Croatian Languages Research Articles

HOMEOSTASIS AND COMPENSATION AS LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA (COMPETITION OF ASPECT AND TENSE ON THE EXAMPLE OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES WITH SPECIAL REGARD TO POLISH)

The present paper deals with two universal linguistic phenomena, homeostasis and compensation. The author examines their function in relation to two categories, aspect and tense in the history of the Slavic languages. It is beyond doubt that one of the most important categories of the Slavic verb is aspect the origin of which may lie in the Proto-Indo-European language. The effects of its emergence as a verbal category were far-reaching and can be well traced in the history of the most Slavic languages. Taking a close look to the linguistic data, it seems quite obvious that the category of tense and aspect were closely related and did interact, creating different patterns in modern Slavic languages. A certain competition between the category of aspect and that of tense can already be observed in Old Slavic and also in Old Russian and Old Polish where tenses like the aorist and the imperfect were becoming increasingly obsolete. The perfect, on the contrary, has gained ground, while the pluperfect has almost completely fallen into disuse. In the further development, the aspectual opposition also extended to the future tenses thereby affecting the entire tense system. This scenario took place everywhere in the East and West Slavic languages with some nuanced differences. Consequently, in the aspect-tense system of the modern East and West Slavic languages the tendency of the category of aspect to prevail over the category of tense together with the gradual decline in the number of tenses seems to be quite clear. The South Slavic languages, however, have taken a slightly different path showing perhaps the most complex picture. Although the Serbian and Croatian languages have preserved the old tenses, their use is rather limited. In terms of their aspectual development, these languages are getting closer and closer to the Eastern and Western Slavic language groups. In contrast, in Bulgarian and Macedonian one can see an intricate interplay of the aspectual system and the developed tense system. In the case of the change of the different Slavic languages, the phenomenon of linguistic compensation can be observed in all cases on the example of aspect and tense categories as the main means of striving to maintain linguistic homeostasis. Keywords: linguistic homeostasis, compensation, aspect, tense, Old Slavic, Slavic languages, Polish

«Alphabet wars» in the history and modernity of Slavic languages: sidenotes to the Artur Steplewski’s book

The article concerns problematics of the (re)interpretation of graphicsof graphics and the alphabet in national categories in the history of Serbian, Croatian, and Ukrainian literary languages through the prism of A. Stemplevsky's monograph «Semiosis of Script: monograph «Semiosis of Script: Cyrillic and latin alphapet in Serbian and Croatian national discourse on the Slavic background».The concept of nationalization is introduced to describe expanding of meaning due to ideological and cultural connotationswhile alphabets as a whole or their separate graphemes have been used in the symbolic function.The article highlights the issues of the parallel functioning of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet in the history and modernity of Serbian and Croatian, as well as other Slavic languages, and the perception of this fact in the usus and national discourse.Special attention is paid to the measures of language policy and the efforts of representatives of national elites who influence the choice of the alphabet and/or the principles of spelling during standardization.

A Questionnaire for Rating Health-related Quality of Life.

BackgroundTranslations of instruments for measuring quality of life developed in certain, mostly more developed, parts of the world usually do not cover regionally specific aspects of health-related quality of life, even after transcultural validation. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a reliable questionnaire in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin languages suitable for measuring health-related quality of life in adults.MethodsThe study was of a cross-sectional type, assessing the reliability and validity of a newly developed questionnaire for measuring health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in adults residing in western Balkan states (WB-HRQoL). It was conducted on a sample of 489 adults from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Montenegro, with a mean age of 52.2±14.4 years and a male/female ratio of 195/294 (39.9%/60.1%).ResultThe definitive version of the WB-HRQoL scale with 19 items showed very good reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha 0.905. The scale was temporally stable, and satisfactory results were obtained for divergent and convergent validity tests. Exploratory factorial analysis brought to the surface four domains of health-related quality of life, namely the physical, psychical, social, and environmental.ConclusionThe WB-HRQoL scale is a reliable and valid generic instrument for measuring HRQoL that takes into account the cultural specifics of the western Balkan region.

