Akcenat u standardnom bosanskom jeziku
Accentuation in modern Bosnian language

Author(s): Elmedina Alić
Subject(s): Phonetics / Phonology, South Slavic Languages
Published by: Slavistički komitet BiH
Keywords: Bosnian language; accentuation; prosodic alternation;
Summary/Abstract: The accentuation norm of the Bosnian language has not been systematised or laid out in one body of work to this day. On the other hand, the standard Bosnian language is characterised by numerous accentual alterations which have not been the focus of academic research until now, leaving us with practically no estimate on the number of variant forms which are frequent in spoken Bosnian and inversely - variant forms that only exist in literary Bosnian.These two facts have been the primary points which determined the objective of this research – to first of all systematise the accentuation norm of the Bosnian language, that is to describe in brief the main accentual types of all types of words, abiding by a singular accentuation typology, as well as to examine the frequency of accentual alternations which are found in normative manuals of the standard Bosnian language.The method of excerption was applied on professional and scientific literature (grammar books and dictionaries). Research using questionnaires and surveys was conducted in primary and secondary schools in Travnik and Sarajevo. The gathered data was analysed statistically and commented on thus enabling us to determine which accentual alteration was more frequent.The accentual alterations found in the standard Bosnian language were sorted according the parts of speech : nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numbers, verbs and invariant parts of speech.The research complied with the accentual typology that divides all types of words in the following two categories:1. Immutable accentual type – which categorises words that have the same, unchanged accent in all forms and all the words of this type were sorted into four subgroups that are characterised by: a) circumflex, b) grave, c) double grave, d) acute accent.2. Mutable accentual type – which categorises mutable words the mutability of which can be in form of: a) a change in tone, b) a change in length, c) a change in the place of the accentuation.Based on the overview of accentual types it is apparent that in the whole corpus of the Bosnian language there is a significantly larger number of words of the immutable accentual type.

• Details
• Contents