# Bulgarian: „Прекарали (са) четири часа в магазина!



## Psi-Lord

I was going to use a thread on the renarrative mood I found, but I was afraid it’d stray off topic, and so decided to open a new one.

The very first time I used the renarrative mood, I was writing a short paragraph on what my mother and my wife had done on a particular Saturday. I’d stayed home, and so a Bulgarian friend told me it’d fit perfectly, since I could write about what I actually heard from them about their activities. One of the sentences was along the lines of:

„Прекарали _четири_ часа в магазина!“

(The two of them had gone shopping, by the way.)

A Bulgarian friend told me that looked perfect, but another Bulgarian friend disagreed and said she felt something was missing, and that it should be

„Прекарали *са* _четири_ часа в магазина!“

instead. I didn’t understand why, because I’d read in many places that, in the renarrative mood, the auxiliary verb isn’t used in the 3rd persons (so that it looks like e.g. a Russian past form).

Not long afterwards, I was writing a paragraph on Brazilian History (the same I mentioned in another post) and wrote:

„Бразилската империя продължила съществуването си само 33 години, понеже маршал Деодоро да Фонсека я провъзгласил за република през 1889.“​ 
Again, the first friend said it was okay, but the second corrected me to:

„Бразилската империя продължила съществуването си само 33 години, понеже маршал Деодоро да Фонсека я *е* провъзгласил за република през 1889.“​
She said she couldn’t explain why she suggested such corrections, only that her native feeling told her the sentences sounded ‘empty’ without the auxiliary verb.

So, in short, are the auxiliary verb 3rd persons necessary here, and why?​


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## Darina

I think this depends whether you speak in renarrative mood or not. 
„Прекарали *са* _четири_ часа в магазина!“ does not necessary mean renarrative mood. Surprise!  It can be just *past perfect undefined tense* (another lovely tense), which forms in indicative mood coincide with the renarrative mood of present tense.
If you mean indicative mood you must use the auxiliary verb. If you mean renarrative mood, you are free to decide to use it or not.
I will be happy if anyone confirms that it. Your questions are always hard.


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## Psi-Lord

Мерси!



Darina said:


> „Прекарали *са* _четири_ часа в магазина!“ does not necessary mean renarrative mood. Surprise!  It can be just *past perfect undefined tense* (another lovely tense), which forms in indicative mood coincide with the renarrative mood of present tense.
> If you mean indicative mood you must use the auxiliary verb. If you mean renarrative mood, you are free to decide to use it or not.


I did know about the ‘coincidence’ of forms, but I think my second sentence confused me even more because of it. I mean, I haven’t studied Bulgarian tenses formally, so to speak, and I’m kind of trying to build some knowledge on them by seeing examples and descriptions here and there. I thought the Bulgarian минало неопределено време didn’t allow, so to speak, a explicit time expression, and so, since my second sentence had _през 1889_, I thought it couldn’t be an option along the renarrative mood.

But, if you say the versions without the auxiliary verb sound natural to you if taken to be in the renarrative mood, that matches what I’ve read so far, and so I’m less confused. 



Darina said:


> Your questions are always hard.


I’m know for digging too deep sometimes.  But this is a good thing, at least for me, because the deeper I get, the more fun I usually have.


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## DarkChild

Прекарали са is indicative. The renarrative of this would be прекарали били.


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## Darina

Psi-Lord said:


> Мерси!
> 
> 
> I thought the Bulgarian минало неопределено време didn’t allow, so to speak, a explicit time expression, and so, since my second sentence had _през 1889_, I thought it couldn’t be an option along the renarrative mood.


 
I think it usually does not allow but talking about historical events is an exception. Your second example must contain the auxiliary verb. Otherwise, it will mean that you have witnessed something that happened more than 100 years ago.



Psi-Lord said:


> Мерси!
> 
> But, if you say the versions without the auxiliary verb sound natural to you if taken to be in the renarrative mood, that matches what I’ve read so far, and so I’m less confused.


 
I think it is slightly better without the auxiliary verb but after all it does not matter. Both ways are grammatically correct.


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## Psi-Lord

DarkChild said:


> Прекарали са is indicative. The renarrative of this would be прекарали били.


