Serbian Language Research Articles

ON SOME NONTYPICAL DERIVATIONAL PROCESSES IN SERBIAN

This paper dicsusses nonconcatenative morphological processes in the modern Serbian language. More precisely, it focuses on derivational capacity of the processes of reduplication, circumfixation, infixation, base modification, and conversion. After representing the difference between concatenative and nonconcatenative morphological processes, each of the mentioned derivational processes is analysed from a crosslinguistic perspective, with special attention paid to the situation in Serbian. Besides the brief overview of the derivational capacity of the nonconcatenative processes, the goal of the paper is to enrich the terminology of the domestic word formation science (and generally of the Serbian grammar tradition).

LEXICAL VARIATION AMONG STANDARD LANGUAGE SPEAKERS IN REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA

This paper is a part of a larger study of regional variation of the lexicon within the Serbian standard language. About 100 questionnaires were collected for this research from educated speakers of the Serbian language from different cities. The questionnaire contains questions which uncover the use of doublets characteristic of the western and eastern parts of the Serbian linguistic territory, such as željezo and gvožđe, mahune and boranija, kino and bioskop. The paper proposes the analysis of around 60 questionnaires from the Republic of Srpska, namely from Banja Luka (47), Trebinje (7), as well as from Prijedor, Bjelina and East Sarajevo. First, the paper presents a list of investigated regional doublets (200 lexemes), and gives their typological division (phonetic or morphological variants, lexical doublets).
 Further, a linguageographic analysis of the first questionnaire is proposed and previously analysed in the other paper, and conclusions about the regional characteristics of the lexicon contained in that questionnaire are presented. For example, it is noted that in Prijedor, unlike Trebinje, words as domaća zadaća, duda, hladetina, hlače, ispričnica, kuhar, kuhati, marelice, neodgojen, propuh, ručnik, tekućina, tržnica, tuka, umjetno gnojivo etc., are used.
 The main content of the paper deals with the analysis of the second questionnaire. For each lexical pair presented in the questionnaire, the statistics of the use of each word in Banja-Luka and Trebinje are given, and based on this, the lexicon characteristic of one and the other city is distinguished (e.g. dan i noć, trougao in Trebinje and maćuhice, trokut in Banja Luka), as well as a group of doublet pairs whose members are used equally often in the west and in the east of the Republic of Srpska (oprosti – izvini). Words which practically do not vary are also described. Sometimes the same word is used in Banja Luka and Trebinje, and sometimes it is the same as in Serbia (putarina), or it may be different (narandža instead of pomorandža).
 The main conclusion of the research is that the lexicon of the western and eastern type on the territory of the Republic of Srpska is distributed in the form of waves. This means that the use of lexical doublets in Trebinje is more similar to their use in Serbia, while for Banja Luka and Prijedor a higher concentration of western words than in Trebinje is typical.
 Further research will be focused on the description of the use of these lexemes in other cities of the Republic of Srpska, as well as their variation on the territory of Serbia.

Diskurs protiv rodno osjetljivog jezika / Discourse Against Gender Sensitive Language

This paper provides an overview of critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology, focusing on the linguistic basis of the descriptive phase of Norman Fairclough’s CDA. This methodological tool is used to analyse the discourse against gender-sensitive language which is broadly defined as a collection of texts and speeches that propagate ideas contrary to the principles of gender-sensitive language and gender equality, i.e., texts and speeches that act against those ideas. In relation to discursive practices, the paper analyses to whom such texts are addressed and how they are disseminated, and in relation to socio-cultural practices, i.e., the social conditions under which such texts are produced, it analyses who actually has power and an underlying ideology. Because it is critical to examine power relations in an analysis, those in positions of power are used as examples of discourse, such as the Board for the Standardisation of the Serbian Language as a standardisation institution. Taking their decision on the adoption of the Law on Gender Equality in Serbia in 2021 as an illustrative example of the discourse, this paper tests the hypothesis that the Board for the Standardisation of the Serbian Language shapes the discourse against gender-sensitive language.

