaps. Thirdly, and 
probably most importantly, five of the total of ten adjectives are hapax legomena, i.e. 
lexemes found in a single work, whether it be the opus of an uncited writer (međusudan 
‘interjudicial’) or, for the remaining four, terms coined by Bogoslav Šulek for the pur-
poses of compiling his previously mentioned DST. It needs to be emphasized that Šulek 
played a large role in the formation of several domains of Croatian scientific terminol-
ogy, which were a result of real needs for Croatian terms in specific scientific domains 
and also a way to resist Germanization and/or Hungarization (Samardžija 1997: 178).
A special comment should be made concerning the adjectives međudnevički ‘related 
to međudnevica (‘three-week period between the Assumption and the Nativity of the 
Blessed Virgin Mary’)’ and međusoban ‘mutual’. The first adjective is derived from the 
noun međudnevica as a result of suffixation, and thus the prefix među- was not directly 
involved in its formation ([međudnevica]
N
 + -čki ‘suffix’ > [međudnevički]
Adj
). In other 
words, the prefix među- is actually present in the adjective međudnevički as part of the 
noun from which the adjective was derived. 
The adjective međusoban ‘mutual’ is more interesting. According to the Academy’s 
Dictionary (1904–1910), at the beginning of the 20
th
 century, it had two possible mean-
ings: 1) ‘internal, domestic’ and 2) ‘mutual, occurring between people’. The first mean-
ing is claimed to be found only in Daničić’s dictionary (1863/64) as part of a quote 
from a 14
th
 century Serbian document, while the second appears in some works written 
by Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin authors (see footnote 12), who were mostly ac-
tive during the 19
th
 century. The first meaning is not recorded in the Croatian language 
today,
13
 and it was probably never part of it, according to the diachronic information 
from the Academy’s Dictionary (cf. Matasović et al. 2016: 600). The second mean-
ing of the adjective međusoban, ‘mutual’, is the only meaning the adjective has in 
contemporary Croatian. The adjective was formed according to the [Pref-Pron-Suff]
Adj
 
pattern, or more precisely according to the following formula: među- ‘inter-’ + sebe 
‘reflexive-possessive pronoun’ + -(a)n ‘suffix’ > međusoban. It is the only adjective in 
the Academy’s Dictionary (and in the analysed corpora, as will be said infra) that was 
formed from a pronoun. Thus, the word-formation pattern from which it resulted is an 
isolated one, and did not have further impact on the formation of Croatian adjectives.
12 One of the anonymous reviewers has asked why there are so few adjectives, and whether the 
reason lies in their predictability. We do not think that is a plausible answer, firstly, due to the fact 
that the Academy’s Dictionary is a very comprehensive one, and it would thus list as many pos-
sible lexemes as there are; and secondly, because the adjectives from Table 1 mostly belong to 
specialized languages, which points to the conclusion that među- adjectives were rare in general 
language.
13 Cf. http://hjp.znanje.hr/index.php?show=search_by_id&id=e1tjURM%3D&keyword=me%C4%9
1usoban. 
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42
It should also be added that the Academy’s Dictionary lists a number of među- pre-
fixed nouns
14
 (e.g. međubrđe ‘place between hills’ (< brdo ‘hill’); međuvođe ‘place be-
tween waters’ <voda ‘water’)), among which many toponyms (e.g. Međuhan ‘village in 
Serbia’; Međulići ‘village in Herzegovina’, etc.), thus it seems that in early 20
th
 century 
the među- prefix was used only as a noun-deriving prefix.
15
All of these facts point to the conclusion that, at the beginning of the 20
th
 century, a 
period when the Croatian standard was already formed, there existed very few adjectives 
formed with the prefix među-, and the extant ones were mostly scientific terms related 
to specific domains of specialized language, as well as hapax legomena. The only two 
adjectives used more frequently, according to the Academy’s Dictionary, which are not 
claimed to appear “only once” or “only with a certain author”, are međusoban ‘mutual’, 
which is also the only adjective formed according to the [Pref-Pron-Suff]
Adj
 pattern, and 
međunarodan ‘international’, formed as a result of prefix-suffix combination. The latter, 
however, is “a recent invention” (Budmani/Maretić 1904–1910: 579), which is another 
interesting insight important for future discussion, as it may lead to the conclusion that it 
was in the 19
th
 and early 20
th
 century that među- adjectives derived through prefix-suffix 
combination under foreign influence started to be formed and used. 
6.1.2 Benešić’s Dictionary
Table 2 presents the relevant adjectives from Benešić’s dictionary (1957).
Table 2: Adjectives formed with među- in Benešić’s dictionary (1957).
Adjective
1 međunarodan ‘international’
2 međusatni ‘between two (school) classes’
3 međuzvjezdani ‘interstellar’
14 A number of these nouns are claimed to be calques of mostly German terms (Budmani/Maretić 
1904–1910: 581).
