The issue of the subjunctive use by serbophone students of Italian: An error analysis from a pragmatic perspective

The complex system of the Italian subjunctive often poses a challenge in language learning, especially for serbophone students, since the Serbian Language does not recognize this mood in its morphosyntactic system. Thus, the primary goal of this paper is to examine the use of the subjunctive in written production in Italian by students whose native language is Serbian. The research was conducted on a sample consisting of students of the Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kragujevac (pretest). The analysis conducted in the first phase showed a clear omission of subjunctive forms, with a simultaneous attempt to use other moods such as the indicative or conditional instead. The obtained results paved the way for the second phase of the research, which included a cloze-test to determine the forms and types of subjunctive that pose a greater problem in expressing attitudes, opinions, doubts, uncertainties, and personal commitment to the conveyed statement. Finally, the results and error analysis of the use of the subjunctive in Italian by serbophone students in this study represent a starting point in understanding the causes of the limited use of this mood, as well as possible methods and applicable strategies that could improve, from a morphosyntactic and pragmatic perspectives, the fluency of the Italian Language students using a wide range of available live language exponents based on the mass media system.