Do Social Sciences and Humanities Speak the Language for Specific Purposes? A Look at Archaeological Texts


 The unbreakable bond between language and scientific thought has incarnated into a special way of using general language, which we call language for specific purposes. It is thanks to this language that articulation of observations, conceptual and semantic constitution of scientific fields and exchange of new knowledge are possible. Language for specific purposes is not a new system of signs, rather it uses all the linguistic resources contained within general language, from which it is inseparable. Its peculiarity lies in the frequency and the specific ways of using lexicon and morphosyntactic structures, especially the ones which help it approach the ideal of precision and brevity of expression. In the first part of the paper, in addition to the detailed definition of the concept of language for specific purposes, we analyze which language is necessary for scientific purposes, whether or not scientists understand one another and if there are any universal characteristics of language for specific purposes. The second part of the paper is devoted to a smaller study with the goal of questioning some general traits of the language of archeology, performed on a group of abstracts originally written in the Serbian language.

THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS ON TWITTER: SENTIMENT ANALYSIS – POSSIBLE INTERPRETATIONS

The mass use of social media has enabled users to reach out and share opinions, attitudes, and emotions on various topics - current events in particular - almost instantly. In this paper, we analyze the attitudes of Serbian speakers toward Russia and Russians during the ongoing war in Ukraine, based on the material obtained using an application for collecting and processing comments on Twitter. The study covers the period from February to September 2022. Starting with the assumption that Twitter users tend to be freer and more spontaneous in expressing their views compared to users of other social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), about 11,000 tweets were collected using the BigBoxData application based on keywords (Russia, Ukraine, war, special operation, Putin, Zelensky...), and were subsequently manually filtered and annotated. The goal was to find out if and how the attitudes of Serbian speakers toward Russia and Russians have changed with the ongoing war in Ukraine compared to associations and stereotypes toward Russia and Russians reported in previous papers. The combination of qualitative (positive, negative, and neutral sentiment) and quantitative (percentage share of each of the three sentiments) sentiment analysis showed that the attitudes of Serbian speakers toward Russia and Russians have changed compared to the previous period (using as a reference the Associative Dictionary of the Serbian language and the Reverse associative dictionary of the Serbian language, both of which report extremely positive associations). The methods used in this study and the research results can serve for further research and attitude change within the crisis discourse on social media and the Internet in general. Keywords: crisis discourse, social media, stereotypes

КОНЦЕПТУАЛИЗАЦИЈА ЛЕКСЕМА ЂАВО И ВРАГ У СРПСКОМ ЈЕЗИКУ

The subject of the work is the conceptualization of the terms đavo and vrag in the modern Serbian language. The paper gives a brief overview of previous research on the theory of conceptual metaphor as a basic domain of interest in cognitive linguistics, with the aim of gaining insight into the problem of this theory, its clarification and application to extracted material. The conceptual domains that the lexemes đavo and vrag form in language were pointed out through the theory of conceptual metaphors. Discovering the semantic potential led to the observation of metaphors that structure the mentioned terms and participate in their conceptualization, which is the goal of this analysis. The material was excerpted and analyzed from the electronic corpus of the contemporary Serbian language (SrpKor). The most typical source domains that were determined: ENTITY, HUMAN, ANIMAL, OBJECT, MATTER, etc., helped in establishing conceptual metaphors that were constructed from more general to more concrete (THE DEVIL IS A LIVING BEING→THE DEVIL IS A HUMAN→THE DEVIL IS AN ALLY / MASTER TO WHOM WE SERVE / JUDGE, etc.)