15 A quick search of all words beginning with the sequence među in the Klasici subcorpus of HNK, 
which comprises the greatest classical works of the Croatian literature, gives the following results: 
među
Prep
 ‘between’ 1,926 occurrences, međutim
Adv
 ‘however’ 277 occurrences, međusoban
Adj
 ‘mu-
tual’ 60 occurrences, međuto
Adv
 ‘in the meantime’ 7 occurrences, međunarodan
Adj
 ‘international’ 
3 occurrences, međumurski
Adj
 ‘pertaining to Međumurje, the region between the rivers of Drava 
and Mura’ 2 occurrences, older version of today’s adjective međimurski with the same meaning, 
međuvrijeme
N
 ‘meantime’ 1 occurrence, međuakt
N
 ‘entr’acte’ 1 occurrence, međumurec
N
 ‘type of 
cheese from the region of Međimurje’ 1 occurrence. These corpus results show that in older lay-
ers of the Croatian language, the prefix među- was mostly used to form nouns, except for the two 
already mentioned adjectives međunarodan
 
and
 
međusoban, as attested also by the earlier quoted 
Academy’s Dictionary. The third adjective appearing in the Klasici subcorpus, međumurski, is 
derived through suffixation from the toponym Međumurje, so među- did not participate directly 
in its formation.
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43
As Table 2 demonstrates, Benešić’s dictionary (1957) lists only three među- adjec-
tives. This fact points to the conclusions that, firstly, over the period from the start of 
the 20
th
 century, i.e. the years when the volume containing među- adjectives of the 
Academy’s dictionary was published, until the mid-20
th
 century, when Benešić finished 
compiling his own dictionary, the pattern [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 had not yet become a pro-
ductive one. Secondly, this might have to do with the fact that Benešić’s dictionary is 
a dictionary of the Croatian literary language, and as such is based on literary sources 
only, while the observed pattern might already have become more productive in other 
language areas, such as the press and specialized terminology. 
6.2 A More Recent Dictionary – VRH (2015)
A more recent dictionary, VRH, lists the following među- adjectives.
Table 3: List of među- prefixed adjectives in the VRH dictionary (2015: 720–721)
Adjective
1 međučeljustan ‘intermaxillary’
2 međudisciplinaran ‘interdisciplinary’
3 međudržavni ‘interstate’
4 međufakultetski ‘occurring between faculties’
5 međugalaktički ‘intergalactic’
6 međuglasni ‘intervocalic’
7 međugradski ‘intercity’ (‘inter-city’)
8 međukatni ‘occurring between two or more floors (of a building)’
9 međuljudski ‘occurring between two or more people’
10 međumišićni ‘intermuscular’
11 međumjesni ‘occurring between two or more places’
12 međunarodni ‘international’
13 međuopćinski ‘occurring between two or more municipalities’
14 međuovisan ‘interdependent’
15 međuparlamentaran ‘interparliamentary’
16 međuplanetaran ‘interplanetary’
17 međurasni ‘interracial’
18 međuratni ‘interwar’ (‘inter-war’)
19 međurebreni ‘intercostal’
20 međuregionalni ‘interregional’
21 međurepublički ‘occurring between two or more republics’
22 međuriječni ‘occurring between two or more rivers’
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44
Adjective
23 međusamoglasnički ‘intervocalic’
24 međusaveznički ‘occurring between two or more allies’
25 međusoban ‘mutual’
26 međuspolan ‘intersexual’
27 međustaničan ‘intercellular’
28 međustranački ‘interparty’ (‘inter-party’)
29 međuvilični ‘intermaxillary’
30 međuvjerski ‘interfaith’
16
31 međuvladin ‘intergovernmental’
32 međuvremen ‘occurring between two or more periods of time’
33 međuzavisan ‘interdependent’
34 međuzglobni ‘occurring between joints’
35 međuzubni ‘interdental’
36 međuzvjezdan ‘interstellar’
37 međužupanijski ‘occurring between two or more counties’
As Table 3 shows, in the VRH dictionary there are 37 među- adjectives, most of which 
also figure among the ones found in the corpora (see infra). However, among them there 
are also several adjectives absent from our corpus analysis (međusamoglasnički ‘intervo-
calic’, međumišićni ‘intermuscular’, međuriječni ‘occurring between rivers’, međuzglobni 
‘occurring between joints’). Upon verification, it was noticed that these four adjectives do 
not appear in the Riznica corpus at all, and that they appear with a frequency below 10 in 
the hrWaC corpus. It is therefore interesting that they were chosen to be included in the 
VRH dictionary while some higher-frequency među- adjectives were not.
17
The 37 adjectives listed in the VRH (2015) demonstrate the following: firstly, 37 adjec -
tives are much more than what can be found in the earlier Academy’s (1904–1910) and 
Benešić’s dictionary (1957), which testifies itself to the fact that the pattern [ među-N-Suff]
Adj
 
has become more productive in Croatian in the recent decades. Secondly, it must also be 
noted that the dictionary does probably not list all the possible adjectives derived on the 
basis of that pattern due to the fact that it is a rather predictable and semantically transpar -
ent adjective forming process which can virtually use any noun to form a među- adjective.
16 One of the anonymous reviewers has enquired about whether the adjective interfaith (e.g. https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interfaith) is actually interreligious (cf. https://www.mer-
riam-webster.com/dictionary/interreligious). In Croatian, međuvjerski ‘interfaith’ is derived from 
the noun vjera ‘faith’, which usually refers to Christianity, while međureligijski ‘interreligious’ is 
derived from religija ‘religion’, which refers more generally to any belief system. Both English 
adjectives are listed in Merriam Webster’s dictionary, so we believe they should be distinguished.