COMMUNICATIVE ORIENTATION OF TEXTBOOKS AND DICTIONARIES FOR TEACHING A FOREIGN CROATIAN LANGUAGE

Knowledge of foreign languages is an important condition not only for personal, cultural, but also professional contacts of a certain person. In view of this, there is a growing attention to the content of teaching foreign languages, updating its technologies, creating textbooks, manuals, dictionaries for their study. The learning process is a joint activity of the teacher and students aimed at learning the language, and largely depend on the means involved in the organization of learning. Teaching aids are an important, integral part of teaching a foreign language. They contribute to the effective organization of learning; make it easier for students to successfully master it. Textbooks, manuals, educational dictionaries have been an important component of foreign language teaching for many years. Renewal of the content of education, a new concept of teaching brought to the fore the principle of language learning through culture. Intensification of the educational process, search for ways to implement the principle of active communication encourage the creation of textbooks that largely meet the communicative needs of students, stimulate speech activity, while increasing the level of socio-cultural awareness of the country whose language is studied. Bilingual thematic dictionaries in recent years become increasingly popular for foreign language learning. The Ukrainian-Croatian Dictionary contains around ten thousand words and phrases. The dictionary is intended for students with a variety of language courses, but they are also suitable for independent learning vocabulary, Ukrainian and Croatian languages for those who are interested in languages. The primary purpose of the dictionaries is to help rework topics relevant to everyday communication, as well as topics related to general problems of professional communication. Thematic dictionaries can help you conquer the conversation for various situations. Thematic dictionaries are also among the teaching aids that can best be tailored to the requirements of the communicative method. They organically combine the actual communicative and system-language work, namely: the system description of the lexical level of language or its fragments is extrapolated to the learning of different types of speech activity: receptive, productive, receptive-productive. Key words: teaching methods, textbook, thematic dictionary, communication, speech activity.

Expressing modality in the Croatian, Serbian, and Polish languages. Similarities and differences between lexical verbal exponents of modality

This paper describes the similarities and differences between the lexical verbal exponents of modality in the Croatian, Serbian, and Polish languages. This study demonstrates the usages and meanings of the Croatian, Serbian, and Polish verbal lexemes: musieć (must / have to), móc (can/may), mieć możliwość (be able to), chcieć (want), and presents their classifi cation from the angle of alethic, epistemic, and deontic modality. Keywords: modality – alethic/epistemic/deontic modality – modal structure – lexical exponents of modality – Croatian language – Serbian language

REVIEW OF THE BOOK BY A. R. BAGDASAROV «HRVATSKI JEZIK. POGLED IZ RUSIJE» - “CROATIAN LANGUAGE. A VIEW FROM RUSSIA”

The article presents a brief review of the monograph of the Russian philologist-Slavist and Croatist, Candidate of Philology A. R. Bagdasarov “The Croatian Language. A View from Russia”. The article reflects the main ideas set out in the monograph, in particular, it touches on the issue of language policy, substantiates the need to distinguish and include the clerical style (or sub-style) in one of the varieties of the functional style of the Croatian literary language, as well as to restore the abolished Council for the Norm of the Croatian Literary (standard) language and to adopt the law on the Croatian state language. The monograph pays considerable attention to the issues of language policy during the formation and disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 40s-90s of the 20th century on the example of Croatian-Serbian ethno-linguistic relations. As a result of the processes of convergence and unification of the language and at the same time its divergence and differentiation, an atmosphere of linguistic tolerance and loyalty was not formed, the literary Croatian and Serbian languages in the current language situation in Croatia and Serbia acquired their own legal status and began to develop independently. The author considers the problem of including feminatives in the official business style (in the legislative or legislative-legal sub-style): the author justifies the inexpediency of such attempts by government officials and linguists. The book is addressed to a wide range of Slavic and Croatian philologists.