LANGUAGE AND GENDER: ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE USE OF GENDER-SENSITIVE LANGUAGE AMONG STUDENTS OF SPORTS

The aim of this paper is to analyse the attitudes of students of sports towards the use of gender-sensitive language in the Serbian language. As the correlation between language and gender has been a hot topic in Serbia in the last two years, this paper presents an overview of some of the studies related to language, gender and sports. The theoretical section of this paper covers some main terms such as gender-sensitive language and the connection among language, gender and sport. The aim of the study conducted for the purposes of this paper was to determine whether male and female students of sports have positive or negative attitudes toward the use of gender-sensitive language in contemporary society and in their everyday speech. The study was conducted by using an anonymous survey with open-ended and closed questions, and it included 281 participants. The study results show that students of sports are still not aware of the increasingly widespread use of gender-sensitive language, and that they are not interested in learning about the theoretical aspects of this issue.

ФРАЗЕОЛОГИЗМИ СА ЛЕКСЕМАМА БОГ И/ИЛИ ЂАВО У СРПСКОМ ЈЕЗИКУ

In this paper, we analyse phraseologisms excerpted from dictionaries, which in the Serbian language contain the lexemes bog (god) and/or đavo (devil). The goal of this research is the presentation of phraseologisms with lexemes bog (god) and/or đavo (devil) in Serbian and observation of the semantic connection between the lexeme and the phraseologism which contains it. Particular attention has been given to the comparative study of structure and meaning of the phraseologisms with the lexeme bog (god) on the one hand, and phraseologisms with the lexeme đavo (devil) on the other hand. The assumption is that the phraseologisms with the lexeme bog (god) will have positive semantic associations, while the ones with the lexeme đavo (devil) will have negative associations. All phraseologisms are classified into the following groups: those with a fixed structure (ako bog da; živi đavo); those which imply the existence of an optional element (boga mi (moga); i za (crnoga) đavola); those where the grammatical form of a lexeme can be changed (ne dati/ davati ni bogu tamjana; koji ti (mu, joj..) je đavo); and those where a word can be substituted by a semantically close word (bože sačuvaj (sahrani, sakloni); bežati kao đavo od krsta (tamjana, sveće)). The most of the phraseologisms have fixed structure (56%). The analysis shows that the meaning of the phraseologism cannot be majorly influenced by any change in her lexical composition. The semantic classification is thus considerably more diverse. The opposing meaning can be especially noticed with the adjectives which are, in the phraseologism, frequently used with the lexemes bog (god) and đavo (devil). The initial assumption has been partially confirmed since the analysis showed that the phraseologisms with the lexeme đavo (devil) indeed have pronounced negative semantic associations, while those with the noun bog (god) also have negative meanings in most cases.

Noun categories and the survival/replacement of the synthetic case system in Syrinic

The subject of this paper is the relationship between the stability of synthetic case system and noun categories in sirinić speech, which is a part of prizren-timoc dialect zone in Serbian language. The existing foundings about synthetic declensions and categories of gender and number have been tested by using corpus and quantitative method in this paper. This research has confirmed that synthetic cases are better preserved in singular than in plural and that they are the most stable in feminine nouns, less in muscular and the least stable in neuter nouns. In plural, dative remains only in musculine and femine nouns. A greater number of cases has been found in singular, but their percentage compared to general case indicates that they persisted only in limited functions and meanings.

Serbskie rzeczowniki motywowane leksemem ‘дете’ (‘деца’)

The text focuses on Serbian nouns motivated by the form дете (деца) ‘child’ (‘children’) which belong to the standard language. The starting point is the dictionary definition of the Serbian lexeme дете (деца). The current state of etymological research on the general original meaning of the word ‘child’ in Slavic and other European languages is also analyzed. Next, the motivated words are finally divided into diminutive and augmentative, as well as compound derivatives, their dictionary definitions are provided, and they are examined from the word-formation perspective. The Serbian word дечак (дечкo) is also included in the analysis. The extracted linguistic material comes from Речник српскога језика (Dictionary of the Serbian Language), published by Matica Srpska – the most comprehensive lexicographic work on contemporary standard Serbian language to date. Therefore, the text also contains an analytical outline of this publication. The analysis of the collected linguistic material showed that in the Serbian standard language the derivatives and noun compounds motivated by the lexeme дете (деца) form a significantly large group. The study also proves that both the basic motivating word дете and its variant – which functions as the plural form – the collective noun деца, could participate in the motivation of the formed diminutive, augmentative, compound forms and the form дечак (дечкo). At the same time, a broader etymological introduction to the word дете (деца) against the Slavic and European background showed that the word originally had a much lower social status than it has today. This may be indicated by the analyzed augmentative (and pejorative) derivatives. On the other hand, diminutives and pejoratives will constitute a primary ‘product’ created within the close family, which later became the lexemes of the standard language (although it should be borne in mind that they can also take a disparaging or ironic meaning in a specific communicative con-text). The analyzed compounds, on the other hand, could originally belong to legal discourse, and then, as they began to be used more and more widely, they found themselves within the Serbian standard lexicon. In the case of compounds, a curious phenomenon is their ‘double’ motivation, which may stem either from the form дете, or from the form деца, carrying the same meaning.

