THE ACCUSATIVE CASE IN CROATIAN PRE-STANDARD LITERARY TEXTS, DICTIONARIES AND GRAMMAR BOOKS

Abstract

The paper discusses the usage and the syntactic function of the accusative case complements in pre-standard Croatian literary texts along with their attestations and descriptions in grammar books and dictionaries. Our research, focused on distinctive syntactic properties of the pre-standard literary language, has revealed parallel usage of vernacular syntactic expressions and of those inherited from Latin or Italian. The attestation rate of the latter in the Croatian language reference books depended on the efforts of pre-standardization lexicographers and grammarians to determine the permitted amount of non-vernacular expressions when trying to standardize the Croatian language. The analysis of accusative case syntactic complements has confirmed our initial assumption that the frequency of their usage in literary writings had an impact on their lexicographic attestations and grammatical descriptions.