THE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF THE LOCAL DIALECT OF PRAŽNICA

Abstract

Although the majority of features of the local dialect of the village of Pražnica can be found in the synthetic descriptions of the Brač Čakavian local dialects, this local dialect has not been fully described on any linguistic level, and only partial information about it is available. In this paper, on the basis of his recent field investigations, the author describes the phonological features of the Pražnica local dialect. The results revealed the existence of expected characteristics which are present in the majority of Čakavian dialects on the island of Brač: the semivowel produces the vowel a, that is, o; we find some examples of Čakavian vocalization of vowels in weak positions; Ikavian reflex of *ě with a few Ekavian forms; the syllabic l and OCS *ǫ are consistently changed into the vowel u; the reflex of OCS *ę > a after palatal consonants and *ę > e after other consonants; examples like rst, krȅst, orbȁc and grb; no phoneme ǯ; firm position of phonemes h and f; the phoneme j as the dominant reflex of primary and secondary jotation of the dental d; “šćakavism”, that is, the sequences *st' and *zd', as well as *sk, *zg that give šć, zj/žj; the existence of typical Čakavian t’; the *čr sequence is preserved in most cases; examples such as djden; the change of ĺ into j; change of -m > -n in final position in grammatical endings and indeclinable words; almost systematic modification of consonant clusters; the consonant l is preserved in the syllable-final position but not in the singular of masculine nouns in past participle; the change of long a into o and the lengthening of short a into ã in nonfinal syllables; a three accent system with a length before the accent. The analysis shows that the local dialect of Pražnica is a stable system which has preserved its structure and that the more recent changes and innovations that are found in some other Brač local dialects have not penetrated this local dialect.