Dialect word order in the Slovenian Carinthian 18th century books “Duhovna bramba” and “Kolomonov žegen”

Abstract

The paper analyzes the use of the Slovenian Carinthian word order in the Carinthian early printed books of the mid-18th century – collections of prayers and incantations Duhovna bramba and Kolomonov žegen. The possibility of using them as a source of information about the 18th century Carinthian dialect syntax is considered. Based on significant deviations from the Central Slovenian standard language orthographic norm in Kolomonov žegen and the absence of such deviations in the Carinthian edition of Duhovna bramba, we assume that Kolomonov žegen reflects the Carinthian word order to a greater extent than Duhovna bramba. The work includes a brief description of the analyzed texts and the Carinthian dialects, an analysis of the reflection of the Rosen Valley syntactic features in these texts, and conclusions. The statistical analysis of the texts confirms the assumption that they contain Carinthian word order features. The assumption about their greatest concentration in Kolomonov žegen is not confirmed. According to the statistics, the first part of Duhovna bramba most fully and consistently reflects the Carinthian word order innovations, while its second part demonstrates the most conservative word order. Kolomonov žegen reflects Carinthian syntactic innovations rarely and inconsistently. Such heterogeneity demonstrates completely different views of the Carinthian editors on the admissibility of the inclusion of their native syntactic features into the printed text. These texts reflect the Carinthian word order to varying degrees, which requires caution in their further use as a source of information about the 18th century Carinthian dialect syntax.