Između Vuka i strukturalizma. Stjepan Ivšić prema starim i novim lingvističkim pristupima
Between Vuk and Structuralism. Stjepan Ivšić’s Attitude towards Old and New Linguistic Approaches

Author(s): Janusz Szablewski
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Croatian Literature, Polish Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Stjepan Ivšić; Neogrammarians; structuralism; dialectology; standard language; orthography
Summary/Abstract: Stjepan Ivšić (1884–1962) was a Croatian linguist with a wide range of interests. He is internationally recognized for the discovery of the eponymous "Ivšić’s law" concerning Slavic accentuation, whereas in Croatia he is remembered as the editor of the journal “Hrvatski jezik”, who resisted both the language unitarism enforced by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the attempts to introduce etymological spelling in the Banovina of Croatia. As a scholar whose work was hampered by historical events, Ivšić studied accentology, dialectology, historical and comparative grammar, as well as orthography. Thanks to the numerous scholarly interests, he was exposed to various methodologies and schools of thought in Yugoslav and European linguistics. His teacher was Tomo Maretić, a Neogrammarian and Vukovian. Ivšić’s accentological work was informed by the achievements of European linguists, such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Antoine Meillet. He was also acquainted with the structuralist Prague and Kazan Schools. Other than that, he would frequently appeal to Vuk’s authority in his papers on standard language and orthography. Despite all of these inspirations and influences, Ivšić cannot be viewed as a representative of any of the above-mentioned schools of thought. This paper presents Ivšić’s attitude towards Vukovian principles and existing methodologies in Croatian and Yugoslav linguistics at the time, as well as towards structuralism, based on his work from the interwar period, especially his understanding of dialectology, standard language, and orthography.

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