Croatian Languages Research Articles

Projekt języka czarnogórskiego

Draft of the Montenegrin languageThe authors of the grammar of the Montenegrin language (Gramatika crnogorskoga jezika, Podgorica 2010) have constructed a linguistic system which definitely stands apart from other standards which grew out from the Shtokavian dialects. Such elements as phonemes |ś| and |ź|, potencijal imperfekta, the negative form of the verb biti, the doublets of the forms of the verb htjeti // šćeti, lexemes with results of iotacismes make up – against the Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian languages – a separate system both in terms of quality and quantity: potentially they are so frequent that would radically change the picture of Montenegrin texts with regard to the “classic” Shtokavian languages/dialects.In addition, the authors have managed to not go too far and have avoided a temptation to introduce into the system more specific characteristics, which have not been used by the modern language for a long time, such as, for example, the expanded form of the adjectival conjugation of the Njegošowski type: momci prsih vatrenijeh czy raniš od Vidova dana junačkijem i konjskijem mesom gavranove i mrke vukove! or phoneme |з|.In addition, it would also be difficult to specify the elements, which would prove unequivocally the tendency of the proposed Montenegrin standard becoming similar to one of the remaining Shtokavian languages.The weakness of the project is its potential nature. In case of the grammar, one cannot speak about the descriptive nature thereof. It is a proposal of the norm and the standard, which can genuinely come into existence solely given the support of the political elites and on the basis of their introduction into the educational and administrative system, as well as – which is most probably the most important and the most difficult aspect – given the goodwill of the decisive majority of the users of the Montenegrin language, which at the current point is rather out of the question.

Toxoplasmosis and Pregnancy: Reliability of Internet Sources of Information

Health education of women of childbearing age has been shown to be an acceptable approach to the prevention of toxoplasmosis, the most frequent congenitally transmitted parasitic infection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the Internet as a source of health education on toxoplasmosis in pregnancy. A group of 100 pregnant women examined in the National Reference Laboratory for Toxoplasmosis was surveyed by a questionnaire on the source of their information on toxoplasmosis. We also analyzed information offered by websites in the Serbian and Croatian languages through the Google search engine, using "toxoplasmosis" as a keyword. The 23 top websites were evaluated for comprehensiveness and accuracy of information on the impact of toxoplasmosis on the course of pregnancy, diagnosis and prevention. Having knowledge on toxoplasmosis was confirmed by 64 (64.0%) examined women, 40.6% (26/64) of whom learned about toxoplasmosis through the Internet, 48.4% from physicians, and 10.9% from friends. Increase in the degree of education was found to be associated with the probability that pregnant women would be informed via the Internet (RR=3.15, 95% CI=1.27-7.82, p=0.013). Analysis of four interactive websites (allowing users to ask questions) showed that routes of infection were the most common concern, particularly the risk presented by pet cats and dogs, followed by the diagnosis of infection (who and when should be tested, and how should the results be interpreted). Of 20 sites containing educational articles, only seven were authorized and two listed sources. Evaluation confirmed that information relevant to pregnant women was significantly more accurate than comprehensive, but no site gave both comprehensive and completely accurate information. Only four sites (20%) were good sources of information for pregnant women. Internet has proved itself as an important source of information. However, despite numerous websites, only a few offer reliable information to the Serbian (or Croat) speaking community, and none present complete and accurate information relevant to pregnant women.

LOVE AND HATRED IN TWO LANGUAGES: CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Living in a world that has become a 'global village' makes different nations seem very similar - we dress in a very similar way, we listen to the similar music, we sometimes even use the same words. But how similar are we when it comes to understanding another person’s culture and values related to some of the general notions, such as love and hatred? The authors of this paper come from two countries that speak Slavic languages and are in many ways similar: Russia and Croatia. This similarity initiated a cross-cultural research described further in the paper. The authors have compared the meanings of two opposite notions (a value and an anti-value) - love and hatred - with regard to the meaning and importance they have in these two countries and how they are used in their respective languages. The definitions of the value love were collected from various available dictionaries in different areas and then analyzed as semantic components. Then the same procedure was conducted with the anti-value hatred. Since these semantic components are used in sentences/phrases in Russian and Croatian in various ways, their comparison has been made. Furthermore, students of two universities (one Russian and one Croatian) filled in a questionnaire regarding the meaning these notions have for them. The purpose of the questionnaire was to help the authors find out whether there are similarities/differences in how these two notions are perceived in their respective countries and languages and whether their meanings and importance for the culture differ. The obtained results will offer some insight into the Russian and Croatian languages when compared on the linguistic and cultural level with regard to a value and an anti-value.

