Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.34075/cs.57.4.5
From Chtejenya to Čtejenja (language change in kajkavian lecturers)
Barbara Štebih Golub
orcid.org/0000-0003-2192-2947
; Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The topic of the paper is a linguistic comparison of two editions, published in 1831 and 1851, of the literary-Kajkavian lectionary Čtejenja i evangelijumi. As Čtejenja has undergone a number of editions, they are suitable for historical-sociolinguistic research because by comparing and analyzing the language of lectionaries one can follow the development of language and linguistic changes at all levels, from one decade to the other. The aim of the research was to determine the linguistic changes that affected the Kajkavian literary language during the two decades of turning point in Croatian linguistic history and to answer the question of whether and if so, to what extent, Kajkavian acquired Štokavian features. The texts of the two editions of the lectionary were compared on a graphic and orthographic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical level.
Differences were found to be present at all language levels. The most noticeable are those at the graphic level because the Čtejenja of 1851 are the first edition of that textbook printed in a reformed, Gaj’s alphabet. At the phonological level, it is noticeable that in the 1851 edition, there was a substitution of the reflex of the semivowel e > a and a substitution of the Ekavian reflex of jat in the negative forms of the verb biti with Ikavian ones, by which the language of the lectionaries became closer to Štokavian. At the morphological level, the editor chooses from several possible literary-Kajkavian forms those that are common to the Štokavian (imperative suffixes, adjective suffixes). The differences at the syntactic and lexical level are also very numerous, but almost invariably the result of the editor’s stylistic and translator choices.
Keywords
lectionary Čtjejenja i evangelijumi; kajkavian literary language; language changes
Hrčak ID:
287120
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2022.
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