Spelling Features of SMS Communication in Russian and Croatian Languages

In this article, we define the range of problems associated with spelling rules used in mobile communication, with a focus on SMS communication. SMS messages are one of the most common methods of communication today. The subject of our research is the language of private SMS, which is difficult to describe. This is explained by the liberties users take with the norms of the literary language, as well as the appearance of numerous regionalisms, vulgarisms, dialectisms, neologisms, etc. Although we are talking about colloquial vocabulary, not literary, and SMS messages that do not observe spelling rules, we note that some patterns exist and are used in both Russian and Croatian languages. We can say that with the advent of virtual communication, in contrast to the traditional (written) genres of spoken language, new modern genres and styles of written colloquial speech have appeared; that is, new rules are established and created that differ from the rules of traditional spelling. Drawing on the latest research on this topic, we analyse SMS messages at the spelling level. The corpus of the studied texts includes several dozen SMS messages of different styles of speech, which reflect some of the features of SMS communication in the Russian and Croatian languages.

Loan Words in the Kostel Dialect of Slovenian Language and the South Chakavian Dialect of Croatian Language

The article compares the lexis of the Kostel dialect of the Slovenian language and the dialect of the villages Pitve and Zavala, which belongs to the South Chakavian vernacular of the Croatian language. The study is based on lexicographic data. The analyzed dialects of the Slovenian and Croatian languages contain 17.08 % of common lexis. 19.58 % (217 in each dialect) of the common lexis are loan words. Both among common and differential words, Germanisms are prevalent in the Slovenian dialect as well as Romanisms in the Croatian dialect. Many internationalisms came into the Slovenian dialect through the German language, and into Croatian through Italian and its dialects. Two dialects also share several Turkisms; in addition, the lexis of the Kostel dialect of the Slovenian language contains Romanisms that could find different ways into it, through other Slovenian dialects or the Croatian language.

ŚRODKOWODALMATYŃSKIE KONTAKTY JĘZYKOWE W PSICH PRZYPOWIASTKACH MILJENKA SMOJE. ZAPOŻYCZENIA LEKSYKALNE W GWARZE MIEJSKIEJ SPLITU

This article has been written following a thesis in which I analyse borrowings from foreign languages in the urban dialect of Split, with references to Pasje novelete by Miljenko Smoje. To this end, I have conducted a lexical and etymological survey on the vocabulary excerpted from the book and I have delved into linguistic statistics. Consequently, I have documented the number and frequency of words borrowed from foreign languages. I also present a detailed calculation of the relationships between the borrowings and juxtaposed with the native vocabulary. In addition, I present a historical outline of the contacts between Croatian and other languages. I describe their intensity and the recent situation as reflected in the lexical area of the Croatian language. Finally, I make several comments on the semantic characteristics of loan words.

Automatic Speech Recognition System for Tonal Languages: State-of-the-Art Survey

Natural language and human–machine interaction is a very much traversed as well as challenging research domain. However, the main objective is of getting the system that can communicate in well-organized manner with the human, regardless of operational environment. In this paper a systematic survey on Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for tonal languages spoken around the globe is carried out. The tonal languages of Asian, Indo-European and African continents are reviewed but the tonal languages of American and Austral-Asian are not reviewed. The most important part of this paper is to present the work done in the previous years on the ASR of Asian continent tonal languages like Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Mizo, Bodo and Indo-European continent tonal languages like Punjabi, Lithuanian, Swedish, Croatian and African continent tonal languages like Yoruba and Hausa. Finally, the synthesis analysis is explored based on the findings. Many issues and challenges related with tonal languages are discussed. It is observed that the lot of work have been done for the Asian continent tonal languages i.e. Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mandarin but little work been reported for the Mizo, Bodo, Indo-European tonal languages like Punjabi, Latvian, Lithuanian as well for the African continental tonal languages i.e. Hausa and Yourba.

