Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.32004/k.52.1-2.3
AN OVERVIEW OF THE 17th CENTURY KOPRIVNICA RECORDS LANGUAGE
Mijo Lončarić
; Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje,Zagreb (do umirovljenja)
Abstract
The paper is an introduction to the studies of the language used in the town of Koprivnica records. In order to be able to judge more comprehensively about the records’ language, a brief description is given of the language and dialectal situation in the wider Koprivnica area, showing some older records, mainly of toponyms from the said area. A hypothesis is given on the Koprivnica town speech.
A reference is made as to the publishing methodology.
The basic linguistic, graphic and orthographic characteristics of the text are shown on basis of a representative sample taken from the book Zapisnici poglavarstva Grada Koprivnice 1698 – 1702. Knjiga prva (Koprivnica Town Hall Government Records from 1698 – 1702, Book One) edited by Karmen Levačić. Scriveners, clerks, and recorders writing the records were educated people who knew Latin, and they only conveyed statements of other persons (of those who were accused, for example) in the manner they were spoken, to be phonologically similar to the spoken word. The scriveners surely knew the Kajkavian literature language as well, the Croatian standard language with a Kajkavian base. They could have been not only Kajkavians (although the Kajkavian area is vast enough with various vernacular), but also Štokavians (there are some living in the vicinity of Koprivnica), or they could have been those seeking employment and coming from other areas so they could have unintentionally recorded characteristics of their own idiom.
Although Koprivnica is a small town, it had its own variation of the literature language, the same as today, and it also had the Kajkavian interdialect, Koine, more or less used for communication by people from the Koprivnica area.
Along with the mainly Kajkavian structure in the Croatian records, there are also non-Kajkavian word examples. There are examples present as far back as in the oldest records dating from 1639. For example, they are words where the vowel a comes into the position of the old semivowel instead of e, regularly (for example, "danas – denes").
Keywords
Koprivnički zapisnici; 17th century; the Kajkavian interdialect; toponyms; the Koprivnica town speech
Hrčak ID:
224701
URI
Publication date:
17.6.2019.
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