UNDERSTANDING OF ANGLICISMS IN THE TEACHING OF SERBIAN LANGUAGE BY PUPILS OF THE FOURTH GRADE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN 2021 AND 2023 - A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

The term Anglicism is increasingly present in contemporary literature, but also in teaching contents and programs, as an indispensable part of adapting the Serbian language to the influence of the English language on vocabulary and literary language. Students, as well as teachers, are daily faced with the challenges posed by the placement of anglicisms in professional literature, as well as in literary and artistic texts, so additional types of learning are needed in order to adopt concepts and understand them in the right context. For the above reason, this research deals with and has as its main goal to examine the understanding of English language among fourth-grade pupils of elementary schools from the area of Kosovska Mitrovica and Zvečan in relation to the understanding of English language among fourth-grade pupils from the area of Lebane Municipality. The research included 133 respondents - 84 fourth-grade elementary school pupils in Kosovska Mitrovica and Zvečan and 49 fourth-grade elementary school pupils from Lebane, of different genders and academic achievements. The obtained results show us that there are statistically significant differences between pupils from different areas, where pupils from Kosovska Mitrovica and Zvečan have a greater understanding of anglicisms compared to pupils from the Municipality of Lebane. The obtained results confirm the set research hypothesis.

Transformer-Based Composite Language Models for Text Evaluation and Classification

Parallel natural language processing systems were previously successfully tested on the tasks of part-of-speech tagging and authorship attribution through mini-language modeling, for which they achieved significantly better results than independent methods in the cases of seven European languages. The aim of this paper is to present the advantages of using composite language models in the processing and evaluation of texts written in arbitrary highly inflective and morphology-rich natural language, particularly Serbian. A perplexity-based dataset, the main asset for the methodology assessment, was created using a series of generative pre-trained transformers trained on different representations of the Serbian language corpus and a set of sentences classified into three groups (expert translations, corrupted translations, and machine translations). The paper describes a comparative analysis of calculated perplexities in order to measure the classification capability of different models on two binary classification tasks. In the course of the experiment, we tested three standalone language models (baseline) and two composite language models (which are based on perplexities outputted by all three standalone models). The presented results single out a complex stacked classifier using a multitude of features extracted from perplexity vectors as the optimal architecture of composite language models for both tasks.

Особенности глаголов с деструктивным значением в русском и сербском языках

The relevance of the study is proved by the fact that the category of destructiveness and the means of its implementation have not received any detailed analysis in linguistics so far. The object of the study is comprised of the verbs with destructive meaning in the Russian and Serbian languages, since these units form the core of the lexical-semantic field of destructiveness. The purpose of the article is to give a comprehensive (multi-level) description of verbs with the semantics of destructiveness, to highlight their specificity in the languages compared. It has been established that in the Russian and Serbian languages, verbs with the semantics of destructiveness fall into four groups: verbs with the meaning of damage; disappearance; destruction, decomposition; harm. It is shown that destructive verbs are characterized by a specific paradigmatic defect caused by semantic barriers. The comparison of the paradigms of verbs with a destructive meaning in the Russian and Serbian languages revealed that in both languages these units are characterized by two-term paradigms, in the Russian language there are verbs with a five-term paradigm, in the Serbian language such units are not represented. It has been revealed that the filling of zero paradigmatic positions in verbs with a five-term paradigm occurs through analytical constructions; verbs with a two-term paradigm do not need to be replaced, since they denote destructive actions, which do not require the forms of the 1 st or 2 nd person.

