Indeklinabilni pridjevi u bosanskom jeziku
The Indeclinable Adjectives in Bosnian

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the indeclinable adjectives in Bosnian, their characteristics, origin, types, accent and comparison. It provides the criteria for distinguishing the indeclinable adjectives from the other meaningful units. The indeclinable adjectives are divided into four types: Slavic, European, oriental and hybrid indeclinable adjectives. These types are all described. The Slavic indeclinable adjectives have Slavic origin and they are very rare (only two – rad and nalik). The European indeclinable adjectives are loanwords from non-Slavic European languages. There are many indeclinable adjectives of this type in contemporary Bosnian. The oriental indeclinable adjectives came to Bosnian via Turkish and they almost always have oriental origin (Turkish, Arabic, Persian) but not always (there are some indeclinable adjectives which have Latin, Indian, Greek, even Franch origin but they did not come to Bosnian via these or other European languages, they came via Turkish). This is the biggest group of indeclinable adjectives in Bosnian but many of these adjectives are archaisms. The hybrid indeclinable adjectives are composed of the parts that have the origin in languages which belong to two of three different groups – Slavic, European and oriental.

• Details
• Contents