Fossil and Subfossil Bird Remains and Faunas from the Carpathian Basin

Abstract The author summarizes the knowledge of fossil and subfossil bird life from the Carpathian Basin, of all geological ages, site by site. After a historical overview, he presents the Mesozoic, Tertiary and Quaternary bird fauna, based on a holistic reference material consisting of 196 titles indicated in the bibliography, including papers in English (64), Hungarian (50), German (46), Romanian (26), Croatian (9) and Polish (1) languages. The text is supplemented with maps of fossiliferous sites from different ages and a list from 341 paleontological and archaeological sites on species of the Carpathian Basin, respectively. The number of taxa reaches 845, including 189 extinct taxa (two orders, four families, nine genera - five ichnotaxa of which (154 species, five ichnotaxa and 10 subspecies) were described from the Carpathian Basin, primarily. Most significant records include the Mesozoic taxa (Eurolimnornis, Palaeocursornis, Elopteryx), the new Neogene songbirds species and the presence of predecessors of recent European grouses, Bustards and Corvidae species from the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene in the Carpathian Basin.

Receptive multilingualism and its relevance to translation studies with data from interpreters of the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages

This paper examines the phenomenon of receptive multilingualism where speakers of two different languages communicate through each speaking his/her own language and understanding the other’s. Comprehension in such an interaction is aided by the speaker and the listener employing linguistic, discourse-pragmatic and other features which represent strategies of accommodation (i.e. reduction of linguistics dissimilarities). This phenomenon is not presented as an alternative to interpreting, but in the context of interpreters who work from or into a language which is closely related, but not identical to the language spoken by one of the participating clients. Background information is provided from language pairs with a high level of mutual intelligibility and the experiences of interpreters, while the focus of the data sample is on 23 interpreters who have accreditation in one, two or three of the following closely-related languages: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Responses are elicited on the following: self-reported incidence of accommodation in non-interpreted interactions; linguistic and ethical protocols when a different, but closely-related language is used by a client; comments from clients about interpreters’ proficiency and ethnicity; attitudes on the distinctiveness of the three languages and future intelligibility. Informants’ linguistic behaviour is analysed according to the number of accreditations held and, in general, those with three accreditations report the highest levels of accommodation.

Re-codified Standards from the Perspective of Language Experts: Credentials, Practice and Attitudes amongst Translators and Interpreters of the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian Languages

Abstract This article examines aspects of linguistic behaviour, attitudes and professional practices amongst a group of 47 “expert users” who are translators or interpreters for one, two or three of the following languages: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. The official terms for these languages in the respective successor states of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and elsewhere reflect not only historic but also popular designations. Incumbent on translators and interpreters are the professional regulatory norms that require practitioners to follow these designations. An overview of the re-codification of the three languages is provided, followed by a discussion of models that account for how speakers and text-producers negotiate verbal and written interactions with speakers or text of different language varieties. Data are elicited on the following: informants’ reported behaviour in professional and non-professional situations; unanticipated differences in the language for which an assignment was accepted and its actual form; attitudes on assignments with unofficial or unclear language designations; others’ assumptions of informants’ native speaker competency and ethnicity; and attitudes towards the distinctness of the three languages. Accommodation to clients’ language varieties is reported by half of all informants, and those with multiple accreditations report converging to others’ language varieties more so than those with accreditation in one language only. Metalinguistic talk, with or without accommodation, is also a common practice in the initial stages of interpreted interactions or the negotiation of translation assignments. The reported behaviour and practices of translators and interpreters are likely to be indicative of “lay speakers’” and marketplace requirements, and therefore reflective of actual language use amongst users of these three languages when interacting with one another.

