Professional paper

Enclitics in Croatian Language Teaching – Between Ideas and Practice

Ana Kedveš orcid.org/0000-0002-1475-7704 ; Sveučilište J. J. Strossmayera u Osijeku, Europski studiji, Hrvatska
Ana Werkmann orcid.org/0000-0002-0720-2575 ; University of Ottawa, Faculty of Arts, Department of Linguistics, Ottawa, Canada

Abstract

This paper deals with the position of enclitics in the context of Croatian language teaching in secondary schools. Given that the written corpus shows considerable deviation from the standard interpretation of the Wackernagel’s law (Peti-Stantić 2007), our intention was to explore this phenomenon in the context of the Croatian language teachers’ attitude towards the rules of enclitics’ placement. The previous works in this field show different aspirations. While most contemporary grammarians (Babić et al. 2007, Barić et al. 2005, Težak, Babić 1994) favour the prosodic interpretation or Wackernagel’s law, according to which enclitics must follow the first stressed word in the sentence, some contemporary linguists (Peti-Stantić) advocate syntactic interpretation of this rule in Croatian language, which entails the enclitics being placed after the first stressed syntactic unit. The latter base their claims on the discrepancy between the prescribed norms and actual language use. Our work addresses precisely that issue – the relationship between the nominal and practical elements in teaching the Wackernagel’s law. The analysis of research results indicates that teachers are inclined towards prosodic interpretation of Wackernagel’s law but are not likely to correct their students when they practise it differently.

Keywords

position of enclitics; teaching practice; Croatian language teachers’ attitude

Hrčak ID:

117874

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/117874

Publication date:

18.3.2014.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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