PARTICIPLES IN THE KAJKAVIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE TEXTS AT THE END OF THE 18TH AND IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

The process of participles losing their adjectival characteristics in Croatian, i.e. of adverbialization of participles into deverbal adverbials, is commonly accepted in the literature, although there are more recent contributions (e.g. Horvat, Štebih Golub 2016) that question these claims. Since participles are dealt with in all known grammars of the Kajkavian literary language, the aim of this paper is to determine whether the participles were really in use in the literary Kajkavian language of the same period when the grammars were written or whether the Kajkavian grammarians deal with them, as they do with some other categories (article, preterit, subjunctive), under the influence of exogenous models of grammatical description. Two Kajkavian grammars were the focus of our study: Matijević’s Horvacka gramatika (1810) and Kristijanović’s Grammatik der kroatischen Mundart (1837) as well as selected works by the same authors: Matijević’s Rastolnačenje evangelijumov (1796), Rastolnačenja zvrhu Velikoga katekižmuša III. (1797), and Genovefa (1808), and Kristijanović’s Blagorečja (1830), Ezopuševe basne pohrvačene (1843), and Danica zagrebečka (1845). The description of participles in the two grammars is compared with the use of participles in the texts in order to determine whether the Kajkavian authors use participles described in their grammars in their texts, and if they do, in which syntactic roles. The analysis of grammars shows that in their grammars both authors treat participles as an established category of the Kajkavian literary language. While Kristijanović explicitly describes their dual nature already in the definitions, Matijević does not mention it explicitly, but the fact that he is aware of it can be seen in the way he describes it. Both authors share the understanding that participles are reduced dependent clauses.
The analysis of the use of the active participles of present and preterit on the corpus of selected texts by the previously mentioned authors has shown that they both use both participles, although their frequency and functions differ significantly. Active present participle has been found in attributive, predicative and secondary predicative function. Nominalized it occurs in other syntactic functions (subject, direct and indirect object, nominal attribute) as well, while the active preterit participle has been found as a secondary predicate in marked stylistic use. The most frequent use of participle is attributive and that is in accordance with the results of previous research. Although the frequent use of active present participle in the attributive function – especially in translations - is without any doubt the result of the influence of (German and Latin) originals, since it has been attested in Kajkavian texts that date up to the 19th century that were not translations and were aimed at a wider audience, such as popular scientific literature and calendars, we believe that it is a feature of the literary Kajkavian language. Other syntactic functions of participles (nominalized participle, predicative, secondary predicative) are much rarer and are found in deliberately archaized texts written in a more formal style. All the detected syntactic functions of participle have been present since the Old Church Slavonic, and have also been attested in the other two Croatian literary languages, which testifies to the incorporation of the Kajkavian literary language into the common Croatian tradition and to the existence of certain syntactic constructions that might have been the result of calquing and the influence of the originals in foreign languages (Latin, German), but which have become trademarks of higher literary style and certain literary genres.