BOSNIAN LANGUAGE AND ITS INAUGURATION: THE FATE OF THE FORMER SERBOCROAT OR CROATOSERB LANGUAGE

The study examines the fate of the Serbo-Croatian or Croat-Serbian language after the dissolution of the former common state of South Slavs, excluding Bulgarians, in 1991 with the main emphasis on the phenomenon of inauguration and promotion of the Bosnian language, which is one of the youngest Slavic and European languages today. The aim of this study is to present the development of the successor languages of the Serbo-Croatian or Croat-Serbian language with the main focus on Bosnian which was officially inaugurated in 1996 and up to now is spoken by the Muslim South Slavs in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sandžak region divided between Serbia and Montenegro. However, the speakers of the Bosnian language identify themselves as the Bosniaks, but not as the Bosnians in the ethno-national sense. The specificity of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian ethno-linguistic situation in the last two decades is marked by the fact that in this republic officially three ethnic languages (Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian) are spoken although supporters of the Bosnian language try to prove that the mother tongue of all inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sandžak (Raska) region is only Bosnian. The specific position of the Bosnian language among all Slavic languages is visible through the fact that its name is different from the name of the state (Bosnia-Herzegovina) in which it is spoken as well as from the name of the nation who speaks it (Bosniaks). From the linguistic point of view, after the dissolution of the Socialist Yugoslavia, the Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian languages continue to use one linguistic system, but from the sociolinguistic point, we can speak about four internationally recognized independent languages. It is a matter of “linguistic engineering” to create more factual differences in syntax, vocabulary, orthography and grammar among the four only de jure separated languages in order that they become de facto different languages. The three languages (Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian), emerging on the grounds of the ex-Serbo-Croatian or Croat-Serbian language in Bosnia-Herzegovina, are standardized on the basis of the ijekavian dialect which is a common component that still connects them into a single linguistic system. However, it is expected that in the future the technology of “linguistic engineering” will focus on the creation of “ethnic” differences within this common dialect. In this short analysis of the sociolinguistic aspect of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, with the emphasis on the inauguration of the Bosnian language, a comparative method and the method of text analysis are used as a form of sociolinguistic penetration into the role and function of the language in the creation of national identity and in setting nation-state boundaries. In addition, we used a method of the mutual complement of the data from sources and literature.

Translation and negotiation of linguistic varieties amongst translators of the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages.

Translation and negotiation of linguistic varieties amongst translators of the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages.

Words of Romani origin in the Czech and Croatian languages

The paper is an attempt to compare words of Romani origin in the Czech and Croatian languages on the basis of two contemporary lexicographic sources. The main objective is to confirm the thesis regarding the presence of words with the same Romani etymon in both languages as well as to provide the semantic charactersitics of the analysed lexemes. The paper also presents information about the frequency of the words of Romani provenience in the Czech and Croatian languages that were collected using Internet corpora of both tongues.

Interpreting in one’s own and in closely related languages

Interpreters may see affinities between their own or working language(s) and others in the same family as an opening to a broader range of professional opportunities. This paper presents data from an online survey, completed by 23 mainly Australian-based interpreters for the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages. Main points include: number of accreditations (one, two or three languages); willingness to work in languages other than one’s ‘own’; and views on adapting language to the variety spoken by interlocutors (in both everyday usage and interpreted speech). Other questions examine negotiation of mismatches between ethnicity and the language variety expected by the client, as well as personal views regarding the distinctness of the three languages. Informants form three main groups: some work in one language only, with no accommodation to others; some consider the languages as separate but might accommodate to other varieties, extemporaneously or by prior arrangement; others consider that their native-speaker status in two or three languages makes accommodation superfluous. Two smaller groups (totalling four interpreters) consider substantial accommodation unnecessary: in one case they see the languages as separate but mutually understandable, in the other they see them as one single language. Quantitative data are complemented by informants’ comments.

Этноязыковые хорватско-норвежские параллели

История каждого языка по-своему уникальна и разнообразна. В разнообразии культуры и истории различных народов коренятся факторы, определяющие своеобразие их литературных (стандартных) языков. Во многом существенны исторические условия, в которых формировались и в дальнейшем функционировали национальные литературные языки.Обычно лингвисты сопоставляют типологически сходные близкородственные языки, в статье же предпринята попытка кратко описать параллельное этноязыковое становление относительно далеких в генеалогическом отношении литературныхязыков: хорватского и норвежского. Хорватский язык относят к южнославянской группе языков, тогда как норвежский — к скандинавской группе германских языков.

