Franjo Vuletić's Slovnica jezika bosanskoga and Its Place among Croatian Grammars

Abstract

This paper analyses Franjo Vuletić's manuscript Slovnica jezika bosanskoga za srednja učilišta (Grammar of the Bosnian Language for Secondary Schools) from 1885, that was published in 1890 under the title Gramatika bosanskoga jezika za srednje škole (Grammar of the Bosnian Language for Secondary Schools). The authors show how changes occurred in the manuscript and which corrections Davorin Nemanić made to the original manuscript of Vuletić's Slovnica. To make it easier to follow Nemanić's interventions in the text, the manuscript is compared with the printed edition of the Grammar of the Bosnian Language from 1890. Given that Franjo Vuletić propagated Karadžić-Daničić's linguistic views in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also that the printed edition included enough elements of the language of the Zagreb philological school, it will be compared how much the original manuscript follows or departs from the previous Croatian grammatical tradition and whether, from these positions, the Gramatika bosanskoga jezika can be considered a Croatian (Vuk's) grammar, as some researchers classify it. Also, since the Gramatika was printed without mentioning the author's name, the cultural and political circumstances that led to its creation and publication in such a form will be considered.