Sure. What confused me was that I was trying to convert aorist (минало свършено време) indicative _прекара_ to renarrative _прекарали_, but, when that friend of mine told me I needed to add _са_ to the latter, I thought I’d got the whole system wrong, since I’d read that the renarrative 3rd persons did not take auxiliaries and consisted of the active aorist participle alone.

In a way, it was like I was converting the present perfect (минало неопределено време) indicative _прекарали са_ into renarrative _прекарали били_, and that friend had told me it had to be _били са прекарали_ instead, with a necessary, explicit _са_.

Note to self: study the proper order of Bulgarian clitics.




Darina said:


> Your second example must contain the auxiliary verb. Otherwise, it will mean that you have witnessed something that happened more than 100 years ago.


Confusion alarm!  So not having the auxiliary verb in my second verb would, after all, have an impact in the overall meaning? I mean, I was indeed trying to use the renarrative mood to get rid of the ‘I was there over 100 years ago’ witnessing feeling, but you’re telling me that, if so, it *must* contain _е_ after all? If so, then the following quote also confuses me a bit:




Darina said:


> I think it is slightly better without the auxiliary verb but after all it does not matter. Both ways are grammatically correct.



Because here you say that not only are both ways grammatically correct, but also that you even prefer the construction if no auxiliary verb.

(But then, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I’m either misreading something, or just missing a point of the discussion altogether… )


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## Darina

Psi-Lord said:


> Confusion alarm!  So not having the auxiliary verb in my second verb would, after all, have an impact in the overall meaning? I mean, I was indeed trying to use the renarrative mood to get rid of the ‘I was there over 100 years ago’ witnessing feeling, but you’re telling me that, if so, it *must* contain _е_ after all?


 
Sorry. You re right. It will mean of course that you haven't witnessed the event. But then: what's the idea of the renarrative mood if you can't be a witness anyway? The whole situation is funny. I personally think that there is no renarrative mood as such. It is just some tenses like минало неопределено време which *can* be used to show that you were not there.  Same with aorist-it can have an aspect of non-witnessing something... Check словоформи/прекарвам in уикиречник. You will see that all tenses have a renarrative mood with too many coinciding forms.


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## DarkChild

This is starting to sound like the joke бил съм се бил напил lol


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## Arath

According to the grammar book, the form with the auxiliary verb is called "conclusive" and the form without the auxiliary is called "renarrative". So we're talking about two different moods (there's even a third called dubitative). They both mean that you didn't witness the action, but the renarrative means second-hand information, in other words, someone else told you about the action. You use the renarrative when you *renarrate* someone else's story and you use the conclusive when you deduce or *conclude* about an action you didn't witness. For example, imagine you're a detective and you are at the crime scene looking at the clues and you're guessing what must have happened - "The victim was taking a bath when the burglar entered" (Жертвата се *е *къпела, когато *е* влязъл крадецът). You use the auxiliary because nobody told you what happened, you're deducing, you're giving your opinion. If you don't use the auxiliary it sounds as if you're telling a story, as if you're giving someone else's account of the events but not your own *conclusions*. This is what's written in the grammar book. You can find some more information here: belb dot net slash personal slash aleksova slash evidentiality_korean_bulgarian.pdf  (it's in Bulgarian, replace dot with . and slash with /, I'm sorry but for some reason I can't post URLs).

About what your friend told you. Well, you should know that not all Bulgarian dialects have the renarrative, conclusive and dubitative moods. Some lack all three of them. In such dialects the present perfect (минало неопределено), which always requires the auxiliary, is used instead of all renarrative past tenses, it may even be used instead of the indicative aorist (минало свършено), for example, when the action happened at an exact point in the past, which is completely wrong in the standard language. These are usually dialects that don't have the past imperfect participle. In other words, they have forms such as "къпал", "ял", "говорил", but lack forms such as "къпел", "ядял", "говорел". Speakers of these dialects often find many renarrative, conclusive or dubitative forms wrong. For example the following past imperfective partiples are totally strange and meaningless to such people "дадял", "речал", "кажел", "отидел".

So my advice is: Do not always trust what someone tells you just because they're a native speaker. Not every native speaker can be a teacher. They can tell you that something is wrong but when they can't explain why it's wrong, or when they are themselves wrong because their judgement is influenced by their native dialect, they aren't of much help. So you should find a good grammar book, so you can consult with it.


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