Describing Motion Events in Sign Languages

Describing Motion Events in Sign Languages Research has shown that sign languages represent space by using the body and the signing space in front of the signers. To date, it is largely unknown to what extent sign languages differ from one another in their linguistic use of space. The present study addressed this question by conducting an experimental study on basic motion event descriptions in historically unrelated sign languages: American, Croatian, Austrian, and Turkish Sign Languages. It was found that these sign languages are similar to one another in the use of classifiers to encode location, orientation, and movement of objects, and that they are similar in using path-only and path+manner descriptions, while leaving out manner-only descriptions. However, these sign languages differ from one another in their lexical signs, in choosing a particular set of classifiers, in responding to the manipulations of objects in space, and in the ratio of path-only constructions with respect to path+manner constructions for the same events. Overall, this study contributes to our knowledge of how motion events are encoded in natural human language. Future research will compare the current findings with those from spoken languages to further explore the properties of the language of motion events.

Eavesdropping with a Master: Leoš Janáček and the Music of Speech

The composer LeoJana� ek (1854-1928) has been noted for his interest in speech melodies. Little discussion has focused however on the field methods that he used in gathering them, nor on the products themselves. Jana� ek spent more than three decades, transcribing thousands of what he termed napvky mluvy (tunelets of speech) in standard musical notation. The record that remains of these efforts is impressive both for its volume and its quality, as well as for its potential to reveal aspects of the perceptual overlap between music and language. Heretofore his pioneering efforts in the study of speech prosody and music perception have neither been recognized nor acknowledged. The present study provides a background for and an overview of the transcriptions, along with comparative musicological and linguistic analyses of the materials presented. With this analysis as a starting point, I indicate promising avenues for further collaborations between linguists and musicologists, seeking an integrated theory of music and language cognition. PRELIMINARIES THE composer LeoJana� ek had a special relationship with the melodies and rhythms of speech. Numerous attempts have sought to sustain or refute the use of speech melodies in his musical output. (2) Yet, the most tangible evidence of this relationship, the thousands of notated examples of often clandestinely overheard language, captured and preserved in his notebooks, have largely been neglected. Little presentation and discussion of these transcriptions have been made in the literature on Jana� ek. In the midst of current preparations in the Czech Republic to publish a complete edition of his speech melodies, and a concurrent project to digitize them, this article seeks to set a stage for their long-awaited coming out. The number of examples presented here amount to less than one percent of his output. The great majority of his notations deal with Czech prosody but also include Russian, Slovak, Croatian, English, Italian, and other languages. The group under consideration here, although limited to the various dialects of Czech, were selected to represent a broad cross-section of the materials he dealt with. Jana� ek wrote mystically of the individualist force of speech melodies, their uniqueness as the public voice of a single soul, but also how that voice was irretrievably entwined with its context, an aspect which he acknowledged was somewhat lost in transcription. In one of his earliest articles regarding speech, Melodies of Children's Speech (Napvky dtske mluvy) (Jana� ek, 1904), he described his observations of a neighbor's child, whom he had known virtually from birth: Lidka grows up with me in notes, but she also grows up in beautiful and fine surroundings. In score, no one would understand; who would not recognize that little house beneath Hukvaldy and its pleasant folks within, who would not recognize the pretty garden nearby that little house. (3)

Sprachliche Wechselwirkung im Spiegel der Wörter

The study gives the survey of the contacts between Croatian and Hungarian languages, paying primary attention to loan-words. The author reports the results of his research into those terms borrowed from Hungarian that are used in modern colloquial Croatian.

The Arabic Cultural Influence on the Balkans

The CaseIt was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation from Dr. YahyaMahmud bin Junayd and Dr. Awadh al-Badi to be with you today. I am veryhappy to be able to speak to you on this special occasion about an importantand very large topic: the Arabic cultural influence on the Balkans. I am particularlyglad to be speaking on this theme in the hall of this eminent institute,the King Faisal Centre for Islamic Studies and Research.I will begin by saying that I shall not deal at length with either the historyor the geography of the Balkans, for I am justified in assuming that theaudience I am addressing today is familiar with these, at least in outline. Ishall therefore proceed at once to the topic itself.Arabic and Islamic influences began to reach the Balkan peninsulawell before the Turks and the start of Ottoman imperial rule in the fifteenthcentury. Museums throughout the Balkans still contain items from theperiod of the first contacts of the Balkan peoples with the Arabs of Sicily,southern Italy, and al-Andalus. We thus find Arabic utensils, for examplethe ibrig,1 which we also call ibrik, with exactly the same meaning inBosnian as in Arabic. It is the same in the Serbian and Croatian languages,too.The archives of Dubrovnik contain a large collection of Arabic manuscriptsthat show clearly what kind of goods were traded between Arabtraders and those of the Balkans over many centuries. But Arab traders didnot only bring with them Arabic customs, books, items, ideas, and principles;the Slavs themselves, who served first in the military with the Arabs ...

