Dalibor Brozović’s Typology of Slavic Standard Languages and the Status of Standard Croatian
Dalibor Brozović’s Typology of Slavic Standard Languages and the Status of Standard Croatian

Summary/Abstract: Dalibor Brozović (1927–2009) was one of the most influential Croatian linguists of his generation. Besides being an accomplished dialectologist, he also contributed to sociolinguistic theory and comparative Slavic studies. His views on Croatian, as a separate standard Slavic language, and the history of its standardization are still generally accepted in Croatia, and his articles on the position of Croatian among the Slavic languages are compulsory reading for all students of Croatian language and literature in Croatian universities.1 Brozović was writing his works on standardology during a particularly turbulent period of Croatian history: Yugoslavia was slowly opening its borders and becoming a less centralized country, and many Croatian intellectuals saw this as an opportunity to strive towards more national self-consciousness and independence in cultural and linguistic, if not political, matters.2 “The Declaration on the Name and Position of the Croatian Literary Language” (1967), which was co-written by Brozović and supported and signed by most Croatian cultural institutions, was soon condemned by the ruling Communist Party. However, the dogma of a unitary Serbo-Croatian (with the so-called Serbian and Croatian variants), while still supported by the Party, was seriously challenged once and for all. As we shall see, Brozović actively contributed to the dismantling of that dogma by developing his typology of Slavic standard languages and by pointing out the differences between the Serbian and Croatian “variants,” which, in his opinion, were equal to the differences between certain other separate standard languages.

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