УКРАЇНСЬКІ, ХОРВАТСЬКІ ТА ПОЛЬСЬКІ ФРАЗЕОЛОГІЗМИ З КОМПОНЕНТАМИ-СОМАТИЗМАМИ ЯК ЗАСОБИ ВЕРБАЛІЗАЦІЇ ТАНАТОЛОГІЧНОЇ СЕМАНТИКИ

The article is devoted to semantic characteristics and structure of phrasemes in the Ukrainian, Croatian and Polish languages with a somatic component that verbalize the concept of “death” and their significance in the national and language worldview. In the article phraseology is seen in terms of its field structure, when its object is explored from the perspective of the phraseological periphery and core. Phrasemes with a somatic component are one of the largest groups in phraseology, because the anthropomorphic model of the world and human as its key element are among the oldest. The importance of the functions of сertain body parts and organs influences the ability of somatism to form phraseologisms: the more important the organ, the more productive it is in creating phrases. Awareness of the phenomenon of physicality allows people to explain and perceive the phenomenon of death. Сoncept is a complex of ideas about a certain object, which is a reflection of the cultural system in which it is represented. Сoncept is often verbalized in phraseologies, when its components present a particular concept. One of the significant elements of the picture of the world is the concept of “death”. The comparative analysis of somatic phraseologisms of the Ukrainian, Croatian and Polish languages confirms that the picture of the world of Ukrainian, Croatian and Polish people showed through phraseologies has a number of common and distinct features. Identical phraseologisms in form and content attest to the affinity of phraseological fund of the analyzed languages.

RODNO OBILJEŽENA KONCEPTUALNA METAFORAŽENA JE PTICA(NA PRIMJERIMA IZ HRVATSKOG I BUGARSKOG JEZIKA)

The subject of the paper is the gender marked conceptual metaphor WOMAN IS A BIRDin two closely related languages − Bulgarian and Croatian languages. The corpus of analyzed ornithonyms, which are metaphorically used for a female referent, was collected from general monolingual and phraseological dictionaries, as well as online and slang dictionaries. Some meanings were illustrated by examples from the online corpora hrWac and Bulgarian web 2012 through the use of the Sketch engine tool. Even though domestic and wild birds are evenly represented in the analyzed corpus, the domestic birds are semantically and metaphorically more productive. The contrastive analysis established that the majority of metaphors are based on anthropomorphism, and that pejorative terms, which serve to semantically derogate women, dominate over terms with positive connotations. We have found pejorative connotations and hints of sexism even in the case of terms of endearment, which are supposed to express a special intimacy and congeniality. Interlingual differences, in the sense of the existence of more specific meanings, are realized within the framework of age and sexual connotation. The interlingual and intralingual variations (Kövecses, 2005, 2015) are the result of the dependency of metaphorical meaning on context and participants in the communication process.

Calendar bypass rites of Burgenland’s Croats in Hungary: history and reproduction

The article deals with the calendar bypass rites of the Burgenland Croats of South-Western Hungary in the vicinity of the town of Szombathei and is based on ethnolinguistic field studies conducted in 2019. Special attention is paid to the processes of the interaction between and mutual influence of the coexisting Croatian and Hungarian languages, folklore, and ethnographic traditions. The role of the folk language used is shown, which is in some cases reproduced when recreating the ritual Christmas circumambulation. The researcher focuses on the history of the revival of the “shepherds” Christmas rite in the village of Narda and its surrounding villages - Felsőcsatár and Horvátlővő. Reconstruction of the elements of the Christmas “shepherds” showed that the persons taking part in the ritual who visit the houses in the village as “shepherds” act as “wonderful guests”. They are connecting the spheres of both “their own” and “alien” worlds, and become the object of sacralisation as representatives of some other world, who bring prosperity, success, and good luck to the owners of the house. At present, this archaic aspect of the circumambulation (which is reflected in the attributes of the maskers and the motifs of their songs) is preserved as a symbol, sign, or characteristic feature of the winter rite itself (the shepherd’s performance). The masks representing the characters of biblical history are characteristic (shepherds, angels), which fits into the broader context of the later Slavic tradition. The example of the Christmas rite of “shepherds” shows the linguistic and folklore polyglossia that is typical for this region, where Burgenland’s Croats live in a foreign-language and foreign-culture environment.