?????????? ???????-as,-ás? ???????????????? ???????

The present article is dedicated to the study of interlingual contacts based on the facts given by the history of the Hungarian personal suffix -as. This suffix is used in modern Serbian, Croatian, Yugoslav-Ruthenian, Slovenian and Slovak literary languages and dialects. People speaking these dialects have been living for a long time in these territories that used to be a part of the Hungarian kingdom. The history of this suffix, its functioning and its present status is demonstrated on the basis of Carpathian and Ruthenian written old and new texts. The productivity of the borrowed personal suffix -?? (-??) is considered to be a result of active interlingual contacts in the Carpathian region and also of the considerable influence of Hungarian on the language and culture in the Southern Carpathian hills. There are many words in modern Carpatho-Rusyn texts which are borrowed from Hungarian, e.g.: ???????, ??????, ??????, ??????, ??????, ????????? etc. Some of them appear in word formation paradigms of the Carpatho-Rusyn motivated words, e.g.:????????, ????????????, ????????, ???????, ??????, ??????? and so on. The result of the Carpatho-Rusyn and Hungarian language contacts on word formation level testifies to a very intensive interaction. In modern Ruthenian the same tendency is to be observed: numerous lexical borrowings from Hungarian exist side by side with borrowings of units on a more abstract level. In our case the word formation suffix ?? (-??) with a personal meaning is of Hungarian origin and it is very productive in modern Carpatho-Rusyn.

Breast self-examination web site of the institute of oncology Sremska Kamenica vs. breast self-examination web sites in English language and languages of former Yugoslavia

Breast self-examination web site of the Institute of Oncology Sremska Kamenica was designed in 2000 year and since then it has had about 490 visits, i.e. one visit by day approximately. The site was presented at the 6th Annual World Congress on the Internet in Medicine "Mednet 2001" in Udine, Italy, from November 29 to December 2, 2001. The next phase in our project is to improve its contents to increase its popularity. To achieve this we compared our site with similar sites in English language and languages of former Yugoslavia. The results of this comparison are presented in this paper. To find the sites in all languages we used search engine Google.com and following key words: "breast self-examination" (English language), "samopregled dojke" (Serbian and Croatian languages) "Samopregledovanje dojk" (Slovenian language) and "Samopregledot na dojkata" (Macedonian language). Some additional aspects of breast self-examination such as its validity as a screening tool and its influence on breast cancer mortality were also involved. Our aim was to emphasize the importance of further development of telemedicine services in general, and particularly the importance of primary care and early detection, including breast self-examination as integral parts of teleoncology services.

Le serbo-croate (bosniaque, croate, monténégrin, serbe) : de l'étude d'une langue à l'identité des langues

Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian) : From the Study of a Language to the Identity of Languages The article deals with the linguistic system which includes the standard Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin languages. The structure of these standards (the history of their formation is noted) shows that it is a unique linguistic system, with several essentially lexical variations. The intercomprehension between these standards exceeds that between the standard variants of English, French, German, or Spanish. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are not translated from one into another. At most one саn 'Serbianize', 'Croatianize', 'Bosnianize', or 'Montenegrinize' a text written in one of the other variants. Moreover, they are not new and did not appear with the breakup of Yugoslavia. Each one simply acquired its own name and the status of an autonomous standard language. The teaching of the linguistic system presupposes (as for English or Spanish) that the learners have a passive knowledge of ail the standards and that they actively speak at least one of them. As for the problem of designating a unique linguistic system and standards, it is closely linked to the identity function of the language, both unifying (for a given group of speakers) and differentiating (in relation to other groups). This article provides several examples, citing the two names for the variant spoken in Bosnia, 'Bosnian' and 'Bosniac', and the term 'Serbo-Croatian', still used by many speakers. The case of Serbo-Croatian and its standard variants shows what the criteria of differentiation between languages саn be in linguistics and the role of the identity function of each language.

The Croatian standard language and the Serbian standard language

The relations between the Croatian and Serbian standard languages have linguistic, sociolinguistic, and sociopolitical implications. By way of concrete examples, the author corroborates his claim that Croatian and Serbian are to a considerable degree genetically identical, but that they have been functioning sociolinguistically as two di€erent standard languages not only at present, but since their very beginnings.

The Croatian and Serbian Languages

The Croatian and Serbian Languages