17 This is peculiar if one knows that the VRH dictionary claims to be based, among other sources, 
on three digital corpora: Riznica, HNK and hrWaC (version 2.0).
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45
6.3 Corpora Analysis: Riznica, HNK and hrWaC
6.3.1 Riznica 
In the Riznica corpus, only two adjectives appear in the earliest period covered (be-
tween late 19
th
 and early 20
th
 century): međunarodan ‘international’ and međusoban 
‘mutual’. After that, for a long period going all the way to 1962, these two adjectives 
remain the only ones formed with the prefix među- which appear in the corpus, along-
side several među- prefixed nouns such as međuvrijeme ‘meantime’.
The situation starts to change from the 1970s onwards, when two more adjectives 
appear: međunacionalni ‘occurring between nations’ (1971) and međuratni ‘interwar’ 
(1972). After that, the number of među- prefixed adjectives really starts to become 
much larger from the 2000s, with examples such as the following: međuljudski ‘inter-
human’, međeukonfesionalni ‘interconfessional’, međugeneracijski ‘intergenerational’, 
međudržavni ‘interstate’, međuzvjezdani ‘interstellar’, međuplanetarni ‘interplane-
tary’, međuledeni ‘interglacial’, međustanični ‘intercellular’, međuparlamentarni ‘in-
terparliamentary’, međurepublički ‘interrepublican’, međuvladin ‘intergovernmental’, 
međuetnički ‘interethnic’, međustranački ‘interparty’,
18
 etc. 
These facts can be said to quite convincingly prove that during the whole 20
th
 cen-
tury među-adjectives were rather rare in Croatian, with only međusoban ‘mutual’ and 
međunarodan ‘international’ being in use, and that it was only from the 1970s onwards 
that the pattern started forming a larger number of među- adjectives. 
This idea leads to the question what reasons there are for the među- prefixed adjec-
tives to have become rather frequent in the late 20
th
 century. Some answers are provided 
in the following sections.
6.3.2 The HNK Corpus
Table 4: Među- adjectives retrieved from HNK
Adjective Frequency Per million 
frequency
1 međubankarski
‘interbank’ (‘inter-bank’)
91 0.42
2 međubankovni
19
‘interbank’ (‘inter-bank’)
5 0.02
18 Some of the English equivalents of the Croatian adjectives have a prefix-suffix structure (e.g. in-
terplanetary, interparliamentary, intergovernmental, etc.), while others do not contain any suffix at 
all (e.g. interstate, intercity, interparty etc.). One of the reasons for this latter fact is that in English, 
adjectives can be formed through conversion from nouns, which is impossible in Croatian (cf. Babić 
2002: 51–52). For a critical review of the so-called noun-to-adjective conversion, which some au-
thors only consider as a specific attributive function of nouns, see Balteiro (2007: 45 and further). 
19 The two adjectives međubankarski and međubankovni are synonyms, which differ only with 
respect to the suffix they are formed with (-ovni and -arski, respectively), and frequency of use.
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46
Adjective Frequency Per million 
frequency
3 međučeljusni
‘intermaxillary’
13 0.06
4 međudržavni
‘interstate’
2,418 11.15
5 međuentitetski
‘occurring between two or more entities’
37 0.17
6 međuetažni
‘occurring between two or more floors (in a 
building)’
12 0.06
7 međuetnički
‘interethnic’
64 0.30
8 međufazni
‘interphase’
10 0.05
9 međugeneracijski
‘intergenerational’ 
(‘inter-generational’)
2,144 9.89
10 međugodišnji
‘interannual’ (‘inter-annual’)
17 0.08
11 međugradski
‘intercity’ (‘inter-city’)
217 1.00
12 međugraničan
‘occurring between borders’
41 0.19
13 međuinstitucionalan
‘interinstitutional’ (‘inter-institutional’)
104 0.48
14 međukatni
‘occurring between floors (in a building)’
29 0.13
15 međuklupski
‘interclub’ (‘inter-club’)
12 0.06
16 međukolodvorski
‘occurring between (bus, train etc.) stations’
18 0.08
17 međukontinentalan
‘intercontinental’
29 0.13
18 međukorejski
‘occurring between the two Koreas’
25 0.12
19 međukrojni 
‘occurring between two markers’
12 0.06
20 međulaboratorijski
‘interlaboratory’
185 0.85
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47
Adjective Frequency Per million 
frequency
21 međuljudski
‘interhuman’
597 2.75
22 međuljušturni ‘(of molluscs) intervalvular’ 46 0.21
23 međuministarski
‘interministerial’
41 0.19
24 međumjesan
‘occurring between two or more places’
541 2.50
25 međunacionalan
‘occurring between two or more nations’
483 2.23
26 međunarodni
‘international’
107,864 497.50
27 međuobalni
‘occurring between shores’
10 0.05
28 međuobrtnički
‘occurring between craftsmen’
53 0.24
29 međuosovinski
‘interaxial’
17 0.08
30 međupalestinski
‘inter-Palestinian’ 
27 0.12
31 međuparlamentaran
‘interparliamentary’
137 0.63
32 međupopisni
‘intercensal’ 
19 0.09
33 međuratni
‘interwar’ (‘interwar’)
142 0.65
34 međuregionalni
‘interregional’ (‘inter-regional’)
90 0.42
35 međureligijski
‘interreligious’ (‘inter-religious’)
204 0.94
36 međurepublički
‘occurring between two or more republics’
45 0.21
37 međuresorni ‘occurring between two or more 
departments’
85 0.39
38 međuresorski ‘occurring between two or more 
departments’
319 1.47
39 međusatelitski
‘occurring between two or more satellites’
