О функционалностилскоj раслоености српскословенског jезика
On Functional Styles of Serbian Church Slavonic

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the functional stratification of Serbian Church Slavonic, manifested through the register of syntactic and lexical resources, which depended on the text function, its topic, typology and origin. The language of original Serbian church literature was modeled after Liturgical Church Slavonic, but due to the fact that a writer was not bound by the syntactic models and lexical resources of already existing texts, it also had innovations. Those innovations, however, did not change the inherited Old Church Slavonic system, since they only meant a higher usage of the resources already present in the canonical Church Slavonic documents. Further language stratification was manifested in the genres with profane topics. Their language was adapted to the vernacular in certain domains without violating the existing norms of the literary language. This was done, for example, by the choice between semantically equivalent syntactic means, giving prominence to those existing also in the vernacular (for example a higher percentage of the temporal clause in relation to the Dative absolute). The reason for this was pragmatic: the functional-stylistic adaptation to the addressee. The influence of Old Serbian on Serbian Church Slavonic in these genres could be also manifested in the rhythm of a text, or in formulas and expressions from the epic poetry. The functional styles thus could be defined in reference to: a) the choice from the inherited Old Church Slavonic syntactic and lexical register, b) systemic innovations due to the influence of the vernacular. Having this in mind, it should be emphasized that the investigation of the internal dynamic of Serbian Church Slavonic is inseparable from its external dynamic, i.e. its relation to Old Serbian.

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