Obrazovni izbori i stavovi prema multikulturalizmu i asimilacionizmu većine i manjine u četiri hrvatske višeetničke zajednice

In this study we examined the relationship between the preference of minority educational models and attitudes towards multiculturalism and assimilationism in four multiethnic communities in Croatia. A sample of 1568 students, aged 11 to 19, members of the Croatian majority and four national minorities (Czechs, Hungarians, Serbs and Italians) enrolled in model A of minority education (all classes are taught in the minority language), and 2000 of their parents participated in the research. Additionally, this is the first paper describing the major socio-demographic characteristics of students in minority education model A, as well as aspects of their language competence in Croatian and minority languages, the use of language in their families and their intentions to continue education in Croatia as opposed to their country of origin. The results have shown that the preferences of minority education models are slightly related to attitudes towards multiculturalism and assimilationism, but also that group status (minority or majority) and the multiethnic context the study has been conducted in are important determinants of attitudes towards multiculturalism and assimilationism.

The Relationship between L1 and L2 Reading Comprehension and Language and Reading Proficiency at the Tertiary Level

The importance of reading is especially emphasized nowadays when the majority of information, irrespective of the source (books, daily press, professional literature, web sources, etc.), is primarily accessed via reading. Therefore, effective reading and reading comprehension are important in everyday life, but also in an academic setting. This particularly refers to pre-service preschool and primary school teachers, whose teacher training courses imply a good command of reading skills, but also teaching skills required for the development and teaching of pre-reading and reading skills. In L2 reading, there are additional issues that need to be considered, principally the possibility of skill transfer between the mother tongue and the second/foreign language. Hence, this research aimed to test reading comprehension in both Croatian (L1) and English (L2) languages in a group of university students (N=83), studying to become pre-service preschool and primary school teachers. Reading comprehension tests and a background questionnaire were used as research instruments in this mixed-method research. Contrary to our expectations, reading comprehension test results were fairly low, i.e. out of a total of 17 points, the mean results for the Croatian language reading comprehension test were M=13.6 (SD=2.05), while for the English language reading comprehension test they were M=11.29 (SD=2.24). The results were further correlated with the participants’ self-assessed language knowledge and reading abilities in both languages. A positive correlation was found only between the English language reading comprehension test and the participants’ self-assessed language knowledge and reading ability. Based on the obtained results, it may be proposed that teachers should focus more on developing reading skills and reading comprehension at all levels as well as in all of the languages that the learners are acquiring, especially in view of the proposed possibility of the transfer of skills among languages.

The Inscriptions on the Gravestones in the Croatian Villages of Slovakia, Chunovo and Jarovce: The Specificity of Mixing Graphics Systems

The article discusses the inscriptions on funerary monuments from the Croatian villages of Cunovo and Jarovce, located in the South of Slovakia, near Bratislava. These inscriptions reflect the complicated sociocultural situation in the region, which is particularly specific due to the fact that this territory was included to Slovakia’s territory only after 1946, while earlier the village was part of Hungary. In addition, the local Croatian ethnic group was actively in close contact with the German and Hungarian communities. At the same time, the orthographic norms of the literary Croatian, German, Hungarian, and Slovak languages, which could potentially be owned by the authors of the inscriptions, differ in many ways, despite the Latin alphabet used on all the gravestones. All this is reflected in the tombstones, representing a high degree of mixing codes. The article identifies the main types of fusion on the monuments: separate orthograms, writing the maiden name of the deceased in the spelling of her native language, the traditional spelling of the family name. In addition, the mixing of codes can be associated with writing feminitives, also order of name and surname within the anthroponym. Moreover, the settlements themselves represent different ethnic groups coexistence within the village. Gravestones from the respective cemeteries also differ from each other in the nature of the prevailing trend of the mixing codes. In Jarovce, where the ethnic groups live compactly, fusion is often presented as a separate foreign language orthograms. In Cunovo, where the ethnic groups constitute a global conglomerate, more traditional presents for a specific family spelling of the names on the monument.

