према + Dative / Locative

The preposition према serves five primary functions in Serbian:

1. Physical Direction and Orientation ("toward", "facing", "opposite"):
• Dynamic motion: Indicates movement heading along a vector toward a point, without necessarily implying arrival or entry (e.g., ићи према излазу – "to walk toward the exit").
• Orientation and facing: Commonly used with participles like окренут to describe facing a certain way (e.g., прозори су окренути према мору – "the windows are facing the sea").
• Static location ("opposite", "across from"): Denotes positioning directly facing or opposite something when used with stative verbs or the copula (e.g., седео је према мени – "he sat facing me / across from me"; кућа је према парку – "the house is opposite the park"). Note that this static spatial use directly with према is predominantly formal or literary; everyday conversational Serbian typically prefers преко пута (+ genitive) or наспрам.

2. Temporal Approximation ("toward", "nearing"):
• Indicates progression approaching a certain time of day, season, or point in time (e.g., према јутру – "toward morning"; према вечери – "toward evening"; према крају године – "toward the end of the year").

3. Relational Stance and Attitude ("toward", "to"):
• Expresses emotional posture, ethical conduct, or stance directed toward people, as well as abstract concepts, obligations, work, or institutions (e.g., љубав према деци – "love toward children"; строг према себи – "strict with oneself"; однос према послу – "attitude toward work"; одговорност према друштву – "responsibility toward society").

4. Evidential Source and Criteria ("according to", "by"):
• Marks an information source, legal benchmark, or schedule (e.g., према вестима – "according to the news"; према закону – "according to the law").
• Forms the common transitional phrase према томе ("accordingly", "therefore").

5. Comparison ("compared to"):
• Contrasts one item relative to another (e.g., то није ништа према јучерашњем дану – "that is nothing compared to yesterday"). (Note: while према also appears in fixed ratio phrases such as sports scores like три према један, cardinal numerals in that specific idiom do not inflect).

Case Government (Dative vs. Locative):
In traditional Serbian descriptive grammar (e.g., Mihailo Stevanović; Ž. Stanojčić and Lj. Popović), dynamic directional motion heading toward a target is classified as directional dative (датив правца or датив смера). Relational stance and attitude directed toward people, abstract concepts, or duties are likewise treated as extensions of directional orientation and assigned to the dative. Conversely, static spatial orientation (facing or positioned opposite), comparison, and evidential criteria/standards are assigned to the locative. In contrast, modern normative reference grammars (such as Piper–Klajn) classify према uniformly as governing the dative across all senses due to complete morphological syncretism in modern usage.

While written inflectional suffixes are completely identical across all genders and numbers in contemporary standard Serbian (e.g., masculine/neuter singular -у, feminine singular -и, plural -има/-ама), traditional standard orthoepy preserves a prosodic distinction in pitch and vowel length for certain monosyllabic and disyllabic masculine and neuter nouns in the singular (e.g., Dative гра̏ду, сто̏лу, бо̏гу vs. Locative гра́ду, сто́лу, бо́гу), which forms the normative and historical basis for distinguishing the two cases.

Key Contrasts:
• према vs. к / ка: While both indicate heading in a direction, к/ка is strictly spatial or abstractly directional and can never mean "according to" or express comparative ratios. Furthermore, unlike к/ка or са/с, према never alternates its phonetic form.
• према vs. по + locative: For evidential criteria or opinions, према frequently alternates with по + locative (e.g., према мом мишљењу and по мом мишљењу both mean "in my opinion").