Original scientific paper
Verb forms in Croatian Glagolitic fragments from the 12th and 13th centuries
Milan Mihaljević
Abstract
The author describes verb morphology in the oldest Croatian Glagolitic fragments. He compares the fragments with the Old Church Slavonic manuscripts as well as with the Croatian vernacular in order to determine similarities and differences among them. He concludes that the verb morphology is almost completely identical in the fragments and in the Old Church Slavonic manuscripts. The influence of the Croatian vernacular is notable only in phonology, whereas in morphology it is hardly visible. In the present tense there are only three cases in which the Church Slavonic endings have been replaced by the Croatian endings. There are many forms of the asigmatic aorist, while the forms of the secondary sigmatic aorist are relatively rare. The imperative forms show the tendency of spreading of the formant -e- to the verbs of i-conjugation in the plural and dual numbers. It seems that jat has become a general marker of the imperative in these cases. The old conditional forms of the verb biti have also been well preserved due to the Čakavian dialect which has preserved these forms until today. As in the Old Church Slavonic texts, there is no uniform way of formation of the future tense. Participles have also preserved the old formation patterns. There are only three cases of the formant -uĉ- in the nominative singular of the masculine gender in the active present participle. Participles are also used as adjectives, and in that function they are declined in the same way as adjectives.
Keywords
Croatian Church Slavonic language; Croatian glagolitic fragments from the 12th and 13th centuries; verb forms
Hrčak ID:
22368
URI
Publication date:
29.3.2008.
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