Grammatical and Lexical Characteristics of the Speech of Travnik at the End of the 19th Century Cover Image

Gramatičke i leksičke odlike govora Travnika s kraja XIX stoljeća
Grammatical and Lexical Characteristics of the Speech of Travnik at the End of the 19th Century

Author(s): Elmedina Alić
Subject(s): Language studies, Phonetics / Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Lexis, Sociolinguistics, Descriptive linguistics, South Slavic Languages
Published by: Slavistički komitet BiH
Keywords: Travnik speech; Central Bosnian sub-dialect; Ikavian-New-Shtokavian (western) dialect; four-accent system;

Summary/Abstract: Data related to the Travnik area speech at the end of the 19th century are scarce. Most data are provided by nine questionnaires from the survey Pitanja o govoru prostoga naroda from 1897 kept at the National Museum in Sarajevo. The data from those questionnaires, though invaluable for the dialectology of the central Bosnian area, has not been comprehensively presented or processed so far. The purpose of comparing the speech data of Travnik and its surroundings at the end of the 19th and data from late 20th century is to gain an insight into the changes that occurred in this Central Bosnian sub-dialect of the Ikavian-New-Štokavian (western) dialect. Data from 1897, as well as from the end of the 20th century (Govor u slivu Lašve, Valjevac 2002: 3–290) confirm that the Travnik speech is Ikavian, Šćakavian, New-Štokavian, with a stable four-accent system. In the span of one hundred years, the retreat of certain dialectological lines is noticed, that is, the withdrawal of a more archaic spoken type over standard-language forms, has been observed. These changes are evident at the phoneticphonological, morphological and syntactic, as well as the lexical level. A detailed description of the features of Travnik speech at the end of the nineteenth century at the phonetic-phonological level is presented in a paper titled Govor Travnika krajem XIX stoljeća: Fonetsko-fonološke osobenosti (Alić 2001: 147–151). The purpose of this paper is to present the characteristics of the Travnik speech towards the end of 19th century on a morphological, syntactic and lexical level, and then compare the Travnik speech from the end of the 19th century with today’s speech of Travnik and its surroundings. In this way, the data of the nine questionnaires from the survey Pitanja o govoru prostoga naroda will be fully processed and presented to the scientific audience. Without data from the Pitanja o govoru prostoga naroda, it would be impossible to see the changes that took place in the Ikavian-Šćakavian speech of Travnik and its surroundings in the last one hundred and twenty years.

  • Issue Year: III/2022
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 85-97
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Bosnian