11 0.05
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48
Adjective Frequency Per million 
frequency
40 međusektorski
‘occurring between two or more sectors’
12 0.06
41 međusoban
‘mutual’
20,277 93.52
42 međuspojni
‘occurring between links’
12 0.06
43 međustranački
‘interparty’ (‘inter-party’)
510 2.35
44 međususjedski
’occurring between neighbours’
50 0.23
45 međuvalutni
‘occurring between two or more currencies’
15 0.07
46 međuvjerski
‘interfaith’
91 0.42
47 međuvladin
‘intergovernmental’
65 0.30
48 međuvlasnički
‘occurring between two or more owners’
22 0.10
49 međuzrnski
‘intergranular’
19 0.09
50 međužupanijski
‘occurring between two or more counties’
332 1.53
51 međuzvjezdan
‘interstellar’
29 0.13
As Table 4 demonstrates, in the HNK corpus there are 51 među- adjectives with a 
frequency of 10 or more occurrences. That is quite a large number of adjectives formed 
mostly according to the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern, which proves that the pattern became 
more productive starting from the 1990s. While some of the adjectives from Table 
4 belong to specialized languages (e.g. međuljušturni ‘(of molluscs) intervalvular’; 
međuzrnski ‘intergranular’; međuzvjezdani ‘interstellar’, etc.), a large number belong to 
general language. If these adjectives have been found in the national corpus, that points 
to the conclusion that adjectives formed according to the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern have 
been quite widespread in various genres of standard Croatian since the 1990s. 
Finally, the hrWaC corpus shall be analysed as the largest extant corpus of the 
Croatian language. It will be interesting to compare the među- adjectives appearing in 
hrWaC, as a large web corpus, with those appearing in the national corpus, due to the 
different text types they include. 
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49
6.3.3 hrWaC
Considering the fact that hrWaC is the largest corpus that registers the most recent 
use of the Croatian language, its inclusion in the analysis presented in this paper was 
important for learning about the current use of adjectives formed with među-. What the 
corpus data shows is that 134 adjectives with the prefix među- and a frequency of 10+ 
occurrences are registered in hrWaC. 134 is a lot more than only two adjectives in the 
first half of the 20
th
 century, and much more than just several more around the 1970s. 
This means that the derivational pattern [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 has become more productive 
with time, culminating in recent years.
Below is a list of the 50 most frequent adjectives retrieved from hrWaC.
Table 5: The 50 most frequent među- adjectives retrieved from hrWaC.
Adjective Frequency Per million 
frequency
1 međunarodni ‘international’ 222,469 214.80
2 međusoban ‘mutual’ 48,796 36.62
3 međuljudski ‘interhuman’ 6,837 5.15
4 međudržavni ‘interstate’ 4,539 3.25
5 međugeneracijski ‘intergenerational’ 4,384 3.14
6 međuosovinski ‘interaxial’ 2,716 1.94
7 međužupanijski ‘occurring between two or more 
counties’
2,076 1.49
8 međunacionalni ‘occurring between two or more 
nations’
1,747 1.25
9 međuvladin ‘intergovernmental’ 1,508 1.08
10 međureligijski ‘interreligious’ 1,235 0.88
11 međustranački ‘interparty’ 1,030 0.74
12 međugradski ‘intercity’ 1,019 0.73
13 međuetnički ‘interethnic’ 697 0.50
14 međuratni ‘interwar’ 687 0.49
15 međusektorski ‘occurring between two or more 
sectors’
671 0.48
16 međuzvjezdan ‘interstellar’ 603 0.43
17 međubankarski ‘interbank’ 576 0.41
18 međuvlasnički ‘occurring between two or more 
owners’
556 0.40
19 međuregionalan ‘interregional’ 555 0.40
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50
Adjective Frequency Per million 
frequency
20 međuopćinski ‘occurring between two or more 
municipalities’
520 0.37
21 međuresorni ‘occurring between two or more 
departments’
483 0.35
22 međukulturalni ‘intercultural’ 457 0.33
23 međukatni ‘occurring between two or more floors 
(in a building)’
406 0.29
24 međuvjerski ‘interfaith’ 391 0.28
25 međustanični ‘intercellular’ 374 0.27
26 međugodišnji ‘interannual’ 348 0.25
27 međumjesni ‘occurring between two or more 
communities’
318 0.23
28 međukulturni ‘intercultural’ 297 0.21
29 međuplanetarni ‘interplanetary’ 295 0.21
30 međuknjižnični ‘occurring between two or more 
libraries’
295 0.21
31 međuovisan ‘mutually dependent’ 241 0.17
32 međuinstitucionalan ‘interinstitutional’ 222 0.16
33 međurepublički ‘occurring between two or more 
republics’
217 0.16
34 međugranični ‘occurring between two or more 
borders’
215 0.15
35 međuresorski ‘occurring between two or more 
departments’
208 0.15
36 međususjedski ‘occurring between two or more 
neighbours’
198 0.14
37 međurasni ‘interracial’ 198 0.14
38 međubankovni ‘interbank’ 195 0.14
39 međuparlamentaran ‘interparliamentary’ 193 0.14
40 međuškolski ‘occurring between two or more 
schools’
182 0.13
41 međuzubni ‘interdental’ 150 0.11
42 međulaboratorijski ‘occurring between two or 
more laboratories’
159 0.11
43 međuvršnjački ‘occurring between peers’ 134 0.10
44 međugalaktički ‘intergalactic’ 133 0.10
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51
