The syntax of the genitive case in Croatian medieval poetry

Macanović, Neda. (2015). The syntax of the genitive case in Croatian medieval poetry. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Croatian Language and Literature. [mentor Pranjković, Ivo].

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is the analysis of the genitive syntax in the Chakavian Croatian medieval poetry. The research is based on the data (poems and Mary's lamentation – Planctus Mariae) from the hymn-book Croatian medieval poetry. The poems were collected and analyzed by A. Kapetanović, D. Malić and K. Štrkalj Despot and they date from the middle of the 14th to the first half of the 16th century. This corpus is written in the old Croatian language and in all three Croatian scripts: Glagolitic, Cyrillic and Latin. The examples of the genitives from the body of texts are divided according to their syntactic function as adnominal, adverbial and independent. They are explored separately. The adnominal function of the genitive case includes its use as congruent and non-congruent attribute and apposition. The mentioned forms are listed and also explored. The same procedure is repeated with the genitives in adverbial function which appear in positions of direct and indirect object, adverbial, part of the nominal predicate and predicate extension. In the function of adverbial the genitive is found in adverbials of: place, time, quantity, concession, manner, comparison, cause, purpose (aim), condition, means and accompaniment. The independent genitive is not used in any of these two functions but outside of their scope. Every syntactic function of the genitive case is provided with the types of the genitives that can appear in it (i. e. possessive genitive, ablative genitive, partitive genitive etc.). The aims of this research are finding the examples of the types of genitives that are archaic or very rare in the modern Croatian language (non-prepositional comparative genitive and the genitive of personal pronouns used instead of possessive pronouns), the confirmation of the domination of possessive genitive among the attributive genitive categories and the exploring of the frequency of Slavonic and ablative genitive and also the confirmation of the accusative case in phrases with verbs in negation. The analysis has resulted in confirmations of the non-prepositional comparative genitive in the function of the adverbial of comparison and the comparative genitive in constructions with the adjectives već / veće or the adverb više (veće / već) in the same function. These constructions are archaic and are not used in the modern Croatian language. There are also a lot of examples of the use of the genitive form of personal pronouns as possessive genitives in the function of non-congruent attribute instead of possessive pronouns. This is an extremely rare and stylistically marked means of expressing possession in Croatian language. There are examples of possessive pronouns: moj, tvoj, njegov, naš and vaš which coexist with the genitives of personal pronouns. The examples of possessive pronouns njezin and njihov haven't been found. The large number of verses with possessive genitive in the function of non-congruent attribute confirms its priority in the attributive genitive categories. The analyzed poems are abundant in verses with the Slavonic genitive in the function of indirect object but there is a considerably large number of verses with the accusative case with verbs in negation. The analysed body of texts is filled withe examples of the ablative genitive in various syntactic functions (non-congruent attribute, indirect object, adverbial, part of the nominal predicate). This fact confirms the claims that ablativity is the primary meaning of the genitive case.

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