Original scientific paper
Cakavism of the Island of Vis
Lucija Šimičić
orcid.org/0000-0002-1023-6100
; University of Zadar, Department of Linguistics, Zadar, Croatia
Abstract
Cakavism is a specific realization of originally palatal con¬sonants geographically confined to local idioms along the eastern Adriatic coast. Although its origins have been much disputed and various hypotheses concerning its genesis proposed, ranging from those that postulate its exogenous (Romance Venetian) (Małecki 1929; Hraste 1962), endogenous (autochtonous Slavic Čakavian) (Hamm 1957;1960; Moguš 1977) or mixed origins (Muljačić 1966), no one ever questioned its status as an exclusively Čakavian feature. As an extremely salient feature, cakavism has been exposed to gradual abandoning, which affected first coastal varieties and subsequently other more isolated insular cakavian varieties. The speech of Komiža is considered the southernmost cakavian point (Małecki 2007 [1929]), and the varieties of the Island of Vis are among rare that still maintain this Čakavian feature. On the basis of sociolinguistic research on the Island of Vis, based largely on samples of spoken language collected by interviewing speakers of different ages, the paper analyzes linguistic variability and change in the form and frequency of cakavian realizations. Language change is analyzed in real time by means of comparing field data with the data collected by the Questionnaire for the Croatian Language Atlas in 1960s, and in apparent time by comparing the patterns in language use among speakers of various ages. Although still present, cakavism in its full-fledged form is confirmed only in the oldest age-group. The collected speech samples indicate that the majority of cakavian realizations have been reduced to depalatalized realization of /č/, while the so-called ‘middle sounds’ /ś/ and /ź/ are maintained only exceptionally. Younger and middle-age speakers, therefore, conserve the feature, but in a reduced and petrified form. Also, cakavism is nowadays often lexicalized and no longer a productive feature on the Island of Vis.
Keywords
Cakavism; Island of Vis; language change in real and apparent time
Hrčak ID:
268241
URI
Publication date:
27.12.2021.
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