Adjective Frequency Per million 
frequency
45 međuredni ‘occurring between two or more lines’ 131 0.09
46 međupredmetni ‘occurring between two or more 
subjects’
123 0.09
47 međunožni ‘occurring between legs’ 115 0.08
48 međuentitetski ‘occurring between two or more 
entities’
113 0.08
49 međuklupski ‘interclub’ (‘inter-club’) 107 0.08
50 međurebreni ‘intercostal’ 94 0.07
The 134 među- adjectives extracted from the hrWaC corpus is by far the largest 
number of adjectives appearing in any of the aforementioned sources. Such an out-
come was expected, firstly, because hrWaC is the largest extant Croatian corpus. Sec-
ondly, given the fact that hrWaC is a web corpus, which also collects data from specific 
sources such as chat rooms and blogs, we have expected to find a certain portion of 
less standard or more colloquial terms, e.g. međunožni ‘occurring between legs’, but 
also more specific terms such as međuroditeljski ‘interparental’, which seems to appear 
in a single weekly newspaper; or međuizborni ‘occurring between elections’, which is 
used exclusively in political discourse. It should also be emphasized that some of the 
adjectives retrieved from hrWaC belong to highly specialized terminologies, such as 
međuzrnski ‘intergranular’, međubiskupijski ‘interdiocesan’ or međukralježnički ‘inter-
spinal’, which one would not expect to find in general language dictionaries such as the 
VRH, but rather in specialized dictionaries or glossaries.
It can generally be said that the 134 adjectives retrieved from hrWaC point to the 
conclusion that među- adjectives, a majority of which were formed according to the 
[među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern, have recently become quite numerous in Croatian. The fact 
also implies that the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern continues to produce new forms, some of 
which have not been listed in lexicographic works yet. It would be interesting to ana-
lyse među- adjectives below the 10 occurrences threshold to see what happens at that 
end of the frequency scale, how many adjectives there are and what characteristics they 
have. It can be assumed that there would be more new adjectives that have not been 
listed in dictionaries yet due to the fact that the pattern seems to be quite productive.
The adjectives extracted from hrWaC shall now be analysed first morphologically, 
or from a purely word-formation point of view, and then semantically.
6.4 Morphological Analysis
From a morphological point of view, the adjectives retrieved from hrWaC are a result of:
1) prefix-suffix formation according to the formulas [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 and [među-
Pron-Suff]
Adj
2) prefixation according to the formula [među-Adj]
Adj 
.
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52
A great majority of adjectives belong to the first group. They are a result of the si-
multaneous addition of the prefix među- and a suffix to a nominal base (cf. Babić 2002: 
445). Thirteen suffixes participated in their formation, as listed in the table below.
Table 6: Suffixes involved in the prefix-suffix formation of adjectives retrieved from hrWaC.
Suffix Adjective example No. %
1 -ni međunarodni ‘international’ 49 36.6
2 -ski međugeneracijski ‘intergenerational’ 48 35.8
3 -čki međustranački ‘interparty’ 10 7.5
4 -en međuvremen ‘occurring between two or more periods of 
time’
6 4.5
5 -ionalan međunacionalan ‘occurring between two or more nations’ 6 4.5
6 -aran međuparlamentaran ‘interparliamentary’ 3 2.2
7 -(a)n međuzvjezdan ‘interstellar’ 3 2.2
8 -ovni međubankovni ‘interbank’ 2 1.5
9 -enski međuplemenski ‘intertribal’ 2 1.5
10 -alan međukontinentalan ‘intercontinental’ 2 1.5
11 -šnji međugodišnji ‘interannual’ 1 0.7
12 -in međuvladin ‘intergovernmental’ 1 0.7
13 -ovski međužanrovski ‘occurring between two or more genres’ 1 0.7
Total 134 100%
Table 6 demonstrates that the two most frequent suffixes, which account for the for-
mation of more than 72% percent of all adjectives, are -ni and -ski. This fact is conso-
nant with details related to the prefix-suffix formation of relational adjectives provided 
by Babić (2002: 444). Babić (2002: 398) describes the -ski suffix as “one of the most 
productive adjectival suffixes”, and -ni as “very productive” (2002: 421). With respect 
to the use of the -ski and -ni suffixes in the formation of adjectives, which is a highly 
complex question dependent on both formal (phonological) and semantic criteria, the 
following can be said briefly (cf. Babić 2002: 428–434): 
1) all adjectives derived from proper nouns are formed with -ski, never with -ni;
2) adjectives derived from common nouns related to living beings (humans, ani-
mals and plants) are rarely formed with -ni;
3) both -ni and -ski are used to form adjectives from common nouns related to 
non-living entities (both concrete and abstract), and their distribution depends 
mostly on phonological context,
20
20 For instance, adjectives from nouns ending in -ij are formed with -ski: e.g. natrij ‘natrium’ > 
natrijski ‘related to natrium’; laboratorij ‘laboratory’ > laboratorijski ‘related to laboratory’, etc. 