Correlation between Serbian aspect in adjectives and articles in English and Spanish

This essay aims to illustrate the phenomenon of (in-)definiteness in three languages – them being English, Spanish, and Serbian. Not many similarities could be found among the three languages. While English and Spanish recognise the notion of definite-indefinite article, there is no article in the Serbian language. However, what Serbian does have is the concept of definite and indefinite aspect in adjectives – which, it is assumed, could serve as a compensation for the definite-indefinite article on many occasions. With this in mind, a brief survey among Serbian native speakers who study both English and Spanish was conducted. The results it yielded showed that Serbian speakers do recognise, though to a certain extent only, the difference between definite and indefinite aspect in adjectives in their mother tongue. The lack of full awareness of the mentioned aspects leads to them not using this potential of Serbian when dealing with Spanish and English articles.

Metaphors and pseudometaphors of language as controversial messages in public discourse about Serbian

Abstract Set in the contemporary public discourse about the Serbian language, this paper demonstrates how metaphors of and about language constructed with the source domains of violence and war (e.g., language occupation, language as battlefield, to fight for language) may serve nationalistic political aims and act as conflict-inciting messages, under the pretenses of typical language purism or ‘language care’. The concept of pseudometaphor is introduced as a figuration-based discursive strategy whereby metaphors for language, underpinned by the language-language users metonymy, may serve as tools for covertly conveying controversial messages about their respective language users. The analysis covers public discourse published in a span of eight years (2010–2018), involving institutionalized language and political campaigns, and less institutionalized public language debates. As convergent evidence for pseudo-metaphoricity of the language-war/violence metaphors and their potential for instigating inter-ethnic conflict, the analysis includes critical voices that expose the dominant ideology through literalization of their metaphorical models.

Bitva za Stalingrad na stranicah gazety «Novoe vremya»

In Yugoslavia, after the collapse of the kingdom, periodicals were no longer available. The daily informative propaganda newspaper “Novo Vreme”, which was published from May 16,1941 to October 5,1944, when all German and Serbian language newspapers were banned by the decree of the German authorities, embraced the establishment of the occupation administration in Serbia. From August 4, an additional issue called “Novo vreme Ponedeljak” was published.

THE CONCEPTUALISATION OF MUSIC IN THE FRENCH AND SERBIAN LANGUAGES

Word associations are an important part of cognitive-linguistic and ethnolinguistic research on semantics. Associative responses to stimulus words provide important information about their lexical meaning. In cognitive studies, there is a vast interest in examining the connection between language and music. The aim of this research is to determine and compare the conceptualisations of music in the French and Serbian languages through the associative connection between the stimulus word music and the responses given by French and Serbian students. The conceptual organisation of the associative material will establish the extent to which the perception of music in the two observed linguacultural communities is specific, and the extent to which it expresses universal characteristics. The empirical material for the research was excerpted from two associative dictionaries of French and Serbian.