Between music and ideologies: Croatian music criticism from the beginning to World War II

As the Croatian lands were exposed to often aggressive Austrian, Hungarian, and Italian politics until WWI and in some regions even later, so Croatian music criticism was written in the Croatian, German and Italian languages. To the best of our knowledge, the history of Croatian music criticism began in 1826 in the literary and entertainment journal Luna, and was written by an anonymous author in the German language.A forum for Croatian language music criticism was opened in Novine Horvatzke, i.e. in its literary supplement Danica horvatska, slavonska i dalmatinska in 1835, which officially started to promote the Croatian National Revival, setting in motion the process of constituting the Croatian nation in the modern sense of the word. However, those articles cannot be considered musical criticism, at least not in the modern sense of the word, as they never went beyond the level of mere journalistic reports. The first music criticism in the Croatian language in the true sense of the word is generally considered a very comprehensive text by a poet Stanko Vraz (1810-51) about a performance of the first Croatian national opera Ljubav i zloba (Love and malice) by Vatroslav Lisinski (1819-54) from 1846. In terms of its criteria for judgement, that criticism proved to become a model for the majority of 19th-century and later Croatian music criticism. Two judgement criteria are clearly expressed within it: national and artistic.Regardless of whether we are dealing with 1) ideological-utilitarian criticism, which was directed towards promoting the national ideology (Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, 1834-1911; Antun Dobronić, 1878-1955), 2) impressionist criticism based on the critic’s subjective approach to particular work (Antun Gustav Matoš, 1873-1914; Milutin Cihlar Nehajev, 1880-1931; Nikola Polić, 1890-1960), or 3) Marxist criticism (Pavao Markovac, 1903-41), we may observe the above mentioned two basic criteria. Only at the end of the period under consideration the composer Milo Cipra (1906-85) focused his interest on immanent artistic values, shunning any ideological utilitarianism, and insisting on the highest artistic criteria.

Die Ungnads von Sonnegg - der lutherische Adel in der Habsburgermonarchie um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts

Die Ungnads von Sonnegg - der lutherische Adel in der Habsburgermonarchie um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts

Екзиль у літературних творах Гавриїла Костельника

Background : Havrijil Kosteljnik (1886. Ruski Krstur, Bačka −1948. Lwow, Ukraine) is a writer by whose work Idyllic Wreath From My Village begins the artistic literature of the Yugoslav Ruthenians (Rusyns). He was born in Ruski Krstur where he started his education. Apart from that, he studied in Croatia, Ukraine and Switzerland where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy. He spent the biggest part of his life in Ukraine, so far from place where he was born. Purpose: The purpose of the analysis is to show that Havrijil Kosteljnik was a writer in exile. His literary works are written in Ruthenian, Croatian and Ukrainian languages and this language roaming shows that he was looking for a homeland for his literary work. Kosteljnik`s literary works in which he addresses his homeland and his people are overflowed with nostalgia for his Bačka which is for him the only region of happiness. This is particularly evident in the Idyllic Wreath From My Village , drama Jephtha's Daughter as well as in some selected poems which I am going to analyze using psychological and biographical approach by which I will prove that Havrijil Kosteljnik was a writer in exile. Results: This paper reveals a new view of Kosteljnik's literary works which are analyzed here. This paper shows that Kosteljnik in his literary works is always between the homeland, which is the only place where he can find happiness, and, on the other side, the place where he live in the moment of writing. It demonstrates his awareness simultaneoius dimensions and plurality of visions. Key words: exile, Havrijil Kosteljnik, Idyllic Wreath From My Village, Jephtha's Daughter, homeland

Die Bedeutung von László Hadrovics im Bereich der kroatistischen Philologie

The present paper is a narrower cross-section of the very rich contribution to Croatistics by the Hungarian linguist László Hadrovics (1910–1996). It presents the findings of his research entailing the contact between the Hungarian and the Croatian languages, the Croatian literary language in Burgenland (former Western Hungary) as well as his findings in etymological studies. Hadrovics was a prominent, internationally acknowledged linguist of his time. His great achievements are marked by the richness in data and by the numerous novel methodological approaches applied in his monograph on the words of Hungarian origin in the Serbo-Croatian language. His book served as a pattern to a great number of successive publications. His work on the Croatian literary language in Burgenland, among others, publishes its first dictionary of this kind. As far as his etymological studies are concerned, the renewal of his research methods is of prominent interest. Hadrovics broke up with the practice of earlier etymological research which was based on using dictionary entries. The author went back to the sources themselves, which yielded much more reliable results. With his new approach, he gained outstanding results, even on an international level.