(Babić 2002: 429). The -ni suffix is used, for example, with bases ending in –st or –št: e.g. čeljust 
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53
4) a number of adjectives have dual forms with -ni and -ski, but with different 
frequency of use, some of which are also non-standard.
The only adjective formed according to the [među-Pron-Suff]
Adj 
pattern, i.e. from a 
pronominal base, is međusoban ‘mutual’, which is also the only descriptive adjective 
formed with među- through prefix-suffix combination, according to Babić (2002: 461). 
With respect to the second group of adjectives, formed through prefixation ac-
cording to the formula [među-Adj]
Adj, 
only the following three adjectives exemplify it: 
međuzavisan ‘interdependent’, međuovisan ‘interdependent’
21
 and međupovezan ‘inter-
connected’. They are formed via the addition of the prefix među- to a base without the 
participation of a suffix. These three adjectives account for only 2.2% of all the među- 
prefixed adjectives in the corpus.
6.5 Semantic Analysis
Without entering into details, one can observe that the prefix među- connects with nom-
inal bases from various semantic domains to form adjectives, resulting in terms related 
to administration (e.g. međuopćinski ‘occurring between municipalities’), traffic (e.g. 
međukontinentalan ‘intercontinental’), zoology (e.g. međutelidbeni ‘(of cows) inter-
calving’), finance (e.g. međuvalutni ‘intercurrency’), astronomy (e.g. međugalaktički 
‘intergalactic’), politics (e.g. međustranački ‘interparty’), religion (međureligijski ‘in-
terreligious’), etc. 
What interests us more here is prefixal meanings. The prefix među- realizes two 
types of meanings in the analysed adjectives: concrete and abstract. Its concrete mean-
ing is ‘located between two or more (concrete) entities’ (e.g. međustaklen ‘between two 
glass surfaces’). This is the core or prototype (e.g. Lakoff 1987) meaning that refers to 
the concrete spatial position of concrete objects.
The abstract meanings of the prefix među- in the analysed adjectives are the 
following: 
a) ‘between two or more abstract entities’ (e.g. međugeneracijska solidarnost ‘inter-
generational solidarity’), and 
b) ‘between two or more periods of time’ (e.g. međutelidbeno razdoblje ‘intercalv-
ing period’). 
The semantic network that the prefix među- realizes with adjectives can thus be il-
lustrated by the following image.
‘jaw’ > čeljusni ‘related to jaw’; kazalište ‘theatre’ > kazališni ‘related to theatre’, etc. (Babić 
2002: 430). 
21 The adjectives međuzavisan and međuovisan are near-synonyms and can be used interchange-
ably in most contexts. Cf. http://hjp.znanje.hr/index.php?show=search_by_id&id=e1tjUBQ%3D
&keyword=me%C4%91uzavisan.
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54
‘located physically 
between two or more 
concrete objects’
međuzubni
‘interdental’
‘between two or more 
periods of time’
međuratni
‘interwar’
‘between two or more 
abstract entities’
međuvjerski
‘interfaith’
Figure 1: Semantic network of the prefix među- in the analysed adjectives.
The abstract meaning ‘between two abstract entities’ relies upon the abstract is con -
crete metaphor (e.g. Lakoff 1987) on the basis of which we conceptualize more abstract 
entities through more concrete ones. In examples such as međuvjerski dijalog ‘interfaith 
dialogue’ or međukulturno razumijevanje ‘intercultural understanding’, for instance, we 
perceive abstract phenomena such as dialogue and understanding taking place between 
faiths or cultures as phenomena occurring between two concrete things, thus we express 
them with the same preposition (među ‘between’) or prepositional prefix među- ‘inter-’.
The concrete meaning ‘located physically between two or more concrete objects’ is 
metaphorically extended into the meaning ‘between two periods in time’ on the basis 
of the frequent time is space metaphor (e.g. Kövecses 2010). This metaphor enables 
human beings to conceptualize time phenomena on the basis of concrete, spatial phe-
nomena of which they have better understanding. Thus, in examples from hrWaC such 
as međusezonska kolekcija ‘interseasonal (clothing or shoes) collection’ what happens 
between two periods of time, i.e. two seasons, is conceptualized as being physically 
located between two concrete objects.
In the conclusion to this part, it must be emphasized that the prefix među- is a poly-
semous affix which, when attached to adjectives, realizes three related meanings, both 
concrete and abstract, the latter of which are based on metaphor. The semantic network 
of the prefix među- in the analysed adjectives demonstrates that it behaves much like 
other lexical categories such as nouns and verbs, construing a radial structure with the 
prototypical sense as the centre of its semantic network (cf. Tyler and Evans 2003: 31). 