АКУСТИЧКЕ КАРАКТЕРИСТИКЕ ГЛАСА И ГОВОРА ОДРАСЛИХ ОСОБА СА АТАКСИЧНОМ ДИЗАРТРИЈОМ

The aim of this study was to determine the acoustic characteristics of voice and speech in adults with ataxic dysarthria, and to examine the extent to which they differ from those of typical speakers. The sample consisted of 30 patients with ataxic dysarthria, ages 21 through 82 (M = 56.07). Using the computer programme for multidimensional voice analysis (MDVP), the individual values of 10 acoustic voice parameters were determined for each sex. Additionally, the programme provided the frequency values of the first two formants for all five vowels of the Serbian language, based on the participants’ reading of the Balanced Text. The results of the analysis showed statistically significant differences in the values of the acoustic parameters between the participants with ataxic dysarthria and the reference values valid for typical speakers, which were generated by the MDVP. These differences were observed in parameters indicating voice frequency variability (F0, Fhi, Flo, STD, Jitt, vF0), voice intensity variability (Shim and vAm), and the presence of voice interruptions (DVB) and voiceless periods (DUV). Furthermore, a statistically significant difference was found between participants with ataxic dysarthria and typical speakers in the second formant (F2) of the vowels /E/ (p <0.01), /I/ (p <0.01), and /U/ (p <0.05). The significant deviations from the norms applicable to typical speakers indicate the substantial changes present in the voice and speech of individuals with ataxic dysarthria.

ANALYSIS OF QUALITY STANDARDS FOR DIDACTIC DESIGN OF TEXTBOOKS USING THE EXAMPLE OF A FABLE IN THIRD GRADE PRIMARY SCHOOL READERS

This paper analyzes quality standards for didactic design of textbooks, using the example of readers for the third grade, published by Klett, before and after curriculum changes resulting from the alteration of legal frameworks defined by the Regulation on the Curriculum for the Third Grade of Primary Education: 5/2019-6, 1/2020-1, 6/2020-1. By means of content analysis, the reader published by Klett and used in teaching until the 2020/21 school year will be analyzed, as well as the reader approved for use in accordance with the new recommendations, serving as a Serbian Language textbook in the Republic of Serbia from the 2020/21 school year. The analysis of the quality standards for didactic design of textbooks has been carried out according to the general quality standards for textbooks (Ivić et al., 2009) and legislative regulations (Law on Textbooks, Official Gazette RS, Educational Gazette 68/2015, 27/2018–13, and the Regulation on Quality Standards for Textbooks and Guidelines for Their Use, Official Gazette RS, Educational Gazette: 42/2016-11, 45/2018–40), which define the quality framework for textbooks and textbook sets. This analysis is conducted using the example of the fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” by Aesop, which is part of the curriculum. A comparative analysis of the realization of standards within the domain of didactic design will provide insight into the alignment of curriculum requirements and textbooks, both the previous and newly approved ones, using the fable as an example. Additionally, it will examine the encountered qualitative didactic adequacy of the reader as a component of the textbook set. This paper will highlight possibilities for enhancing the existing didactic-methodological apparatus that accompanies the fable, aiming to expedite the process of educational interpretation of the work.

TECHNIQUES AND METHODS OF TRANSLATION OF CULTURALLY MARKED VOCABULARY IN ARTISTIC TEXT (IN THE SERBIAN AND UKRAINIAN LANGUAGES)

The article is devoted to the study of translation methods and techniques used for transferring the culturally marked vocabulary from Serbian language into Ukrainian. The material for the research is the Serbian novel „Ситничарница „Код срећне руке“, written by Goran Petrovich and its Ukrainian variant «Крамничка «З легкої руки», translated by A. Tatarenko. The object of the paper is culturally marked vocabulary and its subject — methods and techniques used for translation the Serbian nationally marked units into Ukrainian language. The study pays particular attention to the revealing the culturally marked lexis units in original novel; considers typological peculiarities of the culturally marked lexicon in a translation aspect; discusses the difficulties in its translation into Ukrainian. The main content of the article is to analyze translation techniques and level of equivalence of the translation. As a result of the research, the concepts of culturally marked vocabulary and background knowledge clarified; the translation methods of onomastic lexicon is determined, the level of adequacy of the translation assessed. The results of the study allow us to draw the following conclusions: proper names can be translated in various techniques: transcription / transliteration, calque, reformulation (sometimes known as equivalence, as usual, for idioms), and descriptive translation with generalization or specification, and so on. The analyzed Ukrainian translation is quite adequate. The prospect of further research is associated with comparative (for related languages) or contrastive (for unrelated languages) method to analyze translations of the same text from different origin as well as in the theoretical comprehension of vocabulary related to the background knowledge of speakers of a certain language, and its practical study.