À propos de la place des enclitiques en BCMS (bosniaque-croate-monténégrin-serbe)

Abstract

About the Place of Enclitics in BCMS Language The author draws up a list of ail the enclitics of the Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian language and gives the rules of their linearisation (from the left to the right: interrogative particle li, auxiliary verb, dative pronoun, accusative pronoun, reflexive pronoun). He deals with enclitics which have homographic stressed counterparts, and with the meaning of «second place» for the enclitics: actually, enclitics may come after the first stressed word (even if they are inside a syntagm, according to a strict phonetic principle) or after the first stressed syntagm (according to a syntactic principle). The paper considers different factors which determine the position of enclitics. - Syntactic factors: enclitics may lean on subordinating conjunctions, relative pronouns or adverbs, so that the order of enclitics is different in independent clauses and in subordinate clauses. In coordinate clauses linearisation may be the same as in independent clauses or as in subordinate clauses, after coordinating conjunctions pa, te, ali, ili; the status of the conjuction jer should be reconsidered: it behaves with enclitics as a coordinating, and not as a subordinating conjunction as it is usually called. - Functional style: there is an internal coherence of the enclitics position for each functional style, colloquial, journalistic (in all the media) and literary ('belles-lettres'). - Standard: BCMS language is polystandardized, i.e offers several standards, inside each of which there is some coherence of the enclitics position; however, differences (for instance between Serbian and Croatian) are more important in literary texts (and normative reference books!) than in everyday speech. The author shows that in some cases the term 'enclitic' is inappropriate: in spite of a long tradition (especially from the 19th century on) of repeating the same denominations over and over again, sometimes the so-called 'enclitics' are actually proclitics.