The semantic level of the formation of the analysed adjectives was insisted upon owing 
to the fact that, according to our understanding, all complex words are motivated both 
grammatically (or morphologically) and semantically, i.e. that derivational processes 
cannot be separated from the semantic ones (cf. Booij 2005; Raffaelli 2013).
22
 
22 For a different view on word-formation, see Aronoff (1976) and Scalise (1984) among others.
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55
The semantic network of this particular prefix is just an example of the complex 
relations that exist between word-formation processes and meanings that are created 
during the derivation of new complex lexemes. Therefore, some authors (e.g. Raffaelli 
2018: 153) emphasize that one of the major future tasks of word-formation as a linguis-
tic subdiscipline is to systematically study the semantic processes which accompany 
the formation of complex words. 
7 CONCLUDING REMARKS
This paper explores Croatian adjectives formed with the prefix među-. While adjectives 
derived according to the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern are fairly numerous in contemporary 
Croatian, according to Babić (2002), the author of the most comprehensive manual of 
Croatian word-formation, as well as lexicographic sources (the Academy’s Dictionary, 
Benešić’s dictionary and the VRH) and large digital corpora (hrWaC and HNK), from 
a diachronic point of view that was not the case as recently as only a hundred years ago. 
More precisely, both an analysis of older lexicographic works (the Academy’s Diction-
ary and Benešić’s dictionary), as well as of digital corpora covering older texts (Riznica 
and HNK) have showed that in early 20
th
 century među- prefixed adjectives were very 
rare. Moreover, the Academy’s Dictionary (1904–1910) specifies that almost all such 
adjectives were hapaxes and calques made according to Latin(ate) or German models. 
In mid-20
th
 century, the situation was rather similar according to both dictionaries and 
corpora, and adjectives formed with među- only seem to have become more numerous 
later in the 20
th
 century. The question is, obviously, why. 
The Academy’s Dictionary’s explicit claim that all adjectives formed with među- 
but one, međusoban ‘mutual’, are hapaxes and equivalents of foreign terms is a very 
important one, because it points to a temporarily conclusion that these are not native 
Croatian formations. It must be added immediately, however, that there were a number 
of nouns in the same period that were formed with među-. In other words, it seems 
that među- used to be an exclusively noun-forming prefix, which was impossible to be 
used with adjectives before the 19
th
 century. When it comes to the adjective međusoban 
‘mutual’, it was demonstrated that it was used with two meanings, the first of which, 
‘domestic’, appears in a single 14
th
 century Serbian document, and the second of which, 
‘mutual’, which is the meaning it still has in contemporary Croatian, has been reg-
istered in texts of Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian authors mostly from the 19
th
 
century. In other words, even the adjective međusoban ‘mutual’, as an isolated deriva-
tion resulting from a prefix-suffix combination with a pronominal base (i.e. from the 
reflexive-possessive pronoun se(be)), is a creation dating back to the 19
th
 century, as the 
rest of među- prefixed adjectives.
Apart from the case of the adjective međusoban ‘mutual’, the influence of foreign 
languages seems to be a key element contributing to the possibility of adjective formation 
with the prefix među-. While Latin inter- ‘between’ was the earliest language source of 
Croatian među- prefixed adjective calques, followed by few German words formed with 
zwischen- ‘inter-’, neither of these languages seemed to provide a large number of new 
adjectives in Croatian. It was only in late 20
th
 century, which coincided with the advent 
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56
of English predominance and the spread of its influence on Croatian (Filipović 1990; 
Muhvić Dimanovski 1992: 94; Samardžija 2002: 72), that the Croatian language saw a 
large number of new među- prefixed adjectives. It is therefore arguably under English 
influence that numerous adjectives with među- were formed and then spread in Croa-
tian from mid-20
th
 century onwards, reinforcing the derivational pattern [među-N-Suff]
Adj 
which had already existed in the language as a result of early Latin(ate) and German 
calques. The Etymological Dictionary of the Croatian Language (Matasović et al. 2016)
23
 
also hints at this. Moreover, Ranko Matasović (p. c.),
24
 one of the leading experts on the 
history of the Croatian language and Slavonic languages in general, considers that the 
pattern has recently become productive in Croatian, and that several decades ago most of 
među- adjectives could have been formed as calques of English adjectives. 
A subsequent question would be whether this particular derivational pattern came 
to be through indirect or direct English influence (cf. Seifart 2015). While the question 
cannot be answered with certainty, it was probably a case of direct borrowing, or direct 
calque, as English has been a rather widespread language among Croatian speakers, 
and the most spoken foreign one, in the last decades. More precisely, due to increas-
ingly intensive contacts with English inter- prefixed adjectives, Croatian speakers have 
probably started to calque them in the domains they needed them to fill in lexical gaps, 
using the Croatian prefix među- coupled with Croatian nominal bases and a suffix.
At some point in time, the derivational pattern [među-N-Suff]
Adj 
could probably 
have become as “natural”
 
as any other adjective-deriving native Croatian pattern. If this 
scenario were correct, it would not be a case of the introduction of a new element in the 
Croatian language, but of a reinforcement of an existing prefix (među-) in a new “sur-
rounding”, i.e. with adjectival bases, because the prefix had been used to form complex 
nouns in the 19
th
 century and even earlier (for instance in a number of toponyms).
