The language of the Story of the Sage Ahiqar from Serbian Manuscript No. 53 of the National Library of Serbia

Abstract

In terms of homogeneous diglossia, the basic characteristic of the Serbian mediaeval language situation, the usage of two language systems, Serbian Church Slavonic and Old Serbian, were clearly functionally demarcated. However, in some genres they could get closer to each other, could influence each other and could even interfere with each other. In some texts of secular character (especially those written in different sociolinguistic contexts or in peripheral shtokavian dialectal zones) as a result of the mutual influence of two language systems a hybrid language, a mixture of Serbian Church Slavonic and Old Serbian (shtokavian) elements, could have arisen. Narrative texts of non-liturgical character represented a mixed zone, that is, the texts which could have been written in different types of language. So far it was confirmed that some texts of this genre could have been written in high-style Serbian Church Slavonic (e.g. the Barlaam and Joasaph Romance), the other in its lower functional style (e.g. the Serbian Alexander Romance), and the third in almost pure Old Serbian (e.g. the Troy Romance). This paper investigates the phonological, phonetic, morphological and syntactic features of the Story of the Sage Ahiqar in order to expand the knowledge about the possibilities of language realisations in Serbian medieval non-liturgical narrative prose. Analysis was conducted on the 16th-century transcript from Serbian Manuscript No. 53 of the National library of Serbia, which originated in the west shtokavian dialectal zone. The results have confirmed the presence of elements originating both from Serbian Church Slavonic and Old Serbian (shtokavian vernacular) at every language level without a possibility to say which of them prevail. The analysis has also shown that the dominant vernacular features include those of common shtokavian character which had developed until the 15th century, while those from the later period have not been noted. Regarding the stylistic aspect, the functional style in this text is similar to the other narrative texts where traditional language patterns overlap with patterns characteristic of spoken language or oral literature.