Croatian urban dialects with special respect to the Pula dialect

Kekez, Stipe. (2018). Croatian urban dialects with special respect to the Pula dialect. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Croatian Language and Literature.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij kroatistike) [mentor Pliško, Lina and Ljubičić, Maslina].

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Abstract

This PhD thesis involves a theoretical section and a section based on research. The theoretical part described the structure of urban dialects: what belongs to urban dialects – from colloquial language to slang, jargon, argot, and šatrovački – as well as the factors that are related to them: colloquial language, standard language, interdialects, local dialects or organic speeches, i.e. the way how urban dialects function with respect to the local (organic) dialect of their territorial stratification, the standard language, how the process occurred of their shaping, and how they evolved into what they are, on a path from a so-called organic dialect to a colloquial or standard language. Cities are particularly important because colloquial languages and interdialects are evolving (and developing) in them. Colloquial language, interdialect, and substandard dialect have been described and the basic characteristics of the latter were noted. Interdialect serves for communication between speakers of the same territorial dialect or group of dialects when they are out of their villages or cities within the territory of the same dialect. Interdialect is based on generalized characteristics of that territorial dialect. A colloquial language of one region serves for communication between people, mostly educated, of the same region, but among people from other regions who also came to that region. Substandard language is a colloquial language as well, but that one whose characteristics are used in the whole territory of one federal state. The colloquial language structure (and that of substandard as well) is borrowed from the standard language. The role of colloquial languages is growing in contemporary urban dialects in preference to the (inter)dialects characteristic in the past, and above all the role of substandard language is more and more dominant, which is spread by television and radio media. Some linguistic characteristics compete to become part of the standard language, and the importance of urban dialects is major because expansion is carried out by them. This was described and defined in respect to different terminology: the same term for different notions or different terms for the same notion: slang, jargon, argot (cant), šatrovački. Slang is a dialect of youngsters or students and university students, argot (cant) is a dialect of delinquents, while šatrovački is a dialect made by metathesis of syllables. The phenomena or processes that are typical or becoming so in urban dialects (but not only in them) were pointed out or described, like koineization, koine, levelling, and diglossy. A review was made of the linguistic characteristics of Croatian urban dialects based on the researches conducted. (The review noted there are a lot of cities that have not yet been investigated and others that have been insufficiently investigated.) A typology of urban dialects was made in reference to the standard language (in correlation to the regional traditional dialects or local traditional dialects). There are three types: 1. Basic – in which all or most of the linguistic characteristics of a regional traditional dialect or old local traditional dialect are preserved; 2. Intermediate – a hybrid or mixed-dialect of old local traditional dialect (and/or imported characteristics of other traditional dialects) and standard language or colloquial language characteristics; 3. Final – the dialect in use is the standard or colloquial language with some phonetic, local, or regional traditional dialects, characteristics, and some unique words. The Croatian urban dialects have been classified according to this typology: 1. Basic dialects – Dubrovnik dialect, Varaždin dialect; 2. Intermediate dialects – Split dialect, Karlovac dialect, Korčula dialect, Crikvenica dialect (Senj dialect); 3. Final dialects – Zagreb dialect, Rijeka dialect, Osijek dialect, Zadar dialect. To corroborate the theoretical description of the structure that was made, a qualitative investigation of a Pula dialect was conducted in the field of urban dialectology, and a short description of this dialect was made. The typology of urban dialects was applied to it. The Pula dialect has shown how complex one urban dialect could be and how difficult it could be to define an urban dialect in one way. In reference to other dialects as well, there is no system in a dialectological (structural) sense, but is better to speak about individual grammars, where the sum (of different individual grammars) of shared characteristics compose a Pula dialect. The description displayed that the stress system is the most systematic (and of course the most fixed). In morphology, there is currently a plurality of forms (in relation to the phonology and the syntactical structure), but mostly with a dominance of standard forms. The syntactical structure most clearly shows the traditional dialectal characteristics of the region. In Pula, there are three dialects that somewhat display a continuum: 1. the substandard dialect (with a lesser number of Chakavian characteristics); 2. the Pula colloquial dialect (with more Chakavian characteristics); 3. a hybrid dialect (a relict of a regional Chakavian dialect, used by speakers with an Istrian origin for generations). In the Pula dialect, there was koineization of some regional traditional dialect characteristics with standard or substandard ones, and the shared characteristics were levelled as well. The question remains open as to whether there a pure Chakavian dialect is in use in Pula families. On basis of an exhausted material, it could be possible to determine whether codeswitching from a hybrid, mixed-dialect to the substandard dialect takes place.

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