The analysis of complex među- prefixed adjectives presented in this paper demon-
strates that the adjective-forming pattern [među-N-Suff]
Adj
, which has entered the Croa-
tian language as a result of loan translation of Latin(ate) and German terms, and was 
subsequently probably reinforced through the calquing of English inter- adjectives, is 
a productive word-formation pattern in contemporary Croatian. More precisely, today 
it accounts for a number of adjectives belonging to semantically various domains, ac-
cording to Croatian word-formation manuals and recent lexicographic works. Moreo-
ver, it continues to produce new adjectives, as attested by large web corpora. Not only 
do these insights illustrate the complex influences foreign languages (such as Latin, 
German and English) have had on the Croatian word-formation and lexicon, but they 
also make a contribution, however modest, to the study of morphological borrowing as 
a phenomenon in general.
23 The dictionary lists only three među- adjectives: međunarodni ‘interational’, which it claims to be 
a calque of English and French international, međusoban ‘mutual’, derived from među ‘between’ 
and se ‘oneself’, and međugradski ‘inter-city’, for which it claims that it was formed after the 
English adjective inter-city (Matasović et al. 2016: 600).
24 I would hereby like to thank Ranko Matasović, fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 
for having kindly shared his helpful insights regarding the question addressed in this paper.
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57
Primary sources
Hrvatski jezični portal (Croatian Language Portal). August 2020. http://hjp.znanje.hr/
HNK (Croatian National Corpus). August 2020. http://filip.ffzg.hr/cgi-bin/run.cgi/
first_form?corpname=HNK_v30;align=
hrWaC Croatian web corpus. August 2020. http://nlp.ffzg.hr/resources/corpora/hrwac/
Riznica corpus. August 2020. http://riznica.ihjj.hr/
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Abstract
DEVELOPMENT OF A PRODUCTIVE DERIV ATIONAL PATTERN  
ON THE BASIS OF LOAN TRANSLATION?
THE CASE OF CROATIAN ADJECTIVES FORMED WITH THE PREFIX MEĐU-
This paper deals with the question of the formation of Croatian adjectives with the 
prefix među-. While such adjectives were very rare in late 19
th
 and early 20
th
 century, 
an analysis of relevant lexicographic works and digital corpora demonstrated that their 
number started to become larger in later 20
th
 century, culminating in recent decades. 
Today, the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 derivational pattern is a productive, accounting for 134 
adjectives with a frequency of ten occurrences or more retrieved from the largest extant 
Croatian web corpus, hrWaC. On the basis of an analysis of available older lexico-
graphic works and digital corpora, it can be concluded that među- prefixed adjectives 
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60
first entered into Croatian as loan translations (calques) of Latin(ate) and German 
terms. According to more recent lexicographic works and digital corpora, later on, and 
especially in recent decades, which coincided with a growing English influence on Cro-
atian, među- prefixed adjectives were probably produced as equivalents of English in-
ter- prefixed adjectives. The number of među- prefixed adjectives, as well as the variety 
of semantic domains in which they are used, testify to the fact that the [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 pattern is well-established and productive in contemporary Croatian. The analysis 
of Croatian među- prefixed adjectives in this paper could contribute to shedding more 
light on the question of morphological borrowing phenomena in general.
Keywords: derivational pattern, adjective formation, loan translation (calque), Croa-
tian, language contact
Povzetek 
RAZVOJ PRODUKTIVNEGA DERIV ACIJSKEGA VZORCA NA PODLAGI  
IZPOSOJENK? PRIMER HRV AŠKIH PRIDEVNIKOV, IZPELJANIH S 
PREDPONO MEĐU-
Prispevek obravnava izpeljavo hrvaških pridevnikov s predpono među-. Medtem 
ko so bili takšni pridevniki v 19. in 20. stoletju redki, razčlemba sodobnih leksikograf-
skih virov in digitalnih korpusov pokaže, da se je njihovo število začelo povečevati v 
poznem 20. stoletju, sploh pa v zadnjih desetletjih. Danes je torej derivacijski vzorec 
[među-N-Suff]
Adj
 v hrvaščini produktiven, saj v trenutno največjem hrvaškem spletnem 
korpusu hrWaC najdemo 134 takšnih pridevnikov s pogostnostjo nad 10. Razčlemba 
starejših leksikografskih virov in digitalnih korpusov pokaže, da so se pridevniki s 
predpono među- v hrvaščini najprej pojavili kot izposojenke (kalki) latinskih in nem-
ških izrazov. V novejših leksikografskih virih in digitalnih korpusih pa so se kasneje, 
sploh v zadnjih desetletjih, ko se povečuje vpliv angleščine na hrvaščino, pridevniki z 
među- verjetno pojavili kot ustreznice angleških pridevnikov s predpono inter-. Število 
pridevnikov s predpono među- in različna pomenska polja, kjer se uporabljajo, pričajo 
o dejstvu, da je vzorec [među-N-Suff]
Adj
 v sodobni hrvaščini ustaljen in produktiven. 
Pričujoča analiza hrvaških pridevnikov s predpono među- prispeva tudi k razumevanju 
morfološkega izposojanja na splošno.
Ključne besede: derivacijski vzorec, izpeljava pridevnikov, izposojenke (kalki), hrva